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Losing precious photos can be disheartening. Due to unanticipated circumstances, you may end up misplacing or deleting important pictures from your Windows PC. But did you know that even though you can’t see the files in your computer, they are still there and you can get them back by following the steps given in this blog?
There are countless ways in which you could lose important files from your laptop/desktop, including valuable photos. It could be due to accidental deletion, software issues or something you can’t imagine right now. But despite the catastrophe, what matters is that you can recover deleted photos in a few clicks!
While most of the times you can find the photos lying in the Recycle bin waiting to be recovered, sometimes (when you’re just unlucky), the photos might appear to be gone forever. This usually happens when you permanently delete files using Shift + Del on Windows.
If you find yourself in such a situation, don’t panic. In this article we are sharing a few unique ways to recover permanently deleted photos from Windows. We’ll also talk about proven ways to restore files that you thought were lost forever through a few simple tricks. So without any delay, let’s move ahead.
Table of Contents
Where have your deleted pictures gone?
When files are deleted from your Windows PC, the operating system moves them to the Recycle Bin by default. These files can be easily restored to their original location with the click of a button. All you need to do is go to the Recycle Bin folder (double-click on the icon on desktop), select the files you wish to restore, right-click on them and click on “Restore.”
If, however, you empty your computer’s Recycle Bin, the files inside it are removed completely from your computer. At this time, the computer removes the entry of the file from your computer.
This is where the interesting part comes in. While the file “appears” to be permanently gone from your system, what you probably don’t know is that it still resides on the disk and can be recovered by various methods. But you should know that to use such methods, time is of the essence. It is necessary that you act fast and initiate the recovery process as soon as possible. The more you delay, the lesser are the chances of the file being overwritten and then the file cannot be recovered.
With that, let’s move to the proven ways to recover deleted photos from Windows.
How to recover deleted photos from Windows
1. Recover deleted photos through command prompt
This is the least user friendly method and involves using a series of commands to recover permanently deleted files from your computer.
Having said that, if you are able to understand and follow the instructions given below, it won’t be difficult for you to accomplish the task:
- Open the Windows Start Menu.
- Type “cmd” in the search box and a list of options will appear.

- From the options towards the right choose “Run as administrator” to run the Command Prompt with administrator privileges.
- When the prompt window opens, type “CHKDSK Y: /f” in it (replace “Y” with the letter of your hard drive) and press Enter.
- Next type “ATTRIB -H -R -S /S /D Y:*.*” (replace “Y” with the letter of your hard drive) and hit Enter.

Note: The recovery process may take a while to finish. Thus, kindly be patient and avoid interrupting it. Also, when the recovery process is running, avoid doing any other tasks on your computer.
2. Recover deleted photos from older backup
Windows backs up your files periodically and so there’s a possibility of recovering accidentally deleted files and photos from older backups. This solution is only applicable to Windows 7, Windows 10 and higher Windows OS uses. Windows 8 users should move to the next solution since the backup option has been removed from Windows 8 by Microsoft in favor of File history.
Windows 10 users can recover deleted photos using the Backup and Restore option in Windows.
- Open the Windows Start menu
- Type “backup” and hit Enter.
- Select the “Go to Backup and Restore (Windows 7)” The option is available under “Looking for an older backup?”
- Click on the “Select another backup to restore files from” option and choose the backup you wish to recover from.

- Click “Next” and follow the instructions to complete the recovery process.
3. Recovering files from File History
As mentioned earlier, File History was a replacement for Backup and Restore option in Windows which was introduced in Windows 8 edition. Here are the steps to follow if you wish to recover permanently deleted photos using this solution:
- Click on the Windows Start button
- Type “File History,” and then click the search result labelled as “Restore your files with File History.”
- In the search box, type the name of a file (image) you want to recover.
- When you have located the image you are interested in, use the left and right arrows to browse through its available versions.
- To restore the image to its original location, select the image and then click on Restore.
- To restore the image to a different location, right-click the image select Restore To, and then select the folder you would like to use

Note: The File history option should be ‘On’ for this option to work. If you can’t see the deleted images, files or their versions, it means that the File history option is not active on your computer.
4. Using Photo Recovery Software
There are numerous photo recovery applications available online that can come handy in this situation. Most data recovery experts rely on Stellar Photo Recovery to get the job done.
You can download this photo recovery software from its official website and use it to recover your permanently deleted photos. The software is simple to use and even a novice user can follow the instructions and recover deleted photos in no time.
- Download, install and launch Stellar Photo Recovery on your Windows PC.
- From the home screen, select the drive or volume from where you wish to recover photos. It could be your computer hard drive partition like C: or external hard drive.

- Click on Scan and wait for the scanning to complete. The process may take time so please be patient while the software scans your selected location.
- After the scanning is complete, Stellar Photo Recovery will list all deleted images that can be recovered successfully. The software provides essential information like file name, type, size, date created and date modified for every image in the list.

- From the list of recoverable images, preview any image you wish to. Stellar Photo Recovery software provides previews of the deleted files which can be useful if you can’t remember the file names and only want to recover a few images.
- Select the files you can want to recover and click on Recover
- The software will start recovering the photos and prompt you to save the recovered files to desired location.

Note: the drive to save recovered files should be different from the original file location
Wrapping Up
Accidentally deletion of your photos on your Windows computer should not be a cause for worry. Recovering permanently deleted photos from Windows is extremely easy with Stellar Photo Recovery software. The only thing you need to do to restore lost files on Windows is act fast and use the Stellar Photo Recovery software.
FAQs
Can you recover photos from corrupt thumb drives or hard drives?
Yes, Stellar Photo Recovery can recover photos even from a corrupt hard drive or pen drive. However, the condition of the drive is also important in this case. Stellar Photo Recovery has advanced features that can read SMART information and provide information about the health of the drive in question. If you feel the hard drive or pen drive is failing, you need to recover the files from such devices and discard them altogether to avoid their usage in the future.
What can you do if the deleted photos are corrupt?
Stellar Photo Recovery software comes with advanced feature that allows you to fix corrupt files. The software can corrupt JPEG/PNG images along with RAW images from cameras like Nikon, Sony, Olympus, Canon, and other cameras.
What is the Deep Scan option?
Sometimes the deleted photos might not get listed in the Preview list after initial scan. In that case, you need to use the Deep Scan option that will direct the software to perform a comprehensive scan of your hard drive to locate deleted photos.
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