Is it Enough to Recover Deleted Files from Flash Drive with Freeware? (Answer & Recommendation)

A flash drive, also known as a USB flash drive or pen drive, is widely used for storage by many users. However, accidental deletions or the removal of important files by others can occasionally occur.

Can you recover deleted files from a flash drive? Not all deleted files can be successfully recovered; it depends on the specific circumstances. Choosing a reliable USB data recovery tool can maximize the chances of recovering lost data. Read this passage to know more details.

Can you recover deleted files from a flash drive?

Firstly, let’s talk about the most important thing, can you recover deleted files from a flash drive?

Generally, when you delete a file from a USB drive, the file's record in the file system is marked as deleted, but the actual data remains on the drive until it's overwritten by new data. Recovery software can find and restore deleted files under these circumstances.

There are three important common cases:

If you've simply deleted a file without further operations, like formatting the USB, and it's still in the Recycle Bin (Windows), you can easily restore it from there. If you've emptied the Recycle Bin, recovery becomes more challenging.

Adding new data to the USB drive after deleting files increases the risk of overwriting the deleted data, making it unrecoverable.

If the USB drive is physically damaged or severely corrupted, recovery may be extremely difficult or impossible.

In summary, when you've experienced data loss, it's better to refrain from adding more files to the USB drive after you've deleted some files. Doing so increases the chances of the new files taking up the space where the deleted files used to be. When files are deleted, they may not be immediately overwritten. So, the sooner you attempt recovery, the better your chances of success.

Is it enough to recover deleted files from a flash drive with freeware?

To recover deleted files from flash drive with freeware is often the preferred choice for many users. Nowadays, most data recovery freeware can support restoring lost data from an emptied Recycle Bin, but usually, these tools typically have certain limitations related to file size, type, or quantity.

About freeware, users are also concerned about its security. While the risk of virus or malware attacks is relatively low if you select well-established freeware, some of them may require you to watch advertisements within a few minutes. If you don't mind this and only need to recover deleted files from your flash drive after emptying the Recycle Bin, freeware is enough.

However, if you want to recover deleted data from USB in these situations, freeware might not work:

3 situations:
✍ If the USB drive uses an unusual file system.
✍ If you miss the best time to recover the deleted data.
✍ If you've added a lot of new data to the USB drive.

At this time, specialized data recovery software is your best choice when you need to rescue deleted files from tricky situations like AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, and there are some straightforward reasons why it makes sense.

Why should you choose AOMEI Partition Assistant for USB data recovery?

AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional is proficient in data recovery. As for the aforementioned complex cases, this tool can deal with many file systems on your USB drive like FAT32, NTFS, ReFS, exFAT, and so on, which regular freeware might struggle with. In addition, it gives you a shot at recovery for older data loss even if you've missed the first chance offered by freeware. Lastly, if you've added lots of new data to your drive after losing the files, this skilled software can still help.

What’s worse, it supports restoring hundreds of file types from various storage media. You can retrieve lost documents, pictures, emails, and more from HDD, SD card, SSD, USB...

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. Click on "Recover" from the top menu, then select "Recover Data".

Step 2. Choose the USB drive that contains the lost files and click "Start Scan".

Step 3. After the scanning process is complete, a list of all deleted files will be displayed. Tick the checkboxes next to the lost files you want to recover, then click "Recover".

Step 4. Select a destination path to save the recovered files.

Step 5. Once the recovery process is finished, navigate to the chosen path to locate and access your recovered files.

To sum up

From this passage, we can find recover deleted files from flash drive with freeware is only suitable for simple cases. If you meet complex scenarios, it is time to seek help for AOMEI Partition Assistant, a reliable USB data recovery tool.

This software can offer you many surprises. If you follow the step-by-step guidance we provided, you'll discover numerous other functions on the main interface. In your everyday usage, we also recommend trying features like Disk Clone, App Mover, Duplicate Files Finder, and more, to efficiently manage your device.