I have recovered data many times using simple data recovery freeware tools. I managed to recover data from bad sectors on hard drives, and deleted data from both USB flash drives and memory cards. Regardless of the media used to store data, chances are with a good tool you may be able to recover some of the important data that has been deleted.
As with most things with computers, I am constantly looking at tools that can help with troubleshooting or solving problems. Over the years I have used quite a few tools, but have recently started to look at free ones, and found they work pretty well compared to paid applications. I will share two tools that I have used in the past to help recover data.
Data Recovery Freeware Tools I Use
I have found that there are many great free tools online that can do the job of expensive paid tools. My anti-malware/anti-virus (Microsoft Security Essentials) applications are free, as well as my software firewall (Comodo).
Two Data Recovery Freeware Tools
I have also used two free tools in the past to help recover data from various media. These are:
- TestDisk. I have used this application several times in the past to recover entire hard drives that won’t boot. Many times it is do to the accumulation of bad sectors. This application is small, and while it may seem confusing to those with a non-technical background, is very good at finding lost partitions and data on a hard drive. I wrote about my experience with using TestDisk to recover data from a hard drive with bad sectors a while ago, and I still use those same steps today.
- Restoration. This tool is a few years old, doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of a larger vendor application, and is very simple to use. It is basically an application that can restore deleted files. If I have accidentally deleted a file, and it wasn’t sent to the recycle bin, then I run this application to recover the deleted file. While it’s interface is pretty basic, and you can only restore files one-by-one, it does recover deleted files on hard drives, memory cards, and USB flash. It is a great data recovery freeware tool for anyone looking for a simple application.
There are many programs available to you that help you recover your data, but these are the two data recovery freeware tools that I use on a regular basis.
If you have a suggestion of your own with regards to a data recovery freeware tools, feel free to let me know about it in the comments.