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Bottom Line: Prosoft Data Rescue is among the best when it comes to raw data-recovery power, but it's burdened by a complex, clumsy interface. Read Review Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery (for. Data Rescue 4 is developed by Prosoft Engineering and is recommended as one of the best Mac data recovery tools for the users. This file recovery Mac app can recover any type of file that is present on your hard drive, whether is a corrupted, crashed, formatted or non-mounting. Wondershare Dr.Fone is a renowned data recovery tool for both Android and iOS. It is extremely easy to use with step by step instructions. Using this tool, you can recover Contacts, Messages, Audio, Videos, Photos, Call logs and Whatsapp History. In addition to recovering data from your Mac, Mac Data Recovery can pull data from Time Machine and encrypted disk drives. The tool is just as as attractive as its PC counterpart and just as.
You've Lost a File, Now What?
Nothing can make you feel more helpless than trying to rescue a file from a failing PC, Mac, or external drive. Maybe it's the trove of family photos that suddenly can't be found in its folder, or the important documents you scanned and saved as PDFs to a now-failing hard drive. Whatever the case, you'll do anything—anything—to get those files back. Relax; you don't have to offer up your firstborn or a kidney to do so. A Data recovery utility may be just the solution you need to get you out of the pickle you find yourself in.
What Can Data Recovery Software Can Do?
Data recovery software can be almost miraculously useful in some situations, and entirely useless in others. The best of the file-recovery apps that we reviewed make it effortless to recover files from traditional spinning hard drives, flash drives, SD cards, and other forms of portable storage, including your phone. They can also retrieve some or all of the data that you otherwise can't access on a failing CD or DVD disk. What they can't do—because no consumer-level software can do it—is recover a file that you deleted from the solid-state drive (SSD) that's probably in your laptop if you bought it in the past year or so, and possibly in your desktop if it's also of recent vintage. For SSD data recovery, you'll need to send your disk to a recovery lab; more on that below. Many of the apps we reviewed have both Windows and Mac versions, and they may be priced slightly differently.
Where data recovery software is most useful is when you mistakenly formatted a thumb drive or a media card without remembering to grab the files already stored there, or if you mistakenly deleted files from your phone. This is the kind of mishap that can happen to anyone. Advanced users often get overeager about emptying the Recycle Bin, and want to get back files they didn't intend to delete forever. If you're using a traditional spinning hard drive, the best recovery software can restore those lost files. A few advanced users—you know who you are—have even deleted whole disk partitions by mistake when performing housekeeping on their hard disks. Again, with a traditional spinning hard drive, recovery software can bring it back in one piece.
All these apps offer to recover lost or deleted files. Some include the ability to make a disk image (or full clone) of a drive so that you can try to recover files from the image or clone instead of from the disk itself. This is an essential feature if you're trying to recover files from a disk that's physically failing, and may continue to fail if your recovery software keeps trying to read from it.
Some data recovery apps also include the opposite of file recovery—permanent file deletion. When you want to make sure that no one can retrieve your data, you can tell these apps to overwrite the data with enough random bytes to make the original data unreadable. Keep in mind that government agencies have tools that can retrieve data from almost anything, but these apps make it impractical even for expert thieves to recover private information from stolen or discarded disk drives.
Where Software Fails, Labs May Succeed
Several of the data recovery apps we reviewed come from companies that offer laboratory-based data recovery services—always at a high price. If you can't recover data from your drive with an app, then you can consider getting it recovered by an in-lab service. All of these services claim to recover data even from SSDs. We haven't tested these claims, but all these services won't charge you unless they actually retrieve your data, so it may be worth looking into them in case of real emergencies. Those services—Kroll, Prosoft, and Seagate—that offer mail-in recovery labs are noted in the table above, and you can read about the details of the particular offerings in the full reviews of those services.
A Caveat About SSDs
One failing that bothered us in all these apps—including our top picks—is that they didn't even warn us that we couldn't recover files from an SSD. It's easy for an app to tell whether a drive uses spinning-platter or SSD technology, and easy to tell whether TRIM technology is active in a drive. All of the software we reviewed, both on the Mac and PC, misleadingly told us that they were able to recover deleted files from SSDs—and then disappointed us by providing corrupt and unusable files instead of the ones we wanted. We hope that the next generation of data recovery software is redesigned to make it clear that we can't hope for file recovery on SSDs unless the deleted files are safely in the Recycle Bin—where, of course, they're easy to find without using recovery software.
