[Easy Ways] How to Scan Hard Drive for Deleted Files/Folder

Can you retrieve deleted files from a hard drive?

You keep important files and documents on your computer's hard drive or external hard drive, but you may delete or lose data due to various reasons, including accidental deletion, viruses or malware, formatted or damaged hard drives, and more.

After clicking "Shift + Delete", the file will be permanently deleted from the system. There is no way to restore them by yourself or by pressing "CTRL+Z". Wondering if a file is recoverable? Can you retrieve deleted files from a hard drive? Yes! You can scan and recover deleted files from hard drive.

Next, I will show you how to scan hard drive for deleted files in Windows 10/11/8/7.

How to scan and recover hard drive for deleted files in Windows 10/11/8/7

Now, try the 2 easy ways to scan and recover your hard drive for deleted files on your computer.

How to search hard drive for deleted files from Recycle Bin

If you delete files by pressing the "Delete" key, you can easily restore them by going to the Recycle Bin first. There is a chance that if you haven't emptied the Recycle Bin, you may find deleted data in the Recycle Bin.

To reuse deleted files, you need to recover items deleted from Recycle Bin to your system. Follow the steps listed below to recover deleted files or folders from the Recycle Bin.

Step 1. Find the Recycle Bin shortcut icon on your desktop, double-click it to open.

Step 2. Scan the files you need and select together all the files you want to restore to their original locations.

Step 3. Right-click on the selected files and click the Restore button to get them back. Or You can save files or folders by dragging them to the desired location.

How to scan and recover your hard drive for deleted files with data recovery software

If you ever emptied your Recycle Bin or used “Shift” + “Delete” keys to delete files permanently without removing to the Recycle Bin, you can’t directly restore the deleted files. Besides, files deleted from external disks do not go to the local recycle bin, but are directly deleted.

In this case, to retrieve data from hard drive you can apply a reliable data recovery software-MyRecover, which is designed to  easily scan and recover deleted files from computer hard drive and external storage devices, including HDD, SSD, SD card, etc., and there's no better option than ADR for Windows.

This tool comes with many features and advantages, making it to tackle most difficult data loss scenarios: 

🔥 It can help you scan external hard drive for deleted files or folders with its advanced scanning technology-Quick Scan & Deep Scan. You can recover all deleted data without any omissions.
➡️ With ADR for Windows, you can recover data from external hard drives (HDD, SSD, USB, SD card) with just a few clicks.
⚡ In addition to deleted file recovery, it also applys to various data loss situations like inadvertent deletion, disk formatting, system crash, virus attack, etc.
🧱 It is perfectly compatible with Windows with NTFS, FAT32, exFAT, ReFS in Windows 11/10/8/7 /& Windows Server. So, you can easily restore permanently deleted files in Windows 10/11/10/8/7.
🐢 It can recover more than 200 files types including documents (TXT, PPT, PDF, DOC, etc.), images, videos, audios, archives and more.

Now, free download ADR for Windows to see how to scan and recover hard drive for deleted files.

Step 1. Run MyRecover, hover the mouse over the drive and click Scan to scan.

Step 2. During the process, you can directly recover the files it detects, or you can wait for the full scan results.

Step 3. Select the data you want to get back and click Recover x files.

In this way, you can easily search your deleted files from hard drive. Also, this tool can help you get back data from other devices, such as recovering data from laptop hard drive.

To sum up

That’s all on how to scan hard drive for deleted files, you can try the above methods to scan and recover your deleted files or folders. In fact, with the help of recovery software, the process of scanning and recovering deleted files from hard drives is no longer complicated or time-consuming.