I have a WD My Passport Ultra external hard drive which I use to store all of my photos. I had two windows open copying photos to a new folder for a presentation when one of the folders disappeared. I have to admit that I was half awake. I am assuming I deleted the folder accidentally.
How can I restore it? I am assuming there is a recycle bin or trash. I can’t seem to find it.
HELP! Please.
If you have a windows pc the recycle bin is on the Desktop. Look in there and if you see folder( when drive is connected to pc) you can right click on it, see Restore as a choice. If you can’t see it, get someone better than you are with computers to help. You may have moved or renamed folder.
Thanks. I had already looked in the PC’s recycle bin and didn’t find it which is why I thought that the WD My Passport may have it’s own recycle bin. That makes sense though because I did see some other photos I had deleted earlier in the recycle bin. I’ll keep looking for the folder. I have also tried looking inside of other folders to see if I accidentally moved it into there.
It doesn’t have its own recycle bin, and sometimes the windows bin can be a bit unreliable for removable drives unfortunately.
What you might want to do is look into undelete software that works on removable drives. There are a few options, just search “Windows undelete software removable disk” and try a few out and see if any offer a route to recovering the folder if it is lost rather than moved.
If you accidentally deleted the folder from your WD My Passport Ultra, it may still be recoverable. Check if the folder was sent to the recycle bin external hard drive by opening the Recycle Bin on your desktop https://www.hаndyrecovery.com/recycle-bin-on-external-hard-drive/. External drives don’t always send deleted files to the Recycle Bin, but it’s worth a look. If the folder isn’t there, you can try using a data recovery tool like Disk Drill or Recuva to recover the deleted files. Just make sure to avoid writing any new data to the drive until you’ve attempted recovery to prevent overwriting the lost files.
Great help, and it’s really reassuring to know that it’s possible to recover deleted files recycle bin! I found a guide that offers the clearest instructions on how to do this properly. You can check it out here: https://www.cleverfiles.cоm/recover-recycle-bin.html. The guide walks you through the process step by step, making it easy to follow and execute. Whether you accidentally emptied the Recycle Bin or deleted files without realizing it, this resource is super helpful. It’s a great solution for anyone who needs to recover lost files quickly. Hope it works for you too—let me know if you have any questions or if you find other helpful methods
Unfortunately, external drives (like portable SSDs, USB drives, or SD cards) do not have their own “Recycle Bin” feature.
On the other hand, when you deletea file from your external drive on Windows, it usually permanently deleted rather than being moved to the Recycle Bin. This happens because the Windows Recycle Bin is designed to handle files deleted from internal drives, not external ones.
If files are permanently deleted, you might still recover them using free recovery software as long as the deleted data hasn’t been overwritten.
Backup, backup, backup.
- Maintain at least 3 copies of your data.
- Store it on 2 different types of media.
- Keep 1 copy in an offsite location.
