"I scanned my USB pen drive and Avast found some virus. I chose the action "Move to Chest" but it was unsuccessful. So I chose the action "Delete". But now many files were deleted. Can I recover them?"

Suppose you get a virus and then try to remove it from your computer, USB drive, pen drive, SD card or other devices using antivirus software. But finally, your files get deleted while removing the virus. This is a common case for users who lost data after Antivirus scan. Don't worry! Antivirus deleted data recovery is possible. There are two ways to do the job.

antivirus deleted my files

Method 1. Recover Files Deleted by Antivirus from Quarantine

Quarantine is a function of antivirus software that automatically isolates infected files on a computer's hard disk. Files put in quarantine are no longer capable of infecting their hosting system. When you move the files to the Chest or the Quarantine, you can easily get the file back. If you want to restore your deleted file then:

  • Step 1: Open your Antivirus program
  • Step 2: Click on "Menu"
  • Step 3: Click on "Quarantine" or "Virus Chest". Find your desired file and select it.

At the bottom of the antivirus there should be a "Restore" button, just click on it and your file will be restored. Also, you can right-click the file and select "restore". Here, we take the recovery from Avast Antivirus as an example:

recover antivirus deleted files or data

Method 2. Retrieve Data Using EaseUS Data Recovery Software

If method 1 fails to perform Antivirus deleted files recovery, try the second way - recover files deleted by using EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard. It can help you recover deleted files from virus infected hard drive, memory card, USB flash drive, SD card, and pen drive, etc. What's more, it can do the following things for you:

  • Recover deleted, formatted, and inaccessible data in different data loss situations.
  • Recover photos, audio, music, and emails from any storage effectively, safely and completely.
  • Recover data from the recycle bin, hard drive, memory card, flash drive, digital camera, and camcorder.

Download this EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard to get back lost files as soon as possible.

 Download for Win Recovery Rate 99.7%
 Download for Mac Trustpilot Rating 4.7

Step 1. Select the disk drive where you have lost files after using an antivirus program and click "Scan".

recover files deleted by antivirus step 1

Step 2. When the scan process finishes, all the lost and deleted files on the selected drive should appear. You can try to locate the antivirus deleted items from the tree-view panel on the left, or use the "Filter" function to specify particular file formats, such as pictures, videos, emails, documents and so on.

recover files deleted by antivirus step 2

Step 3. Double-click a file to preview. After that, select the file(s) at one time and click "Recover".

recover files deleted by antivirus step 3

Was This Page Helpful?

Updated by Cedric

Cedric Grantham is a senior editor and data recovery specialist of EaseUS. He mainly writes articles and how-to tips about data recovery on PC and Mac. He has handled 10,000+ data recovery cases and is good at data recovery of NTFS, FAT (FAT32 and ExFAT) file systems, and RAID structure reorganization.

Read full bio

Approved by Evan Galasso

Evan Galasso is a digital forensics and data recovery engineer with over 10 years of experience in the field. He presents opinions on the current state of storage media, reverse engineering of storage systems and firmware, and electro-mechanical systems of SSDs and HDDs.

Read full bio