This post will discuss the top 10 free data recovery software of 2021 for recovering lost or deleted data from your system. Read on to compare their features and limitations, and choose the right software based on your need.
You may lose essential data at any moment due to various reasons, such as accidental deletion, drive formatting, device corruption, etc. Once it happens, you start looking for ways to recover your data. The best solution to retrieve your lost files, folders, photos, videos, etc., is using a data recovery tool.
There are several data recovery tools available, and they have their specific pros and cons. It can be overwhelming to choose the most suitable one for your need, given the plethora of options.
Therefore, we have created a list of top 10 free data recovery software 2021 and their features, data recovery probability, pros and cons, price, etc. Read on to know more!
List of Top 10 Free Data Recovery Software
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Stellar Data Recovery – Free Edition.
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Disk Drill
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EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard- Free
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Recuva
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PhotoRec
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TestDisk
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Recoverit Data Recovery Software
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R-studio
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MiniTool Power Data Recovery
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UndeleteMyFiles
1. Stellar Data Recovery – Free Edition
Stellar Data Recovery – Free Edition is an easy-to-use data retrieval tool that supports data recovery under different data loss situations. The software can efficiently extract data from various data loss scenarios, such as malware attack, deletion, formatting, re-formatting, corruption, etc.
You can recover all kinds of data from Windows PCs, laptops, and external storage media drives, such as HDDs, SSDs, USB drives, and memory cards using this tool. You can also run customized scanning to restore only a particular type of data.
The software is also available in five more versions- Standard, Professional, Premium, Technician and Toolkit versions. These versions offer several advanced features, such as recovery from optical media and non-bootable or crashed systems, SMART drive monitoring and cloning, disk imaging, repairing corrupted videos or photos, etc.
Note: You can recover deleted or lost data up to 1 GB with Stellar Data Recovery - Free Edition.
2. Disk Drill
Disk Drill can restore data from computers and external storage drives. It supports recovery from formatted, corrupted, or missing drive partitions. It also features a Recovery Vault utility for data protection and drive backup. The software scans the systems/drives and recovers data in a folder.
Features such as ‘create a disk image’, ‘SMART device status’, ‘save & load scan session’, ‘RAID recovery (partial)’, etc. are available only with the paid versions.
Note: You can recover data only up to 500 MB using Disk Drill.
3. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard- Free
EaseUs Data Recovery Wizard- Free Edition is another data recovery software that can retrieve data from formatted or corrupted Windows and Linux PCs and other storage media. It supports recovery of more than 1000 file formats. However, you cannot add a custom file format. You can preview a file in EaseUs, but it has to be smaller than 100 MB. It also doesn’t show you the actual scanning time.
Note: You can recover data up to 2 GB using EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard.
4. Recuva
Recuva is a free data recovery software that offers pretty good data recovery chances even though there is no progress on its updates or bug fixing. It can recover data from Digital camera memory cards, Windows systems, MP3 Players, etc. You can also extract data from formatted/corrupted storage drives with FAT, ex-FAT, and NTFS file systems. It also features a data wiping utility, which uses military standard deletion techniques to delete data from drives and PCs.
5. PhotoRec
PhotoRec is an open-source data recovery software, which can restore deleted or lost data such as photos, videos, audios, archives, etc. It supports recovery from external storage devices, such as USB drives, memory cards, CD-ROMs, hard disk drives, PCs, and Mac. It supports over 300 file families, but you can’t retrieve data with file names and structure using this software.
6. TestDisk
TestDisk is said to be the companion data recovery software to PhotoRec. It can recover data from missing partitions. You can even recover deleted or lost files and folders from unbootable systems. This command-line software can also fix partition tables, FAT tables, MFT (Managed File Transfer), and rebuild the NTFS boot sector. It can repair damaged partitions but not files.
7. RecoverIt Data Recovery Software
RecoverIt (Version 9.0) works in different data loss scenarios, such as accidental partition formatting, corruption, deletion, and more. You can use this software to retrieve files, photos, documents, etc., from various storage devices, such as memory cards, USB, SSD, HDDs, and more. It supports recovery for over 1000 file formats and file types. You may also preview the file before recovering them.
Note: The software only restores data up to 100 MB.
8. R-Studio
R-Studio can recover data from Mac OS file systems, Linux, Unix (BSD), new ReFS (Resilient File System) that is Microsoft’s newest file system, etc. You can search for files by file type using this software. There’s also a “Preview” option, but you can preview only a few file formats.
Note: The software doesn’t recover files larger than 256 KB.
9. MiniTool Power Data Recovery
MiniTool Power Data Recovery is also a reliable data retrieval software, which can get back your files and folders lost due to virus attack, disk failure, deletion, or file system corruption.
The software lets you preview files before recovery. It supports recovery from digital media and CD/DVD. It also supports custom scanning like Stellar Free Data Recovery software. However, the data recovery results are not so satisfactory.
Note: You can recover data only up to 1 GB.
10. UndeleteMyFiles
Finally, UndeleteMyFiles is a free data recovery tool that can quickly recover data from PCs and storage devices, such as HDDs, USB drives, SD cards, etc. This software enables you to search for files by file size, name, attribute, or extension. It also facilitates you to search for media files, or regular files separately.
There’s a ‘Files Wiper’ utility, which you may use to delete any sensitive data from your storage drives and systems. The software, however, does not guarantee complete data recovery retaining the original quality.
Note: You can recover unlimited data.
Conclusion
Whether you have accidentally deleted your precious photos or lost your business PPTs, documents or emails, you may use a data recovery tool. We have crafted a list of the best free data recovery software. You may consider the features, data recovery capabilities and limitations of all the software mentioned in the post.
The best one should be able to work under all common data loss scenarios and support recovery from both Windows and Mac, as well as different storage drives.