WinDirStat 2.9.2 Adds FAT USB and SD Card Deleted File Recovery

The GitHub release page shows the maintainer, NoMoreFood, released this 06 Oct 13:20. It's marked as an Immutable release. Only release title and notes can be modified. That second point matters for an open-source tool that gets copied a lot: the published binaries can't be swapped out quietly after release.

What's new in WinDirStat 2.9.2​

Enhancements​

The release notes list six enhancements:

• Deleted-file recovery for FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32 volumes. This is the headline feature.
• Original filename and path detection for Recycle Bin recovery. Recovered items can now show where they came from.
• Faster duplicate view for large duplicate groups. This helps anyone hashing a large media library or a messy file share.
• Better progress reporting and cancellation when creating sparse files, credited to contributor harryytm.
• A revised General settings page layout, also from harryytm.
• Improved Storage Analytics translations across the supported languages.

Bug fixes​

There are 15 fixes. Most deal with how the window and columns behave:

• Column widths and order now come back after a restart.
• Window and column settings are saved before the app restarts with administrator rights.
• Column resizing no longer ignores disabled autosizing or reveals hidden columns.
• Sorting and navigation work correctly with hidden or reordered columns.
• Tooltips and dialog column widths render correctly after font changes.
• Filtering tooltips no longer show outdated examples after you switch regex mode.
• Pane visibility and resizing work across window layouts.
• Menus, checkboxes and radio buttons scale with the font size setting.
• Very small squarified treemap regions no longer trigger an assertion.
• Refreshing items no longer crashes, and matching search results are kept after a refresh.
• Directory regular expressions keep their escape sequences.
• Malformed settings files or CSV/JSON reports no longer crash the app.
• Treemap height slider labels and settings now persist.
• NTFS scans no longer skip valid files after hitting damaged records.
• MSI upgrades work across installation languages.

Two of these matter more than the rest. The NTFS fix addresses a case where a damaged on-disk record could hide valid files from the scan, and that's the kind of drive you're most likely to be investigating. The MSI language fix matters to admins who deploy the installer across machines set up in different languages.

The license change​

The app's license is now GPL v3 or later. Wikipedia's infobox still listed the license as GNU GPLv2 when checked, so expect some third-party listings to lag. The project README says parts of the source code are also available under more permissive terms. For home users nothing changes in practice. Organizations that redistribute or modify WinDirStat should pass the change to whoever handles license compliance.

Section summary: 2.9.2 adds one significant feature (FAT recovery), several improvements and a pile of layout fixes. The license change only matters if you redistribute or modify the app.

How the recovery tool works​

The project's "Recovering Files" guide says Tools > Recover Deleted Files searches local NTFS, exFAT and FAT12/16/32 drives for deleted files whose file-system metadata survives. Before 2.9.2, the FAT family wasn't covered. Some boundaries:

• It requires administrator access.
• It runs separately from the normal disk-usage scan.
• Network shares and MTP devices (phones and cameras connected over Media Transfer Protocol) can't be used as recovery sources, even though WinDirStat can scan them for disk usage.

Steps, based on the project's guide​

1. Stop writing to the affected drive. Anything new saved to that volume can overwrite the deleted data.
2. Check the Recycle Bin first. If the file is still there, restore it the normal way.
3. In WinDirStat, choose File > Run Elevated, then Tools > Recover Deleted Files.
4. Select the source drive and press Resume (the play button) to start. Suspend pauses the scan. Stop ends it but keeps the files it has already validated.
5. When the scan finishes, narrow the list with Path filter. You can type part of a path, use a wildcard such as *.jpg, or turn on Use Regular Expressions. Matching isn't case-sensitive.
6. Select the files you want and set Save To to an existing folder on a different drive or a network share.
7. Click Recover Selected, check each row's Result column, and open the recovered files to make sure their contents are intact.

