Cause of loss · files deleted or missing
Delete something on a spinning disk and you remove the index card, not the contents — the data stays put until fresh writes land on top. A current SSD behaves differently: it begins wiping those cells almost immediately, unprompted. So the answer hangs on which sort of drive you have. Both are covered below.
Run the problem past an engineer
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| On screen | What's behind it | First move |
|---|---|---|
| File gone, Recycle Bin already empty | Something skipped the bin: Shift+Delete, removable media, or a file over the size limit | Write nothing else to that disk |
| Too big for the Recycle Bin | Windows deleted it directly, no bin involved | The contents are usually still present |
| Erased from an SD card or memory stick | Removable media has no bin at all, so the record disappears instantly | Unplug it and leave it be |
| The lot disappeared once sync ran | OneDrive or a rival copied someone else's deletion onto your machine | Look in the provider's web bin first of all |
| A folder you use daily, now empty | A delete, a sync clash, or a different profile | Shut down first, then investigate |
| Files removed from an SSD | TRIM goes out from Windows and the controller blanks those blocks, often in seconds | Power it off, now |
Every item gets its own case number on the day it lands here. An engineer traces the fault, gives you a plain assessment of what is realistically recoverable, and puts one fixed price in writing. The diagnosis is free, you are under no obligation, and chargeable work starts only when you say go.
Leave a computer on and it writes without being asked: thumbnails, cache, updates. Any of them may settle on the sectors your data occupies. So the disk comes out and gets imaged before anything else.
If the file table is still readable, everything comes back with its original names, dates and folder structure. If it isn't, we pull files from the image by the byte signatures each format carries.
A file count proves nothing, so we open what comes back and confirm the items you flagged as important are really there.
You get the full list of recovered files first, and nothing is charged until you approve it. Data goes back on fresh media, return postage paid, and the job stays open on our side until you confirm every file opens at your end.
Two technologies, two clocks: on a hard disk the deleted data stays exactly where it was, sometimes for years, until new writes arrive on top. Put TRIM in the picture — a WD Blue, a Seagate BarraCuda SSD — and the cells are usually blanked inside minutes, often seconds. Identical keypress, opposite outcome. That is why we ask what the file lived on before we ask what it was called.
One decisive press of the key removed twelve months of accounts from an office machine. The disk was imaged that afternoon and the file table rebuilt; the folder came back with names and dates untouched.
Spinning disk: usually, provided nothing fresh has been written since. SSD with TRIM: often not, because garbage collection may have wiped those blocks in seconds. What's inside the machine largely settles the answer.
The Recycle Bin gets bypassed, though on a hard drive the files stay put just as they would after a normal delete. The bin never kept them safe anyway.
No. Delete something from a card or a stick and Windows counts it as gone for good, there and then. The data usually remains in the flash chips regardless, and that is where we go and get it.
TRIM is the housekeeping an SSD does by itself, clearing deleted blocks to keep writes quick. It happens silently in the background, and that is why deletion on an SSD is the one situation where hours count.
Switch a failing device on again and you lose a little more. Open a case before you do — the diagnosis is free, whatever it finds.