How to Recover Deleted WAV Files on Windows and Mac for Free?

About WAV Files

WAV refers to Waveform Audio File Format, which is an audio file format standard. The WAV file is often uncompressed thus it can preserve the best audio quality of the samples. Many professional users and audio experts prefer to use the WAV format for this reason.

The WAV file might be lost due to many reasons such as software errors, the device suddenly shutdown, power shortage, or mistaken deletion. When you find your WAV files disappear, please do not save any new files on the drive to avoid data overwriting. Then, you can try the methods below to recover the deleted/lost WAV files.

Restore Deleted/Lost WAV Files on Windows

Method 1: Recover from Recycle Bin

Deleted files will be stored in the Recycle Bin in Windows systems until you clear the Recycle Bin. If you need to use the deleted files, you can find them in the Recycle Bin and restore them directly.

Step 1: Double-click on the Recycle Bin icon on the desktop to open it.

Step 2: Look through to find the WAV file and right-click on it.

Step 3: Choose Restore from the context menu.

However, there are two situations in that you can’t find the WAV file in Recycle Bin. The first one is when the WAV file is too large or is permanently deleted by accident, it will not be stored in Recycle Bin after you complete the deleting operation. In another case, you might clear the Recycle Bin when you haven’t realized the WAV file is deleted.

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If you failed to restore the WAV file from Recycle Bin, keep reading to try the other two methods.

Method 2: Make Use of File History

File History is a built-in backup feature in Windows. If you enable the File History on your computer, it will back up your files stored in Libraries automatically, including Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos, and Desktop folders. When your files are lost or deleted, you can restore them with a backup.

Step 1: Press Win + I to open the Settings window.

Step 2: Choose Update & Security, then click on the Backup tab.

Step 3: Scroll down to find and click on the Restore files from a current backup option.

Step 4: Select the WAV files you want to restore and click the green Restore button.

Step 5: Select Restore to to choose a preferred destination path to save them.

Then, you can check whether the WAV files are recovered successfully.

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Method 3: Recover Deleted WAV Files with WAV Recovery Software      

The best way to recover deleted/lost files is to seek help from a professional data recovery tool. How to choose the most suitable WAV recovery software from numerous tools? You should consider many factors, including supported recovery file types, recovery capacity, security, price, and so on. I’d like to recommend you a reliable file recovery software, MiniTool Power Data Recovery.

This software allows you to recover archives, videos, pictures, and other types of files. For the audio files, MiniTool Power Data Recovery supports many formats, such as WAV, WMA, AU, MMF, MP3, etc. When there are too many WAV files and you don’t know which is the wanted one, you can use the Preview feature before saving. Many other practical features are provided to improve data recovery accuracy as well. You can download this software and try these features with the following steps.

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This free file recovery software delivers a clean and safe data recovery environment. You can use it with confidence since it will cause no damage to your data. Use it to restore permanently deleted WAV files with the following steps.

Step 1: Download and install MiniTool Power Data Recovery.

Step 2: Launch the software. If your deleted or lost WAV files are stored on an external device, you can connect it to the computer and click on the Refresh button to display the device.

Step 3: Change to the Scan Settings page. You can choose specific file types you want to recover then click OK to save the change. You can also skip this step to choose a location that restores the deleted WAV files to scan directly.

Step 4: Select the partition where your WAV files are saved and click on the Scan button. You can also choose to scan a specific location, like a Desktop or a folder to save the scan time.

Step 5: Wait for the scan process to complete. There might be thousands of files on the result page. To find the wanted WAV files quickly, you can try the following features:

• Filter: to narrow down the file list by setting file size, file type, file category, and date modified.
• Type: to classify files according to their types, like photos, videos, audio, documents, etc.
• Search: to find files by inputting their full or part of names. You can also type the format of your wanted files into the search box, for example, wav.

Step 6: Select the WAV files and click on the Save button.

Step 7: Choose an appropriate storage destination path, then click OK. Do not save the WAV files to the original path because the data recovery might fail due to data overwriting.

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Recover Deleted/Lost WAV Files on Mac

Method 1: Restore from Trash

When you find the WAV file is deleted by mistake, there is no doubt to check Trash first. If you can find the file in Trash, recover it immediately.

Step 1: Open the Trash can and find the item you need from it.

Step 2: Right-click on it and choose Put Back from the popup menu. You can also drag the file and drop it to the destination directly.

Method 2: Rely on Time Machine

File History is to Windows as Time Machine is to Mac. Time Machine is also a backup tool to protect your personal files on Mac. You can also try to retrieve deleted WAV files by using Time Machine.

Step 1: Connect the backup drive to your Mac.

Step 2: Navigate to the Apple menu > System Preference > Time Machine.

Step 3: Use the arrow keys to select which backup you need.

Step 4: Double-click on the folder to find if there contains the wanted WAV file.

Step 5: Choose the wanted file and click on Restore to recover it.

Method 3: Make a WAV File Recovery with Stellar Data Recovery

If you can’t recover deleted WAV audio files with Trash and Time Machine, Stellar Data Recovery for Mac can help you. This software also supports you to retrieve types of files including any format of audio files. You can use it with the following guide.

Step 1: Download Stellar Data Recovery for Mac, then launch the software

Step 2: Choose the file type you need to recover by toggling their switches to ON or OFF.

Step 3: Click on Next to select a partition to scan.

Step 4: When the scan process is finished, you can look through and preview the file list to recover the needed WAV files.

Go to this page to get an appropriate upgrade edition for data recovery.

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Final Words

To sum up, WAV files are important for professional users. Hope the methods in this post can help you recover deleted WAV files successfully. Honestly speaking, MiniTool Power Data Recovery is helpful not only in WAV file recovery but also for device recovery, like SD card recovery.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

You are welcome to share problems in using MiniTool software with us via [email protected].