Data recovery software can help you recover lost, deleted, corrupt or inaccessible files from storage devices like hard disk drives (HDDs), solid state drives (SSDs), USB flash drives and SD cards. Here are some of the best out there.
Recuva
We’ve sung the praises of Recuva before, and for good reason – it’s a great data recovery tool that has a free version, too. The data recovery software from Piriform is really easy to use, and has a wide variety of features that you can utilise to get your data back; which is why we’d recommend it as your first port of call if you’re trying to undelete files. Recuva has a wizard that will guide you through the data recovery process, and allows the user to recovery data from most storage media, including HDDs, SSDs, USB flash drives, SD cards, and CDs/DVDs. The program allows you to filter the files you wish to recover by file type, and the traffic light system lets you know the chance of a successful data recovery for each file.
Disk Drill
Disk Drill (now merged with Pandora Recovery) is an incredibly powerful and reliable data recovery program, but the main draw is that there’s a free version, so there’s not much to lose in giving it a try. The software allows you to recover data from FAT and NTFS-formatted volumes, and the ‘Surface Scan’ method allows you to recover files from drives that have been formatted. The drawback, however, is that the free version only allows you to recover 500MB of data. For many users, it will only be suitable to use as a test before they purchase the full version, which costs $39
Puran File Recovery
This piece of data recovery software provides the user with quick disk scans to ascertain what data is able to be recovered. Puran searches over 50 file types (including documents, photos and videos), and files can be filtered by file type. In addition, files can be previewed before they are restored, and can be restored directly to the original location on the disk.
Wise Data Recovery
This is one of the fastest data recovery programs out there, and is packed full of features. There’s no deep scan feature, but the small, lightweight piece of data recovery software is still able to undertake a scan and recover data in short periods of time. As well as file types, Wise Data Recovery allows the user to enter keywords to search for. The software also provides details about your lost files that will give you some idea as to how recoverable they are
