The invention discloses a method and a device for deleting and recovering video files. According to the method and the device, the deletion on the video files can be triggered only through completing the selection on the video files, so that the instant virtual deletion on the video files can be realized, and the personnel privacy of users can be effectively protected. In addition, the logical deletion instead of physical deletion of the video files is realized on the video files in an invisible shielding mode at an application layer, so that the defects of complete relying on a file system, formation of excessive fragmentation spaces in a disc and recovery difficulty of the deleted video files like physical deletion are avoided. Therefore the method and the device can be widely applied to embedded monitoring equipment, the storage abnormality probability of the video files can be reduced, and the deletion caused by misoperation can be easily remedied. Corresponding, the logic recovery on the video files is realized through canceling the invisible shielding of the video files in the application layer, so that the recovery of the video files is simple, and the implementation is easy.