Before now, if you accidentally delete a file or wipe a drive on your Windows PC or maybe your drive got corrupted and you want to recover your files, you needed third-party apps like EaseUS data recovery tool for that. Aside EaseUS data recovery tool, there are many other Windows file recovery tools you can use to recover deleted files on Windows PC, however, all this recovery tool are not completely free.
Many of the recovery software available, if not all, request that you pay if you’re trying to recover a large amount of data but that will change now with the new Windows Utility tool. Microsoft has silently released a free Windows file recovery tool for the new Windows 10 2004.
The the newly launched recovery tool supports recovering deleted files from your primary storage (HDD), external storage devices like microSD cards, Flash drives, or Hard drives.
❝For photos, documents, videos, and more, Windows File Recovery supports many file types to help ensure that your data is not permanently lost❞ Microsoft said.
The utility tool is specifically designed to search drive data for deleted photos, documents, videos, and several other files. The tool comes with three mode;
While third-party recovery tools offers GUI which users can easily interact with, the new Windows utility tool is a command line tool. Although the new Windows file recovery tool is a command line tool, it is easy to use for anyone.
Default mode. This mode uses the Master File Table (MFT) to locate lost files. Default mode works well when the MFT and file segments, also called File Record Segments (FRS), are present.
Segment mode. This mode does not require the MFT but does require segments. Segments are summaries of file information that NTFS stores in the MFT such as name, date, size, type, and the cluster/allocation unit index.
Signature mode. This mode only requires that the data is present and searches for specific file types. It doesn’t work for small files. To recover a file on an external storage device, such as a USB drive, you can only use Signature mode.
You can recover data on any drive, however, Microsoft recommends using the Signature mode if you’re trying to recover files on FAT, exFAT, and ReFS file systems. These include Micro SD and flash drives.
Download Windows File Recovery App
The recovery app is available to download via Microsoft Store for Windows 10 2004 and newer versions. It is less than 10MB in size and completely free to use.