The reason that data recovery software can't recover data from SSDs is simple. Virtually all current SSDs use so-called TRIM technology that increases efficiency and disk life by clearing disk sectors that are not being used. One result of this is that the data can't be recovered by software, even if the file system retains its record of the sectors where the data used to be. With traditional spinning hard drives and USB flash drives, file recovery is relatively simple. Recovery software can find the location of a file's data even if you've emptied the Recycle Bin, often even if you've reformatted the disk. But once a file is deleted from an SSD, and the Recycle Bin has been emptied, there's no hope of ever getting that file back again, unless you have a backup somewhere.
Which Data Recovery Software Do You Need?
We found two Editors' Choice data recovery apps for Windows: Kroll Ontrack EasyRecovery and Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery. Ontrack was the best performer in our tests, very slightly outclassing Stellar Phoenix in the number of files it recovered, but Stellar Phoenix has by far the best interface of anything we tried. On the Mac side Alsoft DiskWarrior is an Editors' Choice, for its ability to rebuild entire Mac directories. Prosoft Data Rescue is an excellent choice for getting back the odd document or spreadsheet that you accidentally deleted from your Mac.
Lost data can cause financial problems and emotional heartache. You probably have hundreds of photos and sound files that you can't bear to lose. A reliable backup system is the best option, but data recovery software is the second-best, and sometimes the only, choice available. Look into our suggestions now, so you'll be ready if disaster strikes.
Once you've got your files back, you'll want to regularly back up your work. Our roundups of the Best External Hard Drives, the Best Backup Software, and the Best Cloud Backup Services are good places to start.
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Best Data Recovery Software Featured in This Roundup:
Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery Review
MSRP: $99.00Pros: Recovers files from all media. Preview feature lets you know in advance which files can be recovered. Includes disk-testing and cloning functions.
Cons: Lists as recoverable too many files that are not. No automatic display of deleted files list. Poor multi-monitor support.
Bottom Line: Stellar Data Recovery Premium recovers lost data files from all media, and it lets you know in advance which files are recoverable. However, this utility is too often unable to deliver on its recovery promises.
Read ReviewProsoft Data Rescue (for Mac) Review
MSRP: $99.00Pros: Excellent file recovery. Integrated chat button, available call center, and physical recovery lab. Generous licensing.
Cons: Without advanced filtering, it can be difficult to sift through results. Hides some valuable features.
Bottom Line: After fifteen years in the business, Prosoft Data Rescue continues to offer one of the most powerful and accessible tools for data recovery.
Read ReviewAlsoft DiskWarrior (for Mac) Review
MSRP: $119.00Pros: Repairs and rebuilds Mac directories to improve system reliability and performance. Useful hardware and maintenance tools. Effective for traditional hard disk and solid-state drives. Easy to use. Affordable.
Cons: The OS X Recovery partition complicates booting into the utility.
Bottom Line: While other data recovery utilities can scan disks to recover lost or deleted files, DiskWarrior is unrivaled in its ability to repair and rebuild the Mac directory.
Read ReviewProsoft Data Rescue PC4 Review
MSRP: $69.00Pros: High-powered file recovery. Fast and efficient scanning. Saves file-scan data for use in later sessions.
Cons: Over-complex, under-informative interface. Option to create disk-copy clones rather than faster, more manageable disk images. Licensed to five drives only.
Bottom Line: Prosoft Data Rescue is among the best when it comes to raws Platinum edition. Would benefit from advanced filtering. License transfer is onerous. Ineffective for recovering files on solid-state hard drives.
Bottom Line: While it doesn't provide the most sophisticated tools for filtering recovery results, Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery offers an easy on-ramp to Mac data recovery.
Read ReviewCleverFiles Disk Drill Pro (for Mac) Review
MSRP: $89.00Pros: Excellent file recovery with best-in-class file signature support. Superb filtering. Unique features, including data protection and iOS recovery. Affordable.
Cons: Ineffective for recovering files on solid-state drives. Some features less useful than others.
Bottom Line: If you have Mac with a traditional hard drive, Disk Drill Pro offers one of the most advanced data recovery utilities available.
Read ReviewKroll Ontrack EasyRecovery Review
MSRP: $79.00Pros: Impressively fast, extremely thorough data recovery. Rich in technically advanced options. Includes secure-delete feature. Backed up by Ontrack's mail-in disk recovery.
Cons: Unclear interface. Lacks built-in previewer. No option to create a disk image from a failing disk.
Bottom Line: Kroll Ontrack EasyRecovery is the most powerful, thorough data recovery software we've tested, and it's blazing fast, too. Its only real drawback is a sometimes-daunting interface.
Read ReviewRecuva Review
MSRP: $0.00Pros: Low price. Free version available. Beautifully clear interface design. Preview screen.
Cons: Can't recover as many files as high-priced rivals.
Bottom Line: Recuva is attractively priced and easy to use, though it can't dig in quite as deeply as higher-priced data recovery software.
