Recovering Recycle Bin

BOOMBASTICA

Hi, does anyone know of a legitimate free software that I can download to help restore items that have been emptied from my recycle bin by mistake? I can see there's a few but I don't want to download anything dodgy.

Cheers.

km1500

you can try recuva

however be aware that installing recuva or indeed any other recovery software on your C drive could potentially overwrite the files that have been deleted from the recycle bin which will also have been stored on your C drive

Newcad

Is your drive a HDD or an SSD?

If it's a HDD then you may have a chance to recover the files.

Recuva from CCleaner/Piriform can often do it as long as you haven't used the computer since deleting. Don't pay for Recuva, the free version can do exactly the same as the paid for version.* (You are only paying for support which you can get for free on CCleaner forum).

But if it's a SSD then the chances of recovering any deleted files from an internal SSD drive are almost zero, because they use different technology.

*Disclosure. I'm a moderator on the CCleaner forum.

Neil_Jones

Newcad said:

Is your drive a HDD or an SSD?

If it's a HDD then you may have a chance to recover the files.

Recuva from CCleaner/Piriform can often do it as long as you haven't used the computer since deleting. Don't pay for Recuva, the free version can do exactly the same as the paid for version.* (You are only paying for support which you can get for free on CCleaner forum).

But if it's a SSD then the chances of recovering any deleted files from an internal SSD drive are almost zero, because they use different technology.

*Disclosure. I'm a moderator on the CCleaner forum.

You can recover data from SSDs.  Depends whether its had a TRIM in the meantime between deleting and the new recovery software.  Hard but not impossible, but unlikely domestically, especially if you only have the one drive and nothing else to run software from.

Actual erasure of TRIMMED blocks may take some time, and it’s typically something a SSD does when being idle. So generalizing, the data will be erased when the SSD is powered on and idle. This means the data is still somewhere on the drive  As long as that’s the case a data recovery of forensic lab may still be able to recover the data using special hardware.

SteveJW

Install Recuva portable on a USB stick

Newcad

Yes it the TRIM which makes recovery of deleted files from an internal SSD almost impossible.

(The OS will (usually) issue a TRIM command as files are deleted).

You can of course disable TRIM, but doing so slows down the performance of the SSD. Why get a speedy SSD and then deliberately cripple it?

I did say internal SSD drive in the post above, because if the recycle bin in question was on an external drive I'm sure that would have been mentioned.

Recovery of deleted files from an external SSD is usually possible, because it will not be connected to a SATA interface (it will usually be connected via USB) and so the computer cannot give it a TRIM command when deleting files.
An external SSD will still 'Garbage Collect' ocasionally, but not as often as if it is TRIM'ed.

Recovery of non-deleted files from crashed SSDs may also be possible, if it's crashed then it won't have been TRIM'ed since the crash. (You use the Advanced options in Recuva to recover non-deleted files from crashed drives).

Note that the Portable version of Recuva has not been available from the developers (Piriform/CCleaner) for a number of years now.
The Portable version can still be downloaded from some 3rd party websites, but also note that many/most say say it's the Portable but then download the standard installer, rcsetup513.exe.
This one is a repackaged Portable version:https://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/rcvportable
(I've just downloaded one and it scans as clean).
If using any 3rd party site then virus check the download file(s), it(they) will often have been repackaged and you should ensure that the one you download has not been tampered with.