How to recover a deleted AutoCAD DWG drawing

Step by step

1. Stop working on that drive

   Close AutoCAD and do not save new drawings, plots or exports to the drive that held the deleted file. Large CAD files and plot spools write a lot of data and can overwrite the free space you want to recover from.

2. Rename the .bak copy

   Open the folder where the drawing lived and show file extensions. If you see a file such as Plan.bak, copy it somewhere safe and rename the copy to Plan.dwg. It is usually the version from just before the last save, so some recent edits may be missing.

3. Look for autosave .sv$ files

   In AutoCAD, open Options and the Files tab to see the automatic save file location; on many installations it points to the Windows temp folder of your user account. Sort that folder by date, copy any .sv$ file that matches the drawing name, and rename the copy to .dwg. Autosave files are often removed when AutoCAD closes normally, so this works best after a crash.

4. Check copies outside the PC

   Look in the Recycle Bin, right-click the project folder and open Properties, then Previous Versions, and check the file server, cloud folder or vault your office uses. A shared copy keeps the file name, folder and external references intact.

5. Scan the drive from USB

   Run the portable FileFix Ultimate from a USB stick, open Deleted file recovery, choose the drive and start the Balanced scan. File system records come first, so a DWG found there keeps its name and folder. Filter by the dwg, bak or sv$ extension to see every candidate.

6. Save to another disk and open it

   Select the drawings and save them to a different physical disk. Open each one in AutoCAD; if it reports damage, use the built-in RECOVER command on the copy rather than on anything still on the original drive.

Why AutoCAD leaves extra copies behind

When the option to create a backup copy with each save is enabled, AutoCAD renames the previous version of the drawing to a .bak file before writing the new one. That means a .bak sitting in the folder is a complete drawing, only one save older. Many offices leave this option on, but it can be turned off, so the file may simply not exist.

Autosave is a separate mechanism. At the interval set in the options, AutoCAD writes the open drawing to a .sv$ file in its autosave folder. These files are meant for crash recovery and are often deleted when the program closes cleanly, which is why they are most useful when AutoCAD crashed or the PC lost power. Both kinds of copy are ordinary files, so a recovery scan can also find deleted .bak and .sv$ files if the DWG itself is gone.

Names, folders and what a signature search can do

A DWG file starts with a short version marker, so FileFix Ultimate can recognise it by content even when the file system no longer knows where it was. Files found this way have no original name or folder; they appear with a generated name, and you identify them by size, date range and preview in AutoCAD after saving. Files found through the file system records keep their names.

Drawings that reference other files lose those links if only the main DWG comes back. Xrefs, images, fonts and plot style tables are separate files, so recover the whole project folder where possible, or check the reference paths in AutoCAD after opening the recovered drawing.

Common mistakes that make CAD recovery harder

Saving a new drawing with the same name into the same folder is the most common one: it can overwrite the clusters of the deleted file and replaces the .bak with a newer one. Another is installing a recovery program on the same drive. Copy .bak and .sv$ files elsewhere before you rename or open them, so the originals stay untouched if something goes wrong.

When it won't work

• On an internal SSD with TRIM, the deleted drawing's blocks may be erased within moments, and scans then find nothing usable.
• If the space was reused by new drawings, plots or updates, the old DWG is overwritten and cannot be recovered by any tool.
• A drawing that was split into many fragments on a nearly full drive may come back only partly and fail to open.
• FileFix Ultimate does not repair the internal structure of DWG files; use AutoCAD's own RECOVER or AUDIT commands on a copy.

How FileFix Ultimate helps

• No recovery limit and free for personal use, with a portable ZIP that runs from a USB stick so nothing is installed on the affected drive.
• Reads the drive read-only and saves results only to another physical disk.
• Recovers DWG, BAK and SV$ files with original names from NTFS, FAT32 and exFAT records, and finds DWG files by signature when records are gone.
• Shows each result with a confidence level and an honest status, so you know which drawings were checked and which were only extracted.

Frequently asked questions