When you want to move files from one location to another on your Windows 10 computer, you can use the cut and paste feature to directly transfer the files to the destination folder. In most cases, this way is safe. But in rare cases, your files may get lost during cut and paste. In a situation like this, if you can’t find your files in Recycle Bin, you will need to use a free file recovery tool to recover cut and paste files.
Why files get lost during cut and paste? Here are some common causes:
- The cut and paste process is interrupted for some reason.
- You delete or format the cut and paste files by mistake.
- The destination drive is lost or damaged.
- You forget which drive is the destination drive.
- Your data storage drive is affected by viruses and malware.
- Now, you know the reasons for this issue. Next, you need to take measures to solve the issue.
What to Do If Your Files Get Lost during Cut and Paste?
Remove Virus and Malware from Your Computer
As mentioned above, one possible reason for the issue is virus and malware attacks. To rule out this possibility, you should use anti-virus software to scan your computer for viruses and malware. Which anti-virus software should you use? Here are multiple choices like Avast, Bitdefender, Norton, McAfee, and more. You can just select one from these tools for removing viruses and malware from our computer.
Here is one thing you should know: you should not download and install the anti-virus software to the drive where the lost files were saved. Otherwise, the lost files may be overwritten and become unrecoverable. Due to this reason, if you still want to recover cut files, you need to stop using that drive as soon as possible
How to Recover Files Lost During Cut and Paste?
Recover Cut and Paste Files from Recycle Bin?
You may mistakenly delete the cut and paste files from your computer. If these files are not permanently deleted, you can find them in Recycle Bin. You can open Recycle Bin to check whether these files are there. If yes, you can select them, right-click them, and then choose Restore from the right-click menu to restore them to their original location.
But if you can’t find your needed files in Recycle Bin, you need to use professional data recovery software to get them back. You can try MiniTool Power Data Recovery.
Recover Cut and Paste Files Using MiniTool Power Data Recovery
This software is specially designed to recover all kinds of files like documents, music files, videos, audio files, images, and more from your data storage devices on your Windows computer. This software supports recovering data from internal hard drives, external hard drives, memory cards, SD cards, pen drives, and some other types of storage devices. We think it can fully meet your need to recover files lost during cut and paste.
This software has a trial edition. If you are not sure whether it can find your needed files, you can first use it to scan the drive and check whether you can find the files you want to recover. If yes, you can use a full edition to recover all your needed files without limits.
This software is very easy-to-use. You just need to use some simple clicks to get your lost data back. After downloading and installing this software on your Windows computer, you can follow this simple guide to scan your drive to find your lost files.
- Open the software.
- This software will show you all the drives it can detect. You need to select the drive that has saved your lost files.
- Click the Save button to start scanning the selected drive.
- After scanning, you will see the scan results. By default, the found files are listed by the path. You can open each path to find the files you want to recover. If it is difficult to find them, you can switch to the Type tab to find files by type. Or if you still remember the name of the file, you can use the Find feature to locate the file directly.
- If you want to use this software to recover files, you need to use a full edition. After upgrading the software to a full edition, you can select the files you want to recover and then click the Save button to choose a suitable folder to save them. Here, a suitable folder should not be the drive whether the lost files were saved.
Bonus Tip: Copy Files to the Destination Drive Rather than Cut and Paste
You see you may lose your data when you use cut and paste to transfer files. To reduce the risks, you can copy the files to the destination location and then delete files from the original location. We suggest doing this if these files are very important to you.
How to recover files lost during cut and paste? After reading this article, you should know what you can do to do the job. Additionally, to protect your important data, you’d better select a reliable method to transfer files.