The options appear as nearly identical selections from the same prompt box. They have very distinct results. On an SSD, the difference is between recoverable and gone. If it's specifically your photos, deleted photo recovery depends upon their location — card, computer, mobile device or cloud.
If your device is set up to encrypt automatically when a new one is purchased (every recent phone and Mac), then after a reset, there is no longer access to data because the key has been thrown away. But if your device doesn’t do this by default, then a reset simply marks the space available again.
The way each version asks the question may be slightly different but the basic behaviour for each version can be broken down into these:
Reinstalls Windows and saves all user created folders. All apps and their associated configurations will be lost; however all documents and photos created during normal use will remain intact. This option will likely allow you to recover any file(s) that were deleted.
Wipes the index and marks the space as reusable without overwriting anything. On a hard drive, data can still be recovered from the physical location. Takes several minutes.
Overwrites not just the index, but also the volume. That’s why it will take hours instead of minutes. This method is used primarily when selling computers, and it does exactly what it says.
A TRIM operation will physically wipe the freed blocks in the background, typically in a few minutes. Most of the distinctions mentioned above stop mattering — the wipes are real.
The most reliable indicator, and no cost to recall.
A quick reset takes place in minutes since it only writes to the file structures. A full clean can take hours since it writes to each area of the disk — often showing a slow progressing percentage.
So if your machine was back to normal within 30 minutes, it was almost certainly a quick reset. On a hard drive, your files are very likely still physically there. If the reset took most of an afternoon, don't hold out much hope.
On an SSD with TRIM, the timing tells you less as TRIM works in the background whether you chose "quick" or "full". What matters here is how long your machine has been running since being reset. And the answer is usually too long, because after resetting a machine you have to set it up again.
A newly reset computer is downloading updates, installing programs, and creating user profiles — all of these processes will be writing to the same area of disk where your previous files were located. Turn it off.
Many users' OneDrive, Google Drive, iCloud, and Microsoft account back-ups have much more content stored than most users can recall. It is best to check for backed up information from another computer instead of using the same computer that has been reset.
Each pass of wiping writes more information to the drive. This is why if you did a quick type of reset initially, doing a second pass will leave an even smaller amount of data left behind.
You can remove the hard drive and read the information off the drive with a different computer or use a file recovery program that was already loaded on your other computer. Never load the file recovery program on to the drive that you want to be recovered.
It depends on which selection was chosen. "Keep my files" retains your personal folders. "Remove everything", without performing a clean, removes the indexes allowing for potential recovery of deleted information on a hard disk drive. Cleaning the drive performs a write operation on all areas of the drive and removes any possibility of recovering deleted information.
Look at how long it took. A quick reset can be completed in minutes as it only rebuilds the directory structure. It takes hours for a full clean to complete the erase process as it has to write across the entire disk. So if you were able to use the computer again within 30 minutes, then it was the quick reset.
Usually not. Time is more important than which type of reset you used. After any reset, TRIM only takes a few minutes to physically delete the freed up blocks. This deletion is actually permanent. A computer that has been powered on since will have very little remaining to restore.
Turn it off. Once a reset has been performed, a newly reset computer will begin to download updates, install new applications and create new user profiles – all processes that will rewrite back into the area where your old files resided. The longer you leave the computer powered on the less of your original files will remain.
No, and it makes things worse: each additional reset will continue to overwrite some of the last remnants of your old data. Therefore performing a second reset would likely reduce the amount of data recovered from your original files even further if the initial reset was the recoverable type.
A lot of data frequently remains available after you perform a quick reset on a hard disk – but it is usually carved with no folders to view and no names for files, since the index was replaced. Try checking all of your cloud storage first. It may have stored much that you don't know about.