How Can I Recover Shift Deleted Files on Windows 11/10/8/7?

Have you ever seen a warning pop up on your Windows computer, saying" Are you sure you want to permanently delete these items?" Normally, this happens when you press the Shift + Del keys to delete files on your PC.

Most of you may just click Yes to delete them but find all the shift deleted files can't be found in Recycle Bin when you want to access these files again, do you know why? Besides, do you know how to recover these shift deleted files? If you're interested, just keep reading.

What is the difference between delete and shift delete

Normally, when you select a file on your Windows computer and press the Del key or right-click on it and select Delete, your files are been moved to the Recycle Bin. Your deleted files will be stored in Recycle Bin temporarily. if you want to look at the deleted files later or recover them back where they were, you can navigate to Recycle Bin to do it.

However, when you delete a file using the Shift Delete key combo, you'll find the shift deleted files can't be found either in the Recycle Bin or in File Explorer. This is because Windows OS removes those files from your storage drive's index and so your files are inaccessible and cannot be demonstrated as usual.

But don't panic, the shift deleted files are not gone forever, they are just not visible in Windows, but still exist on your Windows hard drive. Windows OS has just marked that section of your hard drive as available for use by other data. Until the marked section has been overwritten, you'll still get a huge possibility to recover shift deleted data.

Thus, before you started the shift deleted data recovery, stop any writing steps on the volume where the deleted files were kept.

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Can I recover shift deleted files

Just like the aforementioned, you still have chance to rescue your Shift deleted data. Generally, you can use the below methods to retrieve the shift deleted files:

Method 1: How to recover shift deleted files using recovery software

The best way to recover shift deleted files on Windows 11/10/8/7 is to use a professional file recovery app. iBoysoft Data Recovery is one of the best data recovery software in the market that can recover deleted files  successfully after emptying Recycle Bin. Besides, it can recover deleted photos, videos, audio, Office documents, and much more on Windows PC.

How to recover shift deleted files on Windows? Simply do the following:

Step 1: Free download, install, and Launch iBoysoft Data Recovery. To avoid data overwriting on your Windows drive, it is highly recommended that you download this file recovery software in a different volume. The installation package is quite small and only takes a little time to install on your Windows PC. After the installation finishes, open this app.

Step 2: Select a recovery module from three recovery modules according to your data loss scenarios:

Step 3: Select the Windows hard drive and click Next to start scanning. In order to quickly find and recover the shift deleted files, you can use Quick scan mode. If you want to find other lost files together, you can use Deep Scan mode to start scanning.

Step 4: Filter the scanning results and preview recoverable files. The preview function helps you find the correct files you want to recover when they have multiple similar versions.

Step 5: Select the checkbox in front of the files you want to retrieve and click the Recover button. You will be asked to select a location to save the shift deleted files. Save the recoverable files to another healthy hard drive as any changes on the original drive might cause corrupt files and permanent data loss.

Before you quit the iBoysoft file recovery software, make sure you have recovered all your shift deleted file.

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Method 2: How to recover shift deleted file with Windows File History

Windows 11/10/8 comes with another convenient tool named File History. It is designed for users to backup data easily. File History is tasked with copying all of the files located in the Music, Photos, Videos, and Documents folders.  If you had enabled File History before the files were shift deleted, you can quickly and easily restore a copy of them.

Let's see how to use File History to recover shift deleted files on Windows step by step:

If unfortunately the shift deleted files can't be recovered, maybe the File History is not enabled on your PC. To avoid accidentally data loss again, you should turn on Window File History. Don't know how to do it, simply check the following steps:

Step 1. Click the Start button and type File History.

Step 2. Under Settings in search results, click "Restore your files with File History".

Step 3. You'll be told that the feature is not enabled, click "Configure File History settings".

Step 4. Then choose the drive for which you'd like to enable the feature and then click "Turn on".

Once enabled, Windows backs up data in a key folder periodically and you can recover a copy of the deleted or lost data on Windows system when you need.

Method 3: How to recover shift deleted file via Windows Backup and Restore

If your PC is running an older version of the Windows operating system (Windows 7). To recover shift deleted files in Windows 7, you can use Backup and Restore to help you if it's turned on. Do the following to recover shift deleted files from Window 7:

Just like File History, it only works when you've turned it on. Thus, if you don't switch Backup and Restore on, then the shift deleted data recovery is impossible. To learn how to protect your files against data loss with Windows Backup and Restore, you can follow these instructions instead to enable the backup feature: