Maybe you forgot to back up an important file. Maybe the storm of the century left your office looking like Waterworld. Or maybe a cyber attack took everything you held dear.
Don’t worry, there are tools that can dig deep into the architecture of your lost universe and retrieve these sacred scrolls of knowledge. Or, ya know, just recover that photo of you and your team members out last week.
Jokes aside, data loss is a serious problem. According to the Ponemon Institute, the average lost data file (when containing sensitive information) costs $225. If your hard drive is physically damaged, it could cost up to $1,000 to recover ANY data. Don’t you wish you’d just scheduled a weekly data backup now?
These programs can retrieve just about anything from a hard drive, disk, flash drive, or any other storage device even if you have 0 clue what you’re doing. That’s why we had to share these 5 free file recovery software.
NOTE: These are all tools with FREE versions, but most offer premium versions with loads of upgraded features. Even if you pay for these tools, the cost pales in comparison to having a pro do it…or worse, never seeing that picture of your cute doggy again.
The #1 for 2020 – Stellar Data Recovery
Move over all other data recovery software, there’s a new #1 for 2020.
Meet Stellar Data Recovery, the absolute best software for recovering lost files or precious data. Whether you’re an individual or a business, we’ve all experienced some sort of panic when it comes to potentially losing crucial files.
Stellar Data Recovery is built for personal or enterprise needs. Available for Mac and Windows, Stellar Data Recovery
Just take a quick gander at their user friendly interface and all of the ways Stellar offers to recover your files from various sources:
Furthermore, there’s a plethora of file types that this software will recover:
Stellar Data Recovery is an amazing software for data recovery. It comes close but isn’t nearly as good as the EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard.
Still, Stellar Data Recovery’s FREE version allows users to fix up to 1GB without needing to pay. That’s a lot of data, or PDF documents perhaps, that you could possibly recover for no cost.
Repair video or photo files with Stellar Data Recovery, or even use their BitRaser for File feature to remove unwanted data from your internet browsing or folders on your hard drive.
What can Stellar Data Recover provide your business? Well, these following features of course:
- Email Repair: includes Exchange Toolkit and an Auditor & Reporter
- Email Converter: converts Windows Live Emails (EML) files and exports mailbox data into other formats.
- File Repair: Repair QuickBooks, PowerPoints and even back-up files while restoring complete data.
- Data Recovery & Erasure: use Virtual Machine Recovery to recover data from any virtual machine or permanently erase file and drive data from your device.
#2 – EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard: Second to Stellar Data Recovery
No options to configure? Everything basically taken care of for you? These are qualities that the best data recovery software reflect.
Easy-to-use
EaseUS presents you with scannable drives, guides you with an intuitive interface, and gives you the option to preview all recoverable files from an Explorer-like window. Data recovery with this program is a smooth experience as we tested.
Tailor-made and robust data recovery utility
- Recover data from internal and external HDD, SSD, SD card, USB flash drive, Camera, and video player, etc
- Equip with two scanning modes to retrieve lost data after deletion, format, device damage, system error, virus attack, etc
- Recover lost data including documents, multimedia files, images and photos, emails, database data and program files, etc.
- Support to scan a single partition or a whole hard drive where data gets lost
Additional feature
Its newly updated version 13.0 has included the file repair feature to fix damaged and corrupt photos and video files of Canon, Go Pro, and DJI devices.
Free version
The FREE version supports all kinds of data recovery from any data loss situation with a limited data recovery amount. You only get 500MB of recovery by default (To gain another 1.5 GB, you need to share it via SNS within the program ). The free version is suitable for document recovery.
Pro Version
The PRO version provides full functionality, allowing a user to recover files without any restrictions. If the size of data exceeds 2GB, the PRO version is your best choice.
The only downside is that we can’t see the recover-ability of the file without previewing it. For the average person, this is perfectly fine. Fast, clean, simple, intuitive—what else could you ask for in a data recovery program?
#3 – MiniTool Power Data Recovery FREE – The Runner Up
The free version of Power Data Recovery 8.6 by MiniTool Power Recovery is a close runner-up on this list of 5 free file recovery software. Install, scan, and recover any lost file, FAST, and with no fuss during installation advice and simple searchable scans.
Unlike basically every other entry on this list, you can have your data back in your hands in 3 easy steps. Select the location, scan it, and select the items you want to restore and it instantly saves them in a safe place. The scans are extremely fast and the results are easy to read.
The free version limits you to only 1GB of recovered data, though.
#4 – Disk Drill
Disk Drill pops up on just about every software recovery list for good reason: It’s powerful and simple, and you don’t have to have a doctorate in theoretical physics to get your data back.
We love the simple and straightforward interface. Just scan a drive and you’ll be presented with recoverable options (for FREE). That way, you scan images or files and preview them to make sure you’re recovering the right file. They even give you a nice tutorial in the beginning.
It’s just as good as MiniTool but only gives you 500MB free, so we wouldn’t dare rank it above its more generous competitor.
TIP: Use Disk Drill if you prefer a simpler interface with less complex options. It’s great for quickly recovering an accidentally deleted file.
Honorable Mentions
There are plenty of other great data recovery programs to undelete those important files. We’d be remiss if we didn’t give them a shout out!
#5 – Recuva – Recover Anything From Anywhere
Need to get something off of a memory card, a USB stick, or even your iPod (if you still have one)?
Recuva is the answer.
It’s the super flexible, ultra deep scanning, do-it-all recovery tool that can recover anything from anywhere. The detailed interface is easy to use thanks to the recovery wizard. The deep scan takes you deep beneath the waves, trawling the depths of your lost data ocean and exposing you to rare and exotic species of data you had no idea existed.
If you don’t want to be whisked away to this fanciful world of imagination, you can limit the search to find something more specific. There’s a reason geeks love this tool—it’s the be all end all in recovery options.
We don’t recommend it for newbies, and be prepared to get YouTube-like ads every 3 minutes. Better ads then extortionist pricing, so it makes this list of 5 free file recovery software.
BONUS #6 – UnDeleteMyFiles Pro
We couldn’t have a list about software that undeletes files if we didn’t mention a program called UndeleteMyFiles. This is actually one of the true FREE programs on the list.
It looks like it’s from 2004, but it has a lot of cool features like:
- Snapshot: Take a “snapshot” of your drive and retrieve files at your leisure.
- Secure file deletion: Delete files forever so nobody can recover them.
- Email recovery: Did you delete that email string with Grandma’s extreme political opinions? Time to bring back the horror!
A strong drawback is that there is no indication of the recoverability of the files.
Your files aren’t lost for good. Pick any of these 6 FREE file recovery software and get them back fast! But if you really want to work even faster, get the best of the bunch: Stellar Data Recovery!
