How to Recover Photos from Emptied Recycle Bin with/without Software

Can I recover deleted items after Recycle Bin has been emptied?

It would be quite easy to restore your photos from Recycle Bin if you haven’t emptied it yet. If unfortunately, you have emptied it, it means you have permanently deleted the items in it. But this doesn’t mean that you can’t get them back. When you delete the photos, the photos are still there on the hard drive until other files are saved to the same location, even though the photos are no longer readable by the computer. There are several ways that could help you recover your photos.

How to recover photos from emptied Recycle Bin [4 steps]

The most effective way how to recover photos from emptied Recycle Bin is to use a professional data recovery tool, for example, MyRecover. There are many good reasons why you need to choose it:

• Easy to use. It is not technically demanding for users, as it has an intuitive interface and an easy operating process.
• Apply to various photo loss situations. No matter how you have lost photos, like accidental deletion, disk formatting, system crash, virus attack, and so on, it can help you bring your photos back.
• Support to recover 200+ types of data. It can recover practically every form of data, not only photos, but also documents, movies, music, compressed data, and so on.
• Scan hard drives quickly and deeply. It embeds an advanced scanning algorithm, which enables you to recover data with no effort in a short time.
• Widely compatible. It supports a variety of Windows operating systems, including Windows 11, 10, 8, 7, and Server.

Step 1. Download, install and launch MyRecover on your computer.  

Step 2. Hover the mouse over the location where your photos have been stored before. Click Scan.

Step 3. Then the scanning process will start automatically. You don’t need to wait for the process to complete if you find the photos you want to recover.

Step 4. Go to Recycle Bin > select the pictures you need to restore > click Recover x files. Or go to Other missing files > Image > select your wanted photos to restore.

How to recover photos from emptied Recycle Bin without software [2 options]

You can also use the services provided by Microsoft to recover lost photos. Here are two options on how to recover deleted files from Recycle Bin after empty without software.

Option 1. Get back lost photos from File History Backup

The first option is to get back lost photos from the backup copies of your files with File History. But the prerequisite is that you have the File History service enabled.

Step 1. Input Control Panel in the Windows search bar, and start it.

Step 2. Click System and Security.

Step 3. Click File History.

Step 4. Click Restore personal files.

Step 5. Select the files you need to recover and then click the Restore button.

You can also follow the steps below to quickly restore the folders where you have saved your lost photos before to the previous version.

Step 1. Right-click the folder where your photos were saved before deletion, choose Restore previous versions.

Step 2. Select the previous version according to the time, and then click Restore.

Option 2. Recover lost photos via the Backup and Restore utility

Another option to recover lost photos is to use the Backup and Restore utility provided by Microsoft. Also, the prerequisite is that you have this service enabled.

Step 1. Go to Control Panel > System and Security > Backup and Restore (Windows 7).

Step 2. Selectively recover lost photos by clicking Restore my files. You can also select Restore all users’ files to recover all photos.

Step 3. Search for your deleted photos by using the Browse for files or Browse for folders option.

Step 4. Choose a location to save the backup, select your photos and click Restore to recover them.

Bonus tip: Backup photos via excellent backup freeware

To avoid unexpected photo loss, we highly recommend you to back up your photos via backup and restore tools, for example, AOMEI Backupper. It is the professional backup freeware that assists you in backing up important photos on your computer and then restoring these photos whenever you need them.  

Step 1. Download, install and launch AOMEI Backupper for Windows on your computer. 

Step 2. Under the Backup tab, select the File Backup.

Step 3. Edit the task name for distinguishing. Click Add Folder or Add File > This PC > Devices and drives to add the photos.

Step 4. Select the destination path to store the backup photos. Network path and cloud drive are supported.

Step 5. Click Start Backup to carry out disk backup and wait until the operation is complete. Click Finish to exit the interface.

Conclusion

In this post, we mainly introduce how to recover photos from emptied Recycle Bin with/without software. You can recover your lost photos without software if you have the File History and Backup and Restore services enabled. But if not, you are recommended to use the professional data recovery freeware MyRecover to get your photos back easily.

Of course, it would be better if you use AOMEI Backupper to back up your important photos as well as our files on your computer to avoid data loss in the future.