file forensics: any way to recover moved file?

Last night I moved--not copied--a file from my Dell Latitude Win 10 laptop's SSD to a thumb drive.

To be precise, I think that I clicked on the file in Windows Explorer in the laptop, then cut it via ctrl-x, and then pasted it onto the flash drive with ctrl-v.

I then safely ejected the thumb drive (I always do this), took it to my desktop, and to my horror found that the file was not on the thumb drive.

Because I moved, not copied, the file, it was no longer in its original location on the laptop. It also is not in the laptop's Recycle Bin.

My question: is the file still in some other location on the laptop, from which I can recover it?

Or, when you move a file like this, does Windows immediately permanently delete it?

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Some more details follow, if you are interested.

The thumb drive is a Visiontek PRO 256 GB USB 3 drive.

I do NOT have this problem with this thumb drive on my Dell T1700 Win 7 workstation.

However, this is the second Dell laptop that I have seen this drive have this same problem with. My original laptop, a Dell Precision Win 7 machine would sometimes do this; that one got stolen in Rotterdam a month ago. The current laptop is a Dell Latitude Win 10 box.

For some reason, there is a bad interaction between Dell laptops and this particular thumb drive. I tested another, cheaper, thumb drive on the Dell laptop and it worked fine.

Bree said:

@up2trix, if at all possible do not use the Dell laptop for now.

When a file is deleted permanently the space is marked as being free, but it is not overwritten until Windows uses that space for another file. While the data still exists it may be possible to restore the file. See this thread for some suggestions.

Software to bring back lost files

Bree, thanks much for your response.

I ended up trying both Recuva as well as Puran File Recovery. No dice.

I am going to have to recreate the file's contents...

Try checking the thumbdrive too. Maybe it got deleted somehow or there are errors in filesystem (do a chkdsk).

up2trix said:

Last night I moved--not copied--a file from my Dell Latitude Win 10 laptop's SSD to a thumb drive.

To be precise, I think that I clicked on the file in Windows Explorer in the laptop, then cut it via ctrl-x, and then pasted it onto the flash drive with ctrl-v.

I then safely ejected the thumb drive (I always do this), took it to my desktop, and to my horror found that the file was not on the thumb drive.

Because I moved, not copied, the file, it was no longer in its original location on the laptop. It also is not in the laptop's Recycle Bin.

My question: is the file still in some other location on the laptop, from which I can recover it?

Or, when you move a file like this, does Windows immediately permanently delete it?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Some more details follow, if you are interested.

The thumb drive is a Visiontek PRO 256 GB USB 3 drive.

I do NOT have this problem with this thumb drive on my Dell T1700 Win 7 workstation.

However, this is the second Dell laptop that I have seen this drive have this same problem with. My original laptop, a Dell Precision Win 7 machine would sometimes do this; that one got stolen in Rotterdam a month ago. The current laptop is a Dell Latitude Win 10 box.

For some reason, there is a bad interaction between Dell laptops and this particular thumb drive. I tested another, cheaper, thumb drive on the Dell laptop and it worked fine.

I would have tried to restart the pc with the drive plugged in, sometimes the system (windows) is simply "not aware" that the file is there actually.
I've also found a way to reproduce this behaviour at will, there are plenty of request for help of vanishing files in windows but it seems to be accepted as a something we have to live with

see the link for further info:


Fast Boot has the devil inside - Windows 10 Forums