Microsoft Has a New Windows 10 File Recovery App

Microsoft is about to "Sherlock" a whole bunch of third-party utilities

Published June 30, 2020 05:00PM EDT

With tons of unofficial, third-party tools out there, Microsoft finally releases one you can trust.

Windows File Recovery app in Windows Store — Original image: Pixabay

Microsoft released its own File Recovery Tool in the Windows Store, making it much easier to decide which tool you want if you lose an important piece of data on your PC.

How it works: The new app is a command-line tool, so you'll want to be a little familiar with Window's Command Prompt app. You can target internal hard drives and external ones, including SD cards.

File Recovery tool in Windows — Microsoft

Technically detailed: You'll use the commands shown in the screenshot above to target specific file names, keywords, file paths, or extensions on your hard drive. The sooner you do that after you accidentally delete a file, the better, of course.

Files to recover: Microsoft says its file tool "Recovers JPEG, PDF, PNG, MPEG, Office files, MP3 & MP4, ZIP files, and more... from HDD SSD, USB, and memory cards." It supports NTFS, FAT, exFAT, and ReFS file systems, but you can't recover files from cloud storage, like Dropbox or OneDrive.

Bottom line: With literally hundreds of third-party apps that promise to recover your files that could be malware, Microsoft's official tool will at least make choosing a recovery tool much less stressful.