Many free data recovery programs exist that can help recover your accidentally deleted files. These file recovery programs can help you recover, or "undelete" files on your computer. Files you have deleted are often still present on your hard drive or USB drive , media card, smartphone, etc.
Data recovery software is just one way to go. See How to Recover Deleted Files for a complete tutorial, including how to avoid common pitfalls during the file recovery process. Undelete files you thought were gone forever with any one of these freeware data recovery tools.
Recuva is the very best free data recovery software tool available, hands down. It's very easy to use but has many optional advanced features as well. Recuva can recover files from hard drives, external drives USB drives, etc. Recuva can even undelete files from your iPod! Undeleting a file with Recuva is as easy as deleting one! We highly recommend that you try Recuva first if you need to recover a file. There is also a bit version Recuva available.
Piriform provides both an installable and a portable version of Recuva. We tested file recovery with Recuva v1. Download For:. Recovering files is very easy to do with just a few clicks. While that may not be everyone's ideal way to display files, it's a very familiar interface that most people are comfortable with. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard will undelete files from hard drives, optical drives, memory cards, iOS devices, cameras, and pretty much anything else that Windows sees as a storage device.
It also does partition recovery! We almost didn't include this program because of that limitation but since most situations call for undeleting much less than that, we'll let it slide. Data Recovery Wizard supports macOS Download For :. Puran File Recovery is one of the better free data recovery programs we've seen. It's very easy to use, will scan any drive that Windows sees, and has a lot of advanced options if you need them.
One particular thing to note is that Puran File Recovery identified more files on our test machine than most other tools, so be sure to give this one a shot in addition to Recuva if it didn't find what you were looking for. Puran File Recovery will even recover lost partitions if they haven't been overwritten yet. It's also available in a portable form for both bit and bit versions of Windows, so it doesn't require installation. Disk Drill is an excellent free data recovery program not only because of its features but also due to the very simple design, making it almost impossible to get confused.
According to their website, Disk Drill can recover data up to MB from " virtually any storage device ," such as internal and external hard drives , USB devices, memory cards, and iPods. Disk Drill can also preview files before recovering them, pause scans and resume them later, perform partition recovery, back up an entire drive, filter files by date or size, run a quick scan versus a full scan for faster results, and save scan results so you can easily import them again to recovery deleted files at a later time.
Disk Drill works with Windows 7 and newer, and macOS Pandora Recovery was another file recovery program but it now exists as Disk Drill. Glary Undelete is an excellent free file recovery program. It's very easy to use and has one of the better user interfaces that we've seen. The biggest advantages in Glary Undelete include the easy "Folders" view, an Explorer-style view of recoverable files, and a prominent "State" indication for each file, suggesting how likely a successful file recovery will be.
One disadvantage of Glary Undelete is that installation is required before you can use it. Another is that you're asked to install a toolbar, but you can, of course, decline if you don't want it. Aside from those facts, Glary Undelete is top-notch. Glary Undelete can recover files from hard drives and any removable media you might have including memory cards, USB drives, etc.
We tested Glary Undelete v5. Unlike most file recovery tools, this one doesn't let you see how successful the file recovery will be. SoftPerfect File Recovery is another superb file undelete program. It's very easy to search for recoverable files. Anyone should be able to use this program with very little trouble. SoftPerfect File Recovery will undelete files from hard drives, memory cards, etc.
Scroll down a bit on the download page to find it. According to SoftPerfect, bit versions of Windows operating systems are also supported. We tested SoftPerfect File Recovery v1. Wise Data Recovery is a free undelete program that's really simple to use.
The program installed very quickly and scanned our test PC in record time. An instant search function makes it really quick and easy to search for deleted files that Wise Data Recovery has found, and there's both a quick and a full scan option depending on how deep of a scan you want to perform. There's also a portable version available. The Restoration data recovery program is similar to the other free undelete apps on this list.
The thing we like most about Restoration is how incredibly simple it is to recover files. There are no cryptic buttons or complicated file recovery procedures — everything you need is on one, easy to understand program window.
Restoration can recover files from hard drives, memory cards, USB drives, and other external drives. Like some of the other popular data recovery tools on this list, Restoration is small and does not need to be installed, giving it the flexibility to be run from a floppy disk or USB drive. We successfully tested it with Windows 7, and didn't run into any problems. However, v3. FreeUndelete is self-explanatory — it's free and it undeletes files!
It's very similar to other undelete utilities around this rank on our list. The major advantage of FreeUndelete is it's easy to use interface and "folder drill down" functionality i. FreeUndelete will recover files from hard drives, memory cards, and other similar storage devices in, or connected to, your PC.
One of this program's best features is the ability to preview text and image files. You can even browse deleted folders in thumbnail view to quickly see which files you want to undelete. Several hundred file types are supported, so you can bet that iCare Data Recovery Free can probably recover anything you've deleted.
Windows users can download this program as a portable tool or a normal, installable program. Even Microsoft has a tool for data recovery, but it's not as easy to use as most of these other programs. This one runs over the command line, so you have to type out everything you want to do.
It's still pretty easy to use, though. To undelete files this way, download and install Windows File Recovery and then search for it in the Start menu to open in. Once you're on a screen like you see above, you could enter a command like this to recover PNG images from your C drive's Downloads folder and copy them to the Images folder on a drive called E :. Since this is a bit more of a process than using a standard application where you can point and click on buttons and menus, check out Microsoft's help page for other examples and more information.
It explains how to recover single files or multiple file types at once, how to use wildcards, and more. Only Windows 10 users can download this tool. File recovery with this program is uncomplicated and could probably be accomplished by the average computer user without any kind of documentation. ADRC Data Recovery Tools is a standalone, KB program making it a very portable data recovery tool that will easily fit on any removable media you might have.
Data Recovery Tools officially supports Windows XP, , and 95 but we successfully tested data recovery with this program on Windows Vista and Windows 7. CD Recovery Toolbox is a completely free and very unique file recovery program. According to the publisher, CD Recovery Toolbox should help recover files from discs that have been scratched, chipped, or have surface spotting. One obvious con is the inability of CD Recovery Toolbox to recover files from hard drives or portable media drives.
However, the program isn't designed to do that so we haven't held that fact against it. The recoverability state of the file isn't shown, so you don't know whether it will be usable upon recovery.
UndeleteMyFiles Pro is another free file recovery program. Don't let the name fool you — it's entirely free even though it says "Pro. Tree View and Detailed View are the two viewing perspectives you can choose from. You can also preview files, which sounds nice, but all it does is restores the data to a temporary folder and then opens it.
This tool takes a snapshot of your entire computer, places all the data in one file, and then lets you work through that file to find deleted data that you want to restore. This is very handy because after the image file has been made, you don't need to worry that new data written to your hard drive will replace any important deleted files.
There's a nice search option in UndeleteMyFiles Pro that lets you search by file location, type, size, and attributes. Something we really didn't like about UndeleteMyFiles Pro is that the recovery process doesn't tell you if a file is in a good state of being recoverable like most of the other software in this list.
However, we also tested v3. Unlike some of the other file recovery programs from this list, Power Data Recovery needs to be installed to your computer before you're able to use it. This isn't the best way to work with this type of software because the install may overwrite your deleted files and make them less likely to be recoverable.
Another downside to Power Data Recovery is that you can only recover 1 GB of data before you have to upgrade to a paid version. However, we do like the fact that the program finds deleted files quickly and that you can recover files from both internal drives and USB devices, as well as easily undelete data from the desktop, Recycle Bin, or a specific folder.
It's reportedly available for Windows 10 through Windows 7. We tested this version in Windows
