Top 10 FREE Data Recovery Software

Recently there was a discussion in our forum about data recovery. I am quite surprised to know that many people don’t think that data recovery software works. In my experience, it does work and it saved my @$! many times after accidentally deleting important files or after formatting a hard drive and forgot to backup some files. There was only once, I wrongly formatted my external hard drive and somehow I wasn’t able to get back all my files. I have 7 external hard drives, all with the same casing and no label. I guess the reason I wasn’t able to get back my files is because I might have copied some files to another hard drive.

When recovering data from accidental deletion, there are some simple rules to follow:

1. Try to stop using the hard drive or partition you want to recover from because if you’re trying to recover files from your C drive for example, any activity might accidentally overwrite them.

2. Do not install, download or extract the data recovery software on the hard drive that you want to recover.

3. Do not save the recovered files on the hard drive that you’re recovering from (some recovery tools will warn you).

Do take note that these are my top 10 picks for FREE data recovery software and are in no particular order of preference. Number 1 does not mean it is better than number 5.

1. Recuva

- Recuva is a free Windows utility to restore files that have been accidentally deleted from your computer. This includes files emptied from the Recycle bin as well as i