Read ReviewSeagate Premium File Recovery Suite (for Mac) Review
MSRP: $99.00Pros: Good results. Fast scanning. Parallel Mac/Windows experience. Available in-house data recovery lab and insurance policies (Rescue Plans). No learning curve.
Cons: Some glitches with STX server during testing. Stingy licensing. Ineffective for recovering files on solid-state hard drives.
Bottom Line: While it's not as feature-rich as some competing tools, Seagate Premium File Recovery Suite provides a simple, fast, and capable utility backed by one of the largest names in data recovery.
Read ReviewSeagate Premium Recovery Suite Review
MSRP: $79.99Pros: Spacious, clear interface. Thumbnail previews for recovered files. Direct link to Seagate's in-lab recovery service.
Cons: Restrictive license. Recovered fewer files than competitive products. Lacks CD/DVD recovery option. No disk-image creation. Lacks secure-delete feature.
Bottom Line: Seagate is a major player in the disk drive industry, but its Premium Recovery Suite consumer-level data recovery software has a very restrictive licensing model.
Read Review
The best way to recover from unexpected data loss is to be properly prepared. With one of the following tools on hand, you'll always be ready to save your data from the Reaper.
Photo by Matalyn.
While the best defense against data loss is redundant and real-time backup, we understand that sometimes data loss sneaks right up on you. Whether your vacation pictures didn't make it safely from your camera to your computer or a bumbling roommate deleted the paper you've been working all week on, having emergency data recovery tools handy is crucial to getting your data back before it's gone forever. Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite data recovery tools with us. We tallied up your favorites and now we're back with the nominees for best free data recovery tool.
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TestDisk (Windows/Mac/Linux)
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TestDisk is a powerful open-source tool for recovering your data. Not only can TestDisk perform basic file recovery like undeleting accidentally deleted files from FAT, NTFS, and ext2 file systems, but it comes with a host of additional functionality. With TestDisk you can recover your boot sector from a backup, 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, but the menus and the documentation in the wiki should get you started without much trouble.
Recuva (Windows)
Best Mac Data Recovery Software
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Recuva is a user-friendly Windows-based tool. When you run Recuva, you can resurrect missing files using either the file-recovery wizard or the application's manual mode. The file-recovery wizard is handy when you're sure your data is gone but you're not quite sure where it went or how to get it back. The wizard lets you narrow your search type to pictures, music, documents, video, or all files, and you can set the search location to everywhere on your computer, removable media only, in My Documents, the Recycle Bin, or a specified location. If you don't need the wizard you can jump right into manual mode and get to work searching where you know the file should be. Recuva uses a green/yellow/red light system to indicate how probable the recovery of your files will be, and when available, it can provide previews image files available for recovery. Recuva also includes a tool to securely wipe files you find, handy if you're attempting a file recovery just to ensure the files are actually dead and gone.
PhotoRec (Windows/Mac/Linux)
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PhotoRec is a companion program to TestDisk, also included in this Hive Five. Like TestDisk, this app is also devoid of a GUI, but likewise is quite powerful at file recovery. We're including PhotoRec independently of TestDisk because many users distinctly prefer PhotoRec as a safer alternative when deep disk recovery isn't necessary. This recovery tool won't mess with your partitions or help you rebuild your master boot record; it will, however, dive into your disks in a safe, read-only mode and ignore partitions and file systems in an effort to seek out your missing files. PhotoRec focuses on file types, is operating-system agnostic, and despite its name, isn't relegated to just photos. Overall, PhotoRec is a powerful tool for quickly and safely copying your deleted files to another disk.
Restoration (Windows)
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Restoration is a tiny, no-frills, portable recovery tool. You can use it in all versions of Windows and Windows file systems. It lacks some of the advanced functionality of other nominees but does have basic file-name search and the ability to sort by file parameters such as size and filename. Despite its tiny size, it performed just as well as the other nominees when tasked with restoring files from our test disks. Restoration weighs in at a mere 406k and would make a great addition to any Windows-based USB toolkit.
Undelete Plus (Windows)
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Undelete Plus used to be commercial software but has gone on a lengthy 'limited time offer' freeware run. This file recovery app works on all versions of Windows and incarnations of the FAT and NTFS file systems. Like Recuva, Undelete Plus assigns a recovery probability to files it finds based on how damaged the file is. You can sort files by type, set filters based on time and size to avoid sifting through every deleted file on your disk, and keep folder structures intact when you perform your recovery.
Now that you've had a chance to look over the contenders for best free data recovery tool, it's time to cast your vote and see who wins the crown.
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Which Free Data Recovery Tool is Best?
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If you have a file-recovery tip, technique, or tool you're dying to share. sound off in the comments and help your fellow readers get their data back.