There are literally hundreds of free data recovery programs out there, and many are incredibly effective at getting your data back.
When you delete a file, it isn’t actually gone; the pointers to it are what’s deleted. Unless the portion of the drive with your lost data on has new data written to it, your data should still be recoverable. While these programs can help you “undelete” files that may have been accidentally deleted, they will do nothing for physical hard drive problems; these require the efforts of a professional data recovery specialist in a clean room lab environment. Trying to repair a head crash, for example, will yield nothing. On the contrary, it will actually make the damage worse and make hard drive recovery even less likely, even by a professional data recovery expert. But for logical issues and accidentally-deleted files, here are some of the best free data recovery programs.
Recuva
Recuva is first on our list because, quite simply, it’s the best free data recovery program out there. It’s incredibly easy to use, has a wide range of features, and should always be your first port of call if you’re trying to undelete files. Recuva can aid you with data recovery from internal hard drives, external hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards and CDs/DVDs. Recuva has a wizard that is able to guide you through the data recovery process, and it allows you to filter files by their extension. The data recovery software uses a traffic light system to let the user know the quality of their recovered data.
Data Recovery Specialists’ Verdict – 10/10
Puran File Recovery
Puran is an interesting data recovery tool that offers a lot of functionality. As well as presenting the user with a list of drives to search from, Puran allows you to choose partitions as well as scan RAW and physical drives. The scans are very fast, and the search box makes it very quick to find the files you need. Not only can you recover more than fifty file formats, the free data recovery software allows you to add custom file extensions. You can also undelete and restore files back to where they were originally deleted from. While this file recovery program is free for home use, it isn’t for commercial use.
Data Recovery Specialists’ Verdict – 8/10
Disk Drill
Another great free data recovery program, Disk Drill is not only packed with features, but has a really simple interface, meaning even data recovery novices will be able to find their way around. The free data recovery program can undelete files from virtually any storage media that can connect to your machine, including hard disk drives, solid state drives and USB flash drives. Disk Drill allows the user to preview image files, which is useful if you have a lot of images with generic file names. There is the option to perform a quick scan or a fast scan, depending on how much time you have. In addition, you don’t have to undelete the files there and then – the scan results can be saved and files restored at a later date. The big drawback, however, is that you are limited to recovering 500MB of data. While this might not be a problem for some, it does restrict people who store a lot of data on their devices. Disk Drill is also able to undelete files on a Mac.
Data Recovery Specialists’ Verdict – 7/10
