How to Make Files Undeletable in Windows 11/10/8/7

Can you prevent a file from being deleted?

After using a computer for a while, you probably have some files that you cannot bear to lose. In case you or someone else delete such files unintentionally, you can make the files undeletable in Windows 10/8/7.

For important files that you don’t want anyone to delete them, you can restrict their access. Without accessing permission, no one can delete or access the files.

In addition, you can zip up a file, make a copy of it on a removable storage device, or move the files to System32 folder or other locations that people do not usually go.

Deny access permissions to prevent files from being deleted

As you probably know, you can edit user permission to a shared folder within the same network. Actually, you can also change user permissions to the non-shared files saved on your internal hard drive or external drive.

You can follow the steps below to restrict user permission

1. Right-click on the file or folder that you want it undeletable, and select “Properties”.

2. Click on the “Security” tab, and click “Edit” to change permissions.

3. In a new window, click “Add”, and type “Everyone” in the field as the screenshot below.

4. Back to the Permissions window, change Full control permission to Deny and click “Apply”.

5. Click “Yes” on the prompt confirmation window.

After that, you have created an undeletable folder. If you try to delete this folder, you will receive an error “Folder Access Denied”. As long as you the owner of this folder or file does not change the permission, no one can delete it.

If the files are too valuable to you, then the above process is not enough. As you can see, changing the permissions settings can bypass the trick. In addition, this cannot prevent ransomware virus to access or delete the file.

It is not easy to restore deleted files and there is no guarantee that all files can be restored. Therefore, to better protect your files, you can back them up in a separate location, secured with a password if needed.

Backup files regularly in case of accidental deletion or damage

Besides accidental file deletion, there are many factors that can cause data loss, such as hard drive failure, ransomware virus affection, system crash, etc. Since these things are unexpected, the best way to protect your data is to perform backups regularly.

You can use free backup software AOMEI Backupper Standard to backup your entire hard drive or some important folders, and then keep creating incremental or differential backups as frequently as you like.

AOMEI Backupper comes with very simple and effective interface and leaves little room for user error. You can simply create a file backup/partition backup/system backup/disk backup task within several steps, and customize the backup job with many useful options.

Download the freeware to have a try:

How to back up important files in case of any accidents:

1. Install and launch the free backup tool, go to the Backup tab and choose File Backup. You can also choose other options according to your needs, such as using System Backup to create a system image.

2. Click Add Folder or Add File to specify the important data you want to protect, then select the destination path to receive the backup image. In addition to the local disk, you can also choose external drive, USB flash drive, network share, NAS, cloud, etc.

3. Before Start Backup, you can set up a Scheduled Backup at the frequency of daily, weekly, monthly, etc, and choose to run full, incremental or differential backup in Backup Scheme.

✎Tips: 

• If you have large files to back up and are worried about regular backups taking up disk space, you can turn on Automatic Backup Cleanup (available in AOMEI Backupper Professional) in Backup Scheme to automatically delete backup images that are older than x days.
• In addition to Windows client OS, AOMEI Backupper also has a Server edition that supports Windows Server 2003, 2008, 2011, 2012, 2016, 2019, 2022 (including R2) and Windows SBS 2003, 2008, 2011.

Conclusion

If you just want to prevent files from being deleted by accident, it's easy to deny user permissions. However, this is not an absolutely safe method and does not protect against many unknown situations.

If you are worried about someone may force delete the undeletable files, then you should consider backing up the files to another location. What’s worse, some virus can encrypt your files and delete them without your knowledge. If you take all that situations into consideration, there is no way to make files undeletable truly.

Therefore, in order to protect your valuable files, backup your files in advance. If possible, create more than one backup copies and save them in different locations.