How to Recover Permanently Deleted Files from OneDrive on Windows 11/10

Jean updated on Oct 08, 2024 to File Recovery | How-to Articles

This guide offers several ways on how to recover permanently deleted files from OneDrive. These ways include recovering files from OneDrive Recycle Bin or from the local hard drive. You should make use of these methods as soon as you find your files are lost. These methods support all types of files, including documents, photos, audio, videos, and other files.

OneDrive deleted files? Read on to learn how to recover permanently deleted files from OneDrive using the Recycle Bin or the local hard drive.

Workable Solutions Step-by-step Troubleshooting
Method 1. Recover Files from OneDrive Recycle Bin
  • Right-click OneDrive
  • Select view online
  • Click Recycle Bin...Full steps
Method 2. Recover Lost Files from Your Local Hard Drive
  • Find default OneDrive folder location
  • Scan the local drive
  • Preview files and recover...Full steps

OneDrive Deleted Files Recovery - Recover from OneDrive Recycle Bin

When you delete a file from your OneDrive storage, you still have a chance to recover your file. That's because Microsoft keeps your removed files, including documents, photos, video games, music, movies, and programs, for 30 days. Within 30 days of deleting a file, you can restore that file right from OneDrive.

To undelete OneDrive files in Windows 11/10, follow the instructions given below.

Step 1. Right-click the OneDrive icon and select "view online".

Step 2. Sign in to your OneDrive account on the OneDrive website at: https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/.

Step 3. Click the "Recycle Bin" option on the left pane.

Step 4. All the deleted files and folders will be displayed on the right pane. To restore specific files or folders, pick them by selecting their checkbox, to restore all items, click "Restore all items".

Tip
When you delete files from the OneDrive desktop app, you can check your computer's Recycle Bin to undelete OneDrive files unless you've emptied the Windows Recycle Bin or the Recycle Bin is overflowing, at this point, old items are removed automatically. However, even if you have emptied the recycle bin, you can still recover files from Recycle Bin after empty with EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard as shown below. 

How to Recover Permanently Deleted Files from OneDrive

Your OneDrive folder location is set at C:\Users\[your username] by default, and that contains all your synced files and folders. When you delete something by whatever means, even after the 30 days limit exceeds or OneDrive and Windows Recycle Bin are cleared and emptied, there is still a way to recover permanently deleted OneDrive files.

This is by using a file recovery tool to recover your original OneDrive files from HDDs, external USB drives, SD cards, and other storage mediums. While there are many data recovery tools out there, EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard seems to be doing a good job at the task. It helps recover various file types like photos and videos and works regardless of what caused you to lose data.

  • Recover lost or deleted files, documents, photos, audio, and more.
  • Recover files from formatted hard drive, emptied recycle bin, memory card, flash drive, and more.
  • Support data recovery for sudden deletion, formatting, hard drive corruption, virus attack, system crash under different situations.

Keep the storage drive where you stored your OneDrive files handy, and then follow the following steps to perform a OneDrive recovery.

Important
Why is EaseUS data recovery utility able to recover deleted files from cloud? It's because your local files are always in sync with the cloud device. When you deleted data from a cloud drive, like Dropbox, OneDrive or Google Drive, you deleted the local files as well. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard is able to scan the local drive to find the identical files disappeared from the cloud drive.

Step 1. Select a local drive

Launch EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard and select the local drive, on which the files were synced to the cloud drive. Click "Search for Lost Data" to get started.

Step 2. Check for scan results

When the scan completes, you can start finding the files that were removed from both the selected drive and the cloud drive. To locate specific files, click "Filter" and choose the category. Then, double-click the file to preview its content.

Step 3. Recover desired files

Select the files you're looking for, click "Recover" and choose a different location other than the previous local drive to save the recovered data. You can choose a cloud storage and click "Save" to save your recovered files.