Recovering files deleted by Disk Cleanup

Phonesis · 7 Feb 2019 at 12:22

I stupidly just ran Disk Cleanup in Windows 10 just now and selected to wipe my Downloads folder.

I then realised, after running it, I had a folder with pictures in there I wanted to keep.

Is there anything I can do to recover them? I unfortunately had no restore points / file history enabled so can't do that.

I downloaded recuva (a file recovery tool) and it managed to find several files that were in a recoverable state from downloads but none were the pictures

Anything else i can try?

jsmoke · 7 Feb 2019 at 12:33

Recuva is pretty good, did you do a deep scan, other than that maybe try another recovery software, I would have thought it should come up though as recently deleted. Do you have the shred option turned on in CCC?

Phonesis · 7 Feb 2019 at 12:45

Thanks, am running deep scan now but am worried gonna get same result. Can you recommend any other software (free)? I didn't use CCleaner to do the wipe. Just in built Disk Cleanup

jsmoke · 7 Feb 2019 at 12:59

You will get very different results with deep scan. Takes a while though.

Phonesis · 7 Feb 2019 at 13:54

So deep scan found them... they were marked as green / recoverable. But when I go to open them once restored they don't open. Just get black screen

jsmoke · 7 Feb 2019 at 14:00

I assume you saved them to the desktop or where ever?

Phonesis · 7 Feb 2019 at 14:16

I did yes

jsmoke · 7 Feb 2019 at 14:41

Don't know then looks like they've been overwritten partially.

Phonesis · 7 Feb 2019 at 15:42

Tbh after some digging I have realised virtually all the pics are either on facebook or my old Apple photostream. So I can spend some time gathering them all up again from various sources. Lesson learnt though. Don't store stuff in Downloads!

postmanfw · 7 Feb 2019 at 18:10

Not a good idea to recover them to the same drive that you are recovering them from....

Phonesis · 7 Feb 2019 at 19:30

Nope. I totally botched it earlier must say. Oh well.

darael · 7 Feb 2019 at 22:13

Is your main OS drive an SSD? If so, then automatic garbage collection can kick in fairly quickly, making the files very hard to recover unless you act very fast.

AthlonXP1800 · 7 Feb 2019 at 23:07

If you got either File History or System Restore turned on and you can restore all files deleted from Download folder, go to Download folder properties and click on previous versions tab and you will see all previous Download folder versions with date and time.

Chaos · 7 Feb 2019 at 23:42

Could try PhotoRec

https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

Phonesis · 7 Feb 2019 at 23:57

Yeah it's an SSD. I have learnt my lesson. Damage was minor as have managed to get virtually all the pics back from other backups. Lost a couple though but nothing I can do I don't think. They might turn up somewhere.

bledd · 8 Feb 2019 at 15:49

Restore them from your backu....

Veeam Endpoint Backup

Set it to run daily incrementals, awesome software, free

Disco_P · 9 Feb 2019 at 12:43

bledd said:
Restore them from your backu....

Veeam Endpoint Backup

Set it to run daily incrementals, awesome software, free

I forgot about veeeeeeeeam but sure enough it's still dutifully doing daily incrementals, weekly fulls and keeping the last fortnight's files.