Everyone is aware of the importance of backups, but even those with perfect backup strategies can find themselves in a tight spot sometimes.
Whether it’s a hardware failure, virus or ransomware infection or simply plain, old fashioned human error, sometimes accidents do happen. In the event of such an accident, it’s always wise to have a free data recovery program on hand to help you out of a tight spot, and potentially save you a lot of money and hassle. Here are three of the best free data recovery programs.
Recuva
With it’s simple, easy to use interface and deep scans, Recuva is one of the best tools to have on hand in the event of a data accident. It has a simple user interface, and a data recovery wizard that can be skipped if the user is more advanced. You can choose the file extensions you want to focus on if there’s a particular type of file – such as picture, video or document – that you’d like to recover. You can do a quick scan or a more intense deep scan, which takes much longer. Once the scan is complete, Recuva will present the user with a list of recoverable files, and a rating, depending on the condition of each file. You can recover the files there and then, or if you switch to advanced mode, you can get a preview of the file.
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IObit Undelete
IObit has a user interface which makes the data recovery process effortless. Simply select the file types you’re looking for, and press “scan”. Unlike Recuva, there’s no “deep scan” option, but the scans are incredibly quick and surprisingly thorough. IObit gives the user an estimated probability of recovery, either excellent or poor, to indicate whether data recovery will be possible or not. You can preview the files listed by hovering over each one with your mouse, and recovering them is simple – just check the boxes and click “recover”.
DMDE
DMDE is an often-overlooked free data recovery program, and while it might not have the cleanest user interface or be the easiest to use, it’s still a powerful tool. After selecting the drive you want to recover data from, DMDE will identify all mountable partitions, and if successful, you’ll be presented with a window to browse the contents on the drive and recover whatever you need. The downside is that, while there’s no limit on the amount of data you can recover, the free version isn’t as fast as the Express edition. If time is of the essence, it might be worth upgrading.
