What to do right now
- Restore from the Recycle Bin, and check OneDrive, your phone and any photo backup service.
- If the photos are not there, stop saving to that drive and scan it, filtering for photo types.
- If the originals cannot be found, recover low-resolution previews from the thumbnail cache.
Step by step
Check the Recycle Bin
Open the Recycle Bin and switch to the details view so you can sort by date deleted and by original location. Select the photos and choose Restore to put them back in their original folders.
Check backups and the phone
If the photos came from a phone, the phone or its cloud backup may still have them, sometimes in its own recently deleted album. Also check OneDrive or any other sync service you use, which may keep deleted files in an online bin, and Previous Versions on the Pictures folder.
Stop writing to the drive
Do not copy new photos to the drive, and avoid installing software on it. If the photos were on drive C:, run the FileFix Ultimate portable ZIP from a USB stick. For an SD card or USB stick, simply stop using it until it has been scanned.
Scan with Deleted file recovery
Open Deleted file recovery, choose the drive and start the scan. Filter the results for JPEG, PNG, HEIC, GIF and BMP, and add camera RAW types if you shoot RAW. Photos found through file records keep their names and folders.
Use the preview to pick photos
Signature search can find thousands of images, including icons and web graphics. Sort by size to skip tiny files, and use the preview to check that a photo shows fully before you select it. Prefer results marked verified with high confidence.
Save to another disk and check
Save the selected photos to a different physical disk and open a few of them. If a JPEG shows a grey or broken lower half, try the JPEG repair in Damaged file repair. If nothing usable is left, run the deleted photo preview finder to extract thumbnails.
Why photos on an SSD are harder to get back
Most PCs now boot from an SSD. When TRIM is on, Windows tells the SSD which blocks are no longer used, and the drive may erase them soon afterwards. A scan can then show the photo's name while its content is empty, and no software can bring back data the drive has already cleared.
Hard drives, USB sticks and SD cards behave differently. They keep the deleted data until new files are written over it, which is why photos on an external drive or memory card usually recover better than photos on the internal SSD. On an SSD, backups, the phone and the thumbnail cache are often the realistic options.
Original names versus photos found by signature
When the file system still has the record for a photo, the scan returns its original name, its folder and its full data. This is common shortly after deletion on NTFS, FAT32 and exFAT drives.
When the record is gone, signature search looks for the start of each image format in the raw data. Photos found this way come back without names or folders. The date the photo was taken is often stored inside a JPEG, so a photo viewer can usually still show it, which helps you sort the results into albums again.
Common mistakes after deleting photos
Saving recovered photos to the same drive you are scanning is the most damaging mistake, because each saved file can overwrite another deleted photo. FileFix Ultimate refuses to save to the same volume for that reason.
Another mistake is clearing the thumbnail cache with Disk Cleanup while trying to free space. That cache may be the last place where a deleted photo still exists, even as a small preview, so leave it alone until you have finished.
When recovery will not work
- The photos were on an SSD with TRIM, and the drive cleared the blocks after deletion.
- Many new files were saved to the same drive afterwards and overwrote the photos.
- The drive was fully formatted rather than quick formatted.
- A thumbnail is only a small preview, so it cannot give back the original resolution.
How FileFix Ultimate helps
- Restores deleted photos with their names and folders from NTFS, FAT32 and exFAT records.
- Finds JPEG, PNG, HEIC, GIF, BMP and camera RAW files by signature, with a preview before saving.
- Repairs damaged JPEG and PNG files into new copies and leaves the originals unchanged.
- Extracts low-resolution previews of deleted photos from the Windows thumbnail cache.
FileFix Ultimate is free for personal use, works offline and never writes to the drive you are recovering from. Business use needs a one-year licence per PC. Check the signature before you run it.
Frequently asked questions
Can photos be recovered after emptying the Recycle Bin?
Often yes on a hard drive, USB stick or SD card, as long as they have not been overwritten. On an internal SSD the chances drop quickly, so check backups and the phone as well.
Why are there thousands of small images in the results?
Signature search also finds icons, web images and app graphics. Filter by type, sort by size and use the preview to find your own photos quickly.
Can iPhone HEIC photos copied to the PC be recovered?
Yes, HEIC is one of the recognised photo formats. How well they recover depends on the drive and on whether the space has been reused, as with any other photo.
Some recovered photos are half grey. What happened?
Part of the file was missing or overwritten. JPEG repair may recover more of the picture, but areas whose data is gone cannot be restored.
Does the Windows Photos app keep its own trash?
Photos deleted from the Photos app on a PC usually go to the Windows Recycle Bin, so look there first. Photos stored in a cloud account may also be in that account's own bin.