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Microsoft Releases Undelete Tool – Backups are Better

June 30, 2020

Microsoft Windows has had the recycle bin for years. Apparently, it's not good enough for users to recover deleted data. As reported by Ars Technica, Microsoft has released a stand-alone undeletion tool called WINFR (Windows File Recovery). The utility works with the latest versions of Windows 10. Finding the utility can be a little challenging even if searching the Microsoft Store. "Moving onto the Microsoft Store, the experience was no better—when searching for its exact name, we couldn't find the Windows File Recovery tool until we'd filtered our results first to Apps only, then to Tools & Utilities only."

Not so fast. The best solution is to backup your system in case you need to restore any data. Many users have relied on third-party shareware utilities to recover deleted files that typically have a graphical interface. WINFR isn't as fancy and is command line driven. It's not a perfect world either. You will need some sort of external storage (e.g. USB flash drive) to restore the recovered data. In testing, Ars Technica had problems restoring from solid state drives too. Since a lot of modern day machines use SSDs, backing up data is still the best solution. Don't count on some tool to save your bacon.

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