We capture memories through photographs and want to cherish those memories forever. What if one day you realize that your precious photos of big achievements and milestones are missing from your Windows 10 desktop or laptop? Now the question is how to recover missing photos from your system? If you follow the methods given in this post, you should be able to recover the missing photos easily.
Methods to Recover Missing or Deleted Photos from Windows 10 System
1). Go to the Recycle Bin: Any document or photo, which is deleted (by pressing the Delete key) on Windows system usually goes to the Recycle Bin. You can check the Recycle Bin for the recently deleted photos. Here are the steps to recover deleted photos from the Recycle Bin:
- Go to the Recycle Bin on your desktop or laptop. You can access it by double-clicking on the icon on the desktop.
- See the deleted pictures in the folder and choose the ones that you wish to recover.
- Next, right-click on the photo to be restored and select the Restore option. Your photo will be restored to the folder where it was originally located.
Note: This option will not work if you have deleted the photo using the Shift+Delete keys or have emptied the Recycle Bin.
2). Recover Deleted Photos Via File History Backup: Windows 10 features an inbuilt recovery and backup tool called the File History. This feature allows users to create backup copies of files and restore the deleted or missing files effortlessly. Here are the steps to restore missing/deleted photos using the File History feature:
- Click on the Start button on the bottom-left corner of your system. Type Control Panel in the search box and choose Control Panel from the results.
- Choose File History from the options given. Alternately, you can type Restore Your Files with File History in the search option.
- Choose the Restore Personal Files option that appears in the next window.
- Here you can see the photo files that have been missing from your folders. The files are usually organized as per the time of backup. You can click on the images that you want to recover.
- You can right-click on the photo and choose the Restore option.
Note: This method will work only if you have enabled the backup option beforehand on your Windows 10 system.
3). Restore Deleted Photos Using System Registry: This may not be the direct method to recover the missing photos but it is one of the easiest ways to recover missing photos from the Recycle Bin. The Windows System Registry enables you to restore the Recycle Bin on your system if you have deleted it by mistake. Here are the steps to restore the Recycle Bin using the System Registry option.
- Launch the Run dialog box on your system by pressing Windows + R keys.
- Type regedit in the dialog box and click on OK.
- Next, go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > Explorer > Desktop > NameSpace.
- In the right pane, right-click anywhere and choose New > Key.
- Next, type this text - {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E} and press Enter.
- Choose the newly selected key and make it Default by double-clicking on it.
- In the Value Data, type Recycle Bin.
- Close the editor and restart the computer.
- Check if the Recycle Bin option has been restored on your PC.
What if all the above-mentioned methods do not work?
If the above methods do not work, you need to use effective photo recovery software to recover the missing/deleted photos. There is free and paid software available in the market. The following are a few popular photo recovery software for Windows 10.
- Stellar Photo Recovery
- Wondershare Recoverit
- Disk Drill Photo Recovery
- R-Studio
- Recuva
- PhotoRec
- TestDisk
- CardRecovery
- Remo Recover
- Ease US
The software mentioned above share some common features and are designed to help you retrieve deleted photos easily. However, they may differ in terms of their price, performance, and results.
Tips to Choose Photo Recovery Software for Windows 10
- Check if the software is compatible with Windows 10.
- Data recovery is a complex process. See if the software’s interface is user-friendly and easy to navigate.
- Check if the software can recover photos, audio files, and videos that are lost due to viruses, deletion, corruption, or other technical issues.
- The performance of the software is one of the important considerations to be made. See if it can support multiple file formats, including 6k, 4k, 8k, and 360-degree files.
- Also check if the software can retrieve photos taken from mirrorless, action, and drone cameras, as well as from different storage media, such as memory cards, hard drives, and encrypted devices.
Conclusion
This post mentions some methods to recover missing photos from Windows 10. You can recover recently deleted photos from Recycle Bin. If this doesn’t work, you can use File History Backup or System Registry to recover your missing photos.