7 Best File Recovery Software Programs

Losing documents which are important and losing photos which you have taken to capture some special moments in your life is a terrible feeling, which may occur accidentally, due to device formatting or device corruption. But there are lots of data recovery software around that can help in this kind of loss. Here are some of the best among them:

1. PhotoRec: 

It's a free utility which is available in two versions, one which runs in the command prompt and the other runs on 64-bit Windows version only. It's a signature-based file recovery utility that supports more than 440 file formats like JPG, MSOffice, OpenOffice documents. It's very popular among users as it's completely safe to use. It focuses on all the file formats while searching and not specific to photo recovery. It's quite a powerful tool that ensures quick and safe data recovery.

2. Recuva Free: 

It's a portable tool and very user-friendly. A wizard appears to ask you what type of files you are looking for and where to search them. Then it starts scanning your system at high speed and supports FAT, exFAT and NTFS file systems. If your searched file is found, you can restore it with just a couple of clicks. If you run the program in Advanced Mode, then you get more options like Deep Scan, locating files containing some particular text and securely wiping out files which have sensitive information and also ensure that nobody else is able to undelete them. Recuva is an excellent recovery tool which is very effective to use.

3. ZAR: 

ZAR, which stands for Zero Assumption Recovery, actually scans deeper than Recuva and it's more useful for disks that are too corrupted to get recognised. The scanning process is quite longer than others, for example, it takes 4-6 hours for a 2GB SD card. If you use the free version, then you can only restore photos and its full version ensures recovery of all other file types.

4. FAPR: 

Free Any Photo Recovery (FAPR) is an efficient and freely available photo, video and audio recovery software that aids you in recovering deleted files from your PC's hard drive and USB devices. It supports photo recovery from all kind of storage media like Sony memory sticks, Zip Disks, MMC Cards, memory sticks, flash cards, Secure Digital Card, IBM Micro Drive, SD Cards, XD Cards, Hard Disks  and Mini Disks. It has an advanced file scanning mode that helps in retrieval of lost files and it also gives a preview of the recoverable photos and videos before complete recovery.

5. Undelete 360: 

It's a free version of the commercial products and it misses out on some important features like file filtering, previews etc. It has no limit on the amount or size of the files which you are allowed to recover. It's a very simple program, it can scan and delete files and you can also view particular file types (JPGs, PDFs, videos and more) by choosing them from a tree. Its scanning speed is not great though, but it can recover files which are missed out by other programs sometimes.

6. CardRecovery: 

It takes a long time to recover files, as it can take 40 hours to scan a 2GB SD card. But one of its greatest features include it displays the files it finds as it finds them, which means you can click 'stop' within ten minutes and restore the already found files instantly. It supports specific camera types too. Its free version allows four complete disk scans.

7. Pandora Recovery: 

It's a free program that can scan an entire computer disk and finds all deleted files and folders which are not overwritten. It can recover deleted files like pictures, songs, movies and documents. It can restore lost data and its powerful scanning module finds all existing and deleted files as well as directories from hard drive. It can also restore all the deleted files to a user-specified location. 


This article originally published by:-efytimes