Windows File Recovery has been offered by Microsoft for a few days. On paper, it is a simple and practical data recovery tool. After testing, however, we find that the publisher may have rushed its release.
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The life of the IT section is not a long calm river. In our quest to introduce you to new tools that can help you on a daily basis, we sometimes come across a bone. This is precisely what happened to us with the Microsoft Windows File Recovery tool which seems to have been released a little too early to be usable easily.
We announced to you yesterday the release of Windows File Recovery from Microsoft which seemed practical at first. This software allows you to recover different types of documents and videos, even after emptying the trash. There are of course a number of commercial alternatives already existing to this version for Windows, but it has the advantage of being offered for free by Microsoft directly from the Windows 10 application store.
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Seeing the potential of a practical tool to recommend to our readers, we start to use it in order to offer a full tutorial. The program is on the command line – without a graphical interface – which can be frightening at first glance, but can be effective to use. However we quickly realize, after several attempts, that this software is not without problems.
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At first glance, it requires a source partition and a destination partition to function. However, many users have only one partition on their computer. Never mind, we equip ourselves with a USB key to fulfill the role of a secondary partition which will be used to receive the recovered files.
But then again, we meet with snags. If the software performs an analysis, it does not recover the test text document that we had deleted from the desktop on our USB key. Instead, many files are recovered, which we do not really understand the origin and which contain everything except the text that we wanted to recover.
However, it seems that we are not alone in this fruitless adventure. Jim Salter of Ars Technica also points to a number of failures in use. In addition, the software seems to have a problem with SSDs using the TRIM command – that is, most SSDs now. Some conventional hard drives with SMR (Shingled Magnetic Resistance) technology also seem to be affected by malfunctions.
Wouldn’t this tool have been pushed by Microsoft a little too early, on its public store, instead of being first tested by a more informed public? We think so. We will not fail to return to Windows File Recovery when it has got rid of its limitations.
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