Top Free Ways to Recover Data
Hello! If you're looking for the best free ways to recover your hard drive, you've come to the right place! Over the past year, I have tried various hard drive recovery tools out there. At first, I paid $100's for supposed tools that "guaranteed" my data recovery, even if the data was damaged or corrupted. But then I came across several free tools readily available to the public for free. Here they are, in the order of their effectiveness.
EASEUS
Easeus Deleted File Recovery
NTFS-READER
FILE-RECOVERY
RESTORATION
EASEUS
Easeus Deleted File Recovery
removable drive and full Vista support
Easeus is an easy to use data recovery program with full support for FAT 12/16/32 and NTFS file systems for all versions of Windows up to Vista. It can retrieve deleted files from any mounted drive visible to the operating system and, importantly, it works well from an second or removable drive (you should never install anything onto the drive you are trying to recover from).
One especially nice touch with Easeus is the recovery preview which lets you visually scan through all deleted files and select which you would like to recover. The smooth GUI makes this process painless. Because it works with any mountable drive, you can recover lost cell phone pictures, iPod files or digital camera shots.
NTFS-READER
Lightweight free undelete-type data recovery!
NTFS Boot Disk provides access to your NTFS drives in an MS-DOS environment (long filenames are supported). NTFS Reader for DOS will allow you to browse and recover all kinds of deleted files.
Although it looks rudimentary, the DOSishness is actually a real boon since Windows isn't running and mucking up your data with disk swapping. NTFS provides good data browsing and preview functionality and runs straight from a boot disk (which you should make on another computer).
FILE-RECOVERY
PC-Inspector File Recoery - Fast Free but requires installation
PC Inspector File Recovery is a data recovery program with support for FAT 12/16/32 and NTFS file systems. It recovers files with the original time and date stamp, and can optionally restore them to a network drive and can recover many files, even when a header entry is no longer available. On FAT systems, the programs finds partitions automatically, even if the boot sector or FAT has been erased or damaged. PC Inspector File Recovery offers an easy to use interface that will scan your drive and automatically make files that can be recovered available from a "Deleted" folder in an Explorer Style navigation tree.
To be able to use PC Inspector File Recovery you need a working Windows System. Never install the current version on the drive from which you intend to recover data! The program must be installed and run on a second, independent drive.
RESTORATION
Restoration - Small, fast and Easy. No install but runs from Windows
Restoration is an easy to use and straight forward tool to undelete files that were removed from the recycle bin or directly deleted from within Windows. Upon start, you can scan for all files that may be recovered and also limit the results by entering a search term or extension.
In addition, Restoration also provides an option to wipe the found files beyond simple recovery. And as such it is not only a data-recovery tool but also a security cleanup application. You can use it to totally delete your files so that no recovery is possible.
The program is very small and completely stand-alone, it does not require installation and can also run from a Floppy disk. Restoration works with FAT and NTFS as well as digital cameras cards.
