How to Restore Lost & Deleted Pictures on Computers? | Win 10

“Why have my photos disappeared from my PC?”

Have you ever lost some pictures? There is no doubt that photos are the most important file to hold and keep the very moment of people’s life. Prudent users will carefully back up their photos to prevent photo loss risk.

Considerable users, however, still lay little emphasis on photo backup and don’t know what to do after photos get lost or deleted.

Accidental deletion, disk formatting, virus attack, PC crash, etc., many disasters can lead to photo loss. Among these, inadvertent deletion is the biggest reason.

What’s more, viruses may hide/modify/delete your images maliciously.

But don’t you worry, no matter whether your photos are lost or deleted, you could find solutions on how to restore lost pictures on computer in this post.

The fastest way to retrieve lost & deleted photos from computer

Ordinary users will find data recovery to be a difficult task. Using competent and effective photo recovery software will be the simplest way to recover lost and deleted images from your computer.

Here we would recommend MyRecover. Developed by AOMEI, the leading enterprise in the data recovery industry, it is backed by a skilled and sophisticated team with over ten years of software development expertise.

Equipped with advanced scanning methods, it scans the affected hard drive and locates the deleted & lost files within several seconds to minutes.

Now download the software to start an easy photo recovery in Windows 11/10/8/7.

Professional data recovery tool for Windows Free Download

Restore lost pictures on computer within 3 simple steps

Notes:✎...

Please remember to save the recovered pictures on a different drive than their original locations to avoid overwriting.

Step 1. Start the program > hover the mouse over the affected hard drive > click Scan.

Step 2. Quick Scan can find deleted pictures on computer, while Deep Scan locates other missing files. Preview the scanned files or directly select photos to restore.

Step 3. Go to Deleted files > find and select the deleted pictures > click Recover x files. If failed, go to Other missing files > Images > see if your pictures are there.

Using this powerful tool, you could also easily find lost and deleted pictures on computer. Also, if you have shift deleted the pictures, it can recover permanently deleted photos as well.

Find lost and deleted photos on computer without software

How to restore lost pictures on computer without software will also be introduced in this part.

Method 1. Get deleted photos back on computer via File History

File History is an embedded tool on Windows PC since Windows 8. It can back up the files stored on the C: drive, including Favorites, Downloads, files on the Desktop, Saved Games, etc.

You could also use it to restore permanently deleted Excel files from desktop.

Pretty limited, but, there's only so much this tool can do.

Step 1. Go to Control Panel > System and Security.

Step 2. Go to File History.

Step 3. Select Restore personal files.

Step 4. Select the pictures you need > click the Recover button.

Method 2. Find lost pictures on computer by unhiding them

If you lose access to your pictures on computer, they might not be deleted, but hidden due to human errors/misoperation or viruses.

Select the affected drive in This PC > click View in the toolbar > Options > View > toggle Show hidden files, folders, and drives in Advanced settings.

If it didn’t help, try Command Prompt. Use the “attrib” command to change the attribution of files and unhide photos.

Step 1. Run Command Prompt > select Run as administrator.

Step 2. Input chkdsk F: /f > input Y > F > press Enter.

Step 3. Then input F: >attrib –h –r –s /s /d *.*. Thus you could fix potential problems (if any) and unhide the pictures. It can also assist you to restore deleted files from pen drives using CMD.

Conclusion

In this article, feasible methods of how to restore lost pictures on computer are all elaborated on. Turning to a reliable Windows data rescue software is a better bet to save your time & labor and ensure data safety.

What's more, backups are always the best method to prevent data loss risk. If you don't back up data at all, then you really should do. AOMEI Backupper could guard your data firmly with its amazing features.

FAQ about photo recovery