How to Retrieve Deleted Files: A Full Guide with the Best Software

When you delete a file, your operating system does not immediately erase the actual data bytes from your storage drive (HDD or SSD). Instead, it performs two crucial actions:

① Change to the File System’s Directory:

a. The file system maintains a table—such as the File Allocation Table (FAT) or Master File Table (MFT)—which acts as an index for all files, recording their location, name, and other metadata.

b. Upon deletion, the system simply marks the file’s entry in this table as “deleted.” This is often done by changing the first character of the filename in the directory.

c. The critical file metadata and the pointer to where the file’s content is stored on the disk are removed from the active index, but they often remain in place until overwritten.

② Change to Storage Space Status:

a. The clusters (the smallest units of disk space) where the file’s actual content resides are marked as “free” or “available for new data.”

b. The original data itself remains physically intact on the disk platters (HDD) or memory cells (SSD). It becomes inaccessible to the operating system but is still present.

c. The data will only be permanently lost when the operating system writes new information to those specific “free” clusters, overwriting the previous content.