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If you are upgrading your Windows platform either with an updated release- Windows 11 being the latest one or with any other previous versions, you might lose some of your valuable data immediately after that update. This scenario, however, is not necessarily true every time you update your Windows machine.
Whenever a new version is updated, the existing system files on the C: drive gets replaced with the new files associated with the updated version. In simple terms, a version upgrade formats the C: drive completely to add new system files that are going to be used by the newly upgraded platform. However, the version update doesn’t affect the data on local storage drives such as D or E. Sometimes due to configurational changes or unexpected situations, some of the documents, pictures, and other important data may get deleted from your local drives. Also, there are cases where users tend to keep some of their important files in C: drive, a version update can delete those files permanently from your system. Keeping your data in C: drive makes it more prone to deletion. Data loss can occur due to a Windows update or corruption in drives, in such scenarios you must know how to restore files from corrupt drives
Now, you are aware about all the possible risks of losing data, it is time to discuss methods to recover lost files after Windows update.
Some of the standard manual approaches to recover data after Windows update are listed below:
If you have already created a backup for your files, then it’s very effortless to restore files even after upgrading your Windows environment. For Windows 7 to any higher version upgrade, here is how you can back up your entire data to the System Restore Point.
If you have created a restore point before the upgrade, then it’s convenient to recover all your files by just going back to the previous version. Sometimes, the backup data gets corrupted due to the presence of bad sectors in Windows drives, this can be eliminated if you know how to fix and repair bad sectors in Windows. You can restore your previous version of windows from the System Restore Point by following these simple steps:
If you are upgrading your Windows using the Custom upgrade, the setup will backup a copy of your previous installation in the Windows.old folder. This backup folder exists only for ten days after the upgrade process. Therefore, if you are looking for a backup after upgrading your Windows, make sure to look for your files in Windows.old folder before they’re permanently gone.
To locate the Windows.old folder soon after the upgrade, follow the steps given below:
Try to access the Windows.old folder within ten days after the upgrade, after that the folder is automatically deleted from your “Local Disk C:”
Note: If you are doing the clean installation, then the setup will not back up any data from the previous installation.
If you are upgrading from the existing Windows environment to Windows 11, the setup will ask you to sign-in using a Microsoft account. The data from the previous installation will end up moving to the Administrator account, which is automatically disabled after the new upgrade.
To recover data from the previous installation, you need to enable the built-in local Administrator account. Follow the steps as:
Now, you will see that all those files that were originally saved to the previous Windows environment are accessible with the Administrator account. Move the required files to the newly upgraded Windows, which is configured using the Microsoft account.
The most recommended method to recover lost files after Windows upgrade is to use a reliable third-party tool. A trusted third-party tool like Kernel for Windows Data Recovery software will help you recover lost or permanently deleted data from your system hard drives, even after formatting the entire drive.
It is a reliable tool to recover lost or permanently deleted data from internal as well as external storage devices. The tool supports Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10 and Windows 11.
For quick and easy recovery, here is how the tool works:
After committing a Windows Update, losing data is an unwanted situation that any user would not like to face. We have discussed manual and professional methods to recover the data. If the manual process cannot recover all the deleted items, you should use Kernel Windows Data Recovery software to retrieve each deleted item. The software will recover deleted files or items and present them to you in different red color for easy identification.
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Kernel for Windows data recovery helped me to recover data which lost after Windows update. Thank you so much.