DATA loss can be a very sore experience and sometimes its consequences can be far reaching. The causes of data loss can range from mistakenly deleting files, to virus attacks and system malfunction. It’s best to keep backup copies of files so that if you lose your files, you can fall back on the backup. Creating backups is easier today with external hard disk drives and cloud storage services.
Nonetheless, if you’ve lost your files or data and have no backup copy, it’s advised you stop using the affected storage device immediately and then try one or more of the data recovery programs below to get back the files.
RECUVA
Recuva is a data recovery program that helps you get accidentally deleted files back. The program opens by default to a file recovery wizard, then you choose the type of file you’re trying to recover (picture, documents, compressed, emails and all files) and it’ll focus its search accordingly.
You can also target your search to a specific location or search all your drives, and you can opt to choose a quick or deep scan. The deep scan takes much longer but reveals more files. Once done, your results are presented, with each recovered file given a rating depending on its condition.
Recuva is only available for the Windows OS platform and can be downloaded for free. Click here to download.
PANDORA RECOVERY
Pandora recovery is a reliable and effective data recovery tool that restores deleted files from NTFS and FAT-formatted volumes. It also previews deleted files of certain types (image and text files) and can also recover files that are archived, encrypted or compressed. The user interface is familiar and easy to navigate.
Click here to download Pandora Recovery for free here. Pandora is available for Windows platform only.
EaseUS Data Recovery
EaseUS Data Recovery is a powerful program that recovers data that was lost due to deleting, formatting, partition loss, OS crash or virus attack. The program supports multiple file types, it recovers lost Emails and supports a wide range of storage devices such as flash drives, hard drives, solid state drives, memory cards, music players, etc. You can also save your recovery session if you want to recover the files at a later time or do the recovery process in parts for a large amount of data.
EaseUS Data Recovery is available for Windows, Mac, iPhone and Android and it comes in both free and paid versions. Download here.
TESTDISK
TestDisk is a powerful open-source tool for recovering your data. TestDisk performs basic file recovery operations like undeleting accidentally deleted files from FAT, NTFS, and ext2 file systems. TestDisk can recover a boot sector from a backup and rebuild your boot sector, fix FAT tables, fix your MFT, locate the ext2/ext3 backup SuperBlock, copy deleted files from partitions to recovery media, and find lost partitions in dozens of formats to help you locate your lost data. It’s a command line tool, so there’s no GUI (Graphic User Interface), but the menus and the documentation in the wiki should get you started without much trouble.
The program is available on Windows, Mac and Linux and can be downloaded for free here
PURAN FILE RECOVERY
Puran file recovery has a very simple interface with an extremely powerful recovery engine. A perfect combination of speed, accuracy and simplicity. It supports multiple storage drives irrespective of their file system including Hard Disks, Pen Drives, Memory Cards, Mobile Phones, CDs, DVDs, etc. It has quick scan, deep scan and full scan modes and also supports more than 50 formats and data patterns. Using the “Find lost files” option turns Puran File Recovery into a tool to recover all files from a lost or damaged partition.
Puran file recovery is available on Windows; download here for free.