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There are many more than 10 free data recovery tools. In selecting the ones that made our list, we considered the following criteria:
After identifying solutions that fit our criteria, we went ahead and tested the products under the same conditions users will face when struck by a data loss scenario.
Features that bring Disk Drill on top of the list are:
User-friendly
For first-time users, working, downloading, and installing Disk Drill is a walk in the park. Testers and laypersons alike assert that Disk Drill is an easy-to-install, user-friendly, and intuitive software that is imbued with wizards and GUI tools to make for a successful recovery process.
R-Studio provides users with extensive recovery options and has versions for Windows, Mac, and Linux. As a true cross-platform solution, files can be recovered from any supported operating system regardless of the OS hosting the tool. This offers additional flexibility and eliminates the need to purchase more than one version of the software in multi-platform environments. The tool can recover data from local and removable disks as well as from client machines connected to a LAN or the internet.
EaseUS offers free file recovery software with its Data Recovery Wizard. The tool enables you to recover data that has been accidentally deleted or from a mistakenly formatted drive or partition. It can easily perform file recovery on an emptied Windows Recycle Bin and can be used on many types of external storage. You can restore lost files, photos, and videos in a variety of file formats with this data recovery application.
Stellar Phoenix Pro is loaded with multiple features that allow users to tailor the recovery process according to their requirements. Among the highlights are Lost Partition, Formatted Drive, Deleted File and Email Recovery of PST files of MS Outlook.
Our look at free recovery software continues with PhotoRec. It’s another freeware app that can be used to recover files on any file system by restoring the underlying data. It performs the recovery in read-only mode for additional data safety during the process. This tool can recover data from many types of storage media and is especially proficient at recovering data from digital cameras. It is a companion to the TestDisk application that is designed to repair damaged or lost partitions.
Recuva is free data recovery software for Windows computers. It can restore files with its deep scan option that searches your drive for traces of deleted data. Use the tool to recover music files, photos, documents, emails, and any other type of lost files. The application also has a feature that employs military-standard deletion techniques to securely erase your data.
The functionality of MiniTool is pretty simple. As the name suggests, this application is available as a small downloadable file. Upon installation, launch the application and select the drive on which your lost partition was located. The app will then prompt the user with a dialog box querying whether they want to scan the entire disk or just a portion of it. Proceed to select an option and specify the nature of the scan — whether it’s a full or quick scan.
Data Rescue supports many different file types for recovery and enables the user to teach the application about new file types by using a few file examples. This extends the tool’s flexibility to allow it to recover any type of file. The new hex previewer enables you to look at your files as raw data before initiating their recovery.
Here is a free file recovery tool that offers some advanced features usually only found in a commercial app. This application is freeware, and there is no paid version available. The freeware is provided as-is and can be used for any purpose, including commercial applications.
Undelete 360 is another freeware application that allows you to recover deleted files from your computer’s internal disk as well as from memory cards, external hard drives, and many other types of storage media. It can undelete files that were too big to fit in the Recycle Bin or that have been erased through the use of the Cut command. The tool does not come with technical support so users are on their own when recovering their lost data.
Narrowing available data recovery software applications down to just the top 10 best options wasn’t easy. There are several applications you should know about even though they didn’t make the list, so we’ve decided to include them here as honorable mentions.
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Recovery Results | ★★★★★ Excellent |
★★★★★ Good |
★★★★★ Good |
★★★★★ Average |
★★★★★ Excellent |
★★★★★ Good |
★★★★★ Excellent |
★★★★★ Good |
★★★★★ Good |
★★★★★ Good |
OS Supported | Win XP+ macOS 10.8+ |
Win XP+ | Win XP+ macOS up to 10.14 |
Win 2000-7 | Win 7+ macOS 10.7+ |
Win XP-8 | Win XP+ macOS 10.9+ |
Win XP+ macOS 10.7+ |
Win 7+ macOS 10.12+ |
Win 2000+ macOS 10.9+ |
Free version limits | 500 MB | No limitations | No limitations | Files < 10MB | 1 GB | No limitations | 2 GB | Scan only | Scan only | Files < 256KB |
File preview | ✔ | ✔ | ✘ | ✔ | ✔ | ✘ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Modern interface | ✔ | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✘ |
Support | Email, online chat | Community | Community | Email, online chat | Phone, email, online chat | Phone, email, online chat | Email, online chat | Phone, email | ||
Security | Bitlocker support | Bitlocker support | ✘ | ✘ | Bitlocker support | ✘ | Bitlocker support | Bitlocker support | ✘ | Bitlocker support |
Truth be told, data recovery software isn’t always necessary. For example, you don’t need to download a data recovery application just to get back recently deleted files that are still in the Recycle Bin. Likewise, you don’t need to perform data recovery if you have a backup of the deleted files and can simply restore them from it.
However, data recovery software is the only way to recover deleted files that are no longer in the Recycle Bin and are not backed up. Data recovery software is especially useful in situations when you accidentally formatted a storage device or deleted an important file and immediately realized your mistake.
Because deleted files are still physically present on the storage device until other files use the space they occupy, you should be able to get them back without any issues. All you need is a reliable data recovery software application.
Unfortunately, there isn’t any data recovery software application that provides a complete guarantee of successful recovery. That’s because data loss can be caused by a number of different factors, including human error, computer malware, and physical damage.
While non-mechanical issues are relatively easy to deal with, physical damage presents a serious obstacle to data recovery, usually requiring the expertise of a professional data recovery service like CleverFiles Data Recovery Center.
Thanks to state-of-the-art equipment and Class 100 (ISO-14644-1 Class 5) clean rooms, CleverFiles Data Recovery Center is able to repair storage devices that have suffered a physical failure and can’t be recognized by data recovery software applications.
Even though hard drive capacity has been increasing year after year, the same thing can’t be said about hard drive reliability. Each year, data storage provider Backblaze publishes hard drive reliability statistics based on its experience with running over 100,000 spinning hard drives in data centers on two continents. In 2019, the annualized hard drive failure rate in Backblaze data centers was 1.89 percent, which is significantly more than it was in 2018 (just 1.25 percent). Clearly, hard drive manufacturers still have some work to do to make hard drives more reliable.
Data recovery software works by restoring access to files deleted by the operating system. When the OS deletes a file it removes logical access but leaves the physical data on the disk. Data recovery software can restore this logical access if the file’s storage space has not been overwritten.
Yes. Data recovery software is safe to use and will not lead to further data loss. In cases where your drive is experiencing physical problems, attempt to make a byte level backup to be used when performing the recovery. Then you can recover without adding stress to the degraded disk.
Yes, with some restrictions. An SSD drive can be TRIM enabled which is used to improve performance and increase drive life. Unfortunately, if you have TRIM enabled on your drive you cannot recover data from a formatted SSD. Drives that are not using TRIM can be recovered with software.
Recover permanently deleted files for free using these methods:
There are many SD card recovery applications available. Some solutions are specifically developed for photo recovery. The best SD card recovery software is:
Not all data recovery solutions are compatible with the Mac operating system. The best data recovery software applications for Mac are: