Windows File Recovery, this is how Microsoft's new application to recover files works

Windows File Recovery, this is how Microsoft's new application to recover files works

Microsoft has made available to users a new free tool that we can find in the Windows 10 operating system app store. We refer to Windows File Recovery, an application that will help us recover deleted files in Windows 10 . The application has been quite a surprise, since nobody expected it. Generally when we need to recover files we need to resort to paid applications. Now with Windows File Recovery we will have a totally free application that is available in the Windows application store. Let's see how it works.

A simple application but without a graphical interface

If you want to try the new Windows File Recovery application, the first thing you will have to do is download and install it. To do this you simply have to go to the Windows 10 application store, search for it and click on Get. We leave you a direct link to the application to make it even easier.

Unfortunately, in this simple step we may have the first problem. And it is that a message can jump us indicating that we do not have any applicable device linked to our Microsoft account. Why is this happening? Because the new Windows File Recovery tool is only compatible with the latest version of Windows 10, the Windows 10 May 2020 Update or version 2004 . And the problem is that this update is not yet available for the vast majority of computers.

The second drawback that we see in the new Microsoft application is that it does not have a graphical interface . That is, to use it we will have to do it through the command line . And not all users control this interface.

this is how Windows File Recovery interface works

If you know a little English and have ever seen the applications that are used through the command line, surely you can use the application without problems. As a summary we can tell you that the application is launched using the "winfr" command , followed by the drive where the file to be recovered was and where we want the recovered file to be saved. After the source and destination folders, we will have to tell the application in which way we want it to perform the scan. We will do this with a / followed by the corresponding letter.

According to Microsoft's support website, Windows File Recovery offers three modes . The Default mode is recommended for files recently deleted from a hard drive with an NTFS file system. The second mode is Segment , recommended to recover files deleted a long time ago, after formatting the disk or if the files were on a corrupt disk. Finally there is the Signature mode , designed to recover files from a disk that is formatted with the FAT, exFAT or ReFS file systems.

Let's look at an example . Let's say that we want to recover a document called balance.docx that we had in the Documents folder of the user your expert on the main disk of the computer (C :). We want to store the backup of this document in drive D :, the second disk of the computer that we use as a warehouse. The command to use (with Windows in Spanish) would be the following:

winfr C: D: / n \ Users \ your expert \ Documents \ balance.docx

This is just a small example for the cases in which we are looking for a specific file, but the tool has many more possibilities. For example, we can tell the tool to recover all the jpeg and png photos from the photos folder and save them to a folder on our recovery drive (D: in our example):

winfr C: D: / n \ Users \ youexpert \ Images \ *. JPEG / n \ Users \ youexpert \ Images \ *. PNG

These two commands, and many more, can be found on the Microsoft support website. Here you have multiple examples of what we can do with the new Windows File Recovery application.