What a successful result looks like​

A row marked "Recovered – Verify File Data" only means a file was copied. It doesn't mean the contents are correct. The guide uses these assessment labels:

Known limitations​

• FAT: Recovery assumes the file sat in consecutive free clusters, so fragmented files may come back with the wrong contents. FAT short names can start with _ when the original first character is lost.
• exFAT: Only files recorded as contiguous are supported.
• FAT and exFAT: Files inside deleted directories may not appear at all.
• NTFS: Only the main file contents are copied. Compressed or encrypted files, reparse points and files that need extra metadata records are skipped. Alternate data streams and original permissions aren't restored.
• Output: Recovered files go straight into the destination folder without the original folder structure. Existing files are never overwritten, so use separate destination folders if names collide. Saving to the source volume asks for confirmation because it can overwrite other deleted data.
• SSDs: TRIM, overwriting or missing metadata can make recovery useless.

FAT32 is still the default format on many cameras and small flash drives, so this is a real use case. Treat it as a first attempt, though, not the equivalent of a specialist recovery suite or a forensics lab. The project says recovery doesn't replace backups.

Section summary: Run elevated, recover to a different drive, and check every file. Fragmented FAT files and TRIM'd SSDs are where it's most likely to fail.

Supported systems and which download to pick​

The project says WinDirStat 2.x is tested on Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10 and 11, and on Windows Server 2008 R2, 2012, 2012 R2, 2016, 2019, 2022 and 2025. It may run on other versions, but those aren't supported. The 2.9.2 release offers the same range of packages as earlier releases: Windows x64 installer, x86 and ARM64 MSIs, portable ZIP and 7z archives, a checksums file, and Windows MSIX bundle (x86, x64, and ARM64) plus separate MSIX packages for each architecture.

• Most Intel/AMD PCs: use the x64 MSI. The project names it as the default if you're unsure.
• Snapdragon/Windows on ARM devices: use the ARM64 MSI.
• Older 32-bit Windows installs: use the x86 MSI.
• USB-stick or no-install use: use the ZIP or 7z portable archive and run the executable that matches your CPU.

The project's preferred installation methods are the Microsoft Store, winget (winget install -e --id WinDirStat.WinDirStat, then winget upgrade later), Chocolatey (choco install windirstat) and Scoop (scoop install extras/windirstat). Package repositories can lag behind GitHub. When checked, the Chocolatey listing still showed WinDirStat 2.9.0 as its newest approved package, dated September 26, 2026. If you need 2.9.2 today, check your package manager's version before assuming you have it.

The project also warns about unofficial sites that copy WinDirStat's name and branding and may host outdated or modified files. Its advice is to install only from the Microsoft Store, the listed package managers, the official GitHub releases, or links on the official website. Compare your download against the published hash file.

Release cadence​

This update comes quickly after the last one. GitHub shows a Beta build 2.9.1.2238 published on October 4, and Chocolatey approved 2.9.0 on 27 Sep 2026. Going from 2.9.0 to a stable 2.9.2 in about ten days fits the frequent releases of the 2.x line. Chocolatey's history shows 2.6.0 through 2.9.0 landing between May and September 2026.

That's quite a change for a tool that went almost a decade without updates after version 1.1.2. The question for longtime users is whether a treemap viewer should also handle recovery, permissions, file watching and maintenance shortcuts. The fix list suggests the maintainers are cleaning up the interface as they add features. If you just want to find out what's eating your C: drive, the 2.9.2 fixes for restoring columns and scaling with font size will help in daily use more than recovery will.

Bottom line​

• Upgrade if: you rely on WinDirStat's column layouts, regex filters or CSV/JSON report loading, or you scan NTFS volumes that might be damaged.
• Try the recovery tool if: you've just deleted something from a FAT-formatted USB stick or SD card and haven't written to it since. Recover to a different drive and check every file.
• Admins: check the GPL v3-or-later license against your redistribution policies, and confirm the MSI upgrade across your language variants on a pilot machine before rolling it out.