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Problem

I am using Windows 10. Due to a file sync error I deleted over 11,000 files. They are now in the Recycle Bin. I have tried selecting the files I want to recover and recovering through the Recycle Bin (using the button marked 'restore selected items') but the recovery process takes too much system resources, appears stuck on the 'calculating' phase with no progress, and crashes.

Question

How do I restore the files I need from the recycling bin؟ The solution needs to be easy enough to implement for an intermediate user e.g. using an application with a GUI or command prompt (no scripting solutions). The solution needs to account for the following:

  1. I need to recover files for a specific date only i.e. all the files I deleted today.
  2. I need to restore to the original location

Things I have tried / Ideas that might work

Command Prompt -- Robocopy

Using Robocopy from the Command Prompt seems like a good solution. The Recycle Bin is accessible in the command prompt using C:\$Recycle.Bin. However, I do not know the switches that I need to use.

Copying software

Dedicated copying applications may copy faster than Windows. I looked at TeraCopy but the Recycle Bin cannot be specified as a source for copying from.

Windows File Recovery

I looked at the Windows File Recovery app available from the Windows Store. I read the online manual at https://aka.ms/winfrhelp but, again, could not figure out the syntax I needed.

Windows Power Shell

There is an online article, Managing the Recycle Bin with PowerShell but it was too advanced for me.

Similar articles on StackExchange

Recover all files from recycle bin via commandline? -- not specific enough

Recover large amount of files from Recycle Bin in OneDrive -- relates to the Recycle Bin in One Drive and, again, uses a scripting solution.

Thank you for your help!

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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The problem by using the command line is that files in $Recycle.Bin have a different name than in windows. So if you recover them like this you will have your files but won't know what is what... I suggest ordering the files by date excluded inside the recycle bin select like 100 files at a time using SHIFT + Down Arrow, then restore, next 100 files and so on.

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  • This sounds reasonable but in my case I have 60k files in the Recycle Bin. Windows is really struggling to display them, restore them, then refresh the view. Many of the files have long paths. In Safe Mode a batch of ~40 files took ~5 mins to restore and a batch of ~100 files took ~15 mins to restore.
    – Ad Astm
    Jul 5, 2022 at 17:00
  • @Ad Astm is this harddrive or Windows damaged?
    – Ricardo Bohner
    Jul 5, 2022 at 18:16
  • No, there is no damage of which I am aware. Everything functioning normally.
    – Ad Astm
    Jul 5, 2022 at 20:50
  • This was the only approach which worked for me although some work was needed to make it feasible. I deleted thousands of extra files from the Recycle Bin, although due to slowness this was done by locating the folder in the file browser of 7-Zip rather than within Recycle Bin itself. With the size of Recycle Bin drastically reduced it was able to restore and refresh without being too slow.
    – Ad Astm
    Jul 12, 2022 at 11:20
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Besides reducing the size of the Recycle Bin and restoring selected files bit by bit, another solution may be to upgrade the processing power of the computer or remove the hard disk and operate in a more powerful computer. Processing power seemed to be a limiting factor and as the computer heated up the restore process grounded to a halt.

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