Files get lost every day. Sometimes we are to blame, other times it’s due to external factors. In the past, if you deleted a file you knew it was gone for good. It didn’t matter how much you wanted it back; if you couldn’t retrieve it at that moment, you were out of luck. Thankfully, today there are a number of tools that make getting these seemingly lost files back an option. I personally tested over 25 data recovery services and found the best to be Recovered.
Data Recovery is never an easy subject. If you’ve ever run into this situation, I hope your heart wasn’t racing as much as mine was. A backup is an essential tool for every business owner, but it’s not always enough if something goes wrong. So your backup got corrupted, overwritten or lost? You probably started panicking and you had no idea what to do next. That’s what happens when you’re a victim of data loss, which can be a very stressful situation.
Data loss happens to everyone sooner or later. If you haven’t had to recover data yet, it’s just a matter of time until a faulty drive, software crash, virus infection or human error causes you to lose some files and photos. Data recovery can mean the permanent loss of your data if you don’t act immediately. It’s important to know what data recovery solutions exist for your specific problem so that you don’t needlessly suffer this kind of loss.
What Is The Best Method For Data Recovery?
There are a lot of reasons why you might need to recover data from a hard drive. Sometimes, they involve highly sensitive and extremely important files. Other times, recovering deleted family photos is the goal. Whatever the case may be, it’s important to know what you’re doing before you get started.
You’ll need to learn how to create a bootable USB drive, and you’ll need to purchase a piece of software that specializes in data recovery. You can usually find these programs for less than $100 online. They’re well worth the investment, because they’ll help you perform all kinds of file recovery jobs that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to handle.
But before you get started, it’s important that you make sure your drive is detected by your computer. If it isn’t, then you won’t be able to use any third-party software on it. You should also keep in mind that some hard drives cannot be repaired after being physically damaged. Water damage is especially tricky to deal with because there’s a risk of short circuits when the water dries up inside the drive.
If the hard drive doesn’t power up at all, then there’s not much more that can be done aside from taking it apart and trying to salvage individual components from within it.
What Is The Best Data Recovery Software?
You’ve just lost a document, picture or some other file that you can’t do without. Maybe it was deleted accidentally or corrupted by a computer glitch. What you need is data recovery software, a program that can coax your hard drive, flash drive or other storage media into coughing up those lost files.
The best free Data Recovery software provides far more advanced features than the simple undelete tools built into Windows and macOS. They’re better at finding all the files you need in a wide range of situations, from accidental deletion to disk corruption to reformatted drives. However, they aren’t perfect and don’t always find everything you need.
If you’re serious about recovering lost files, there’s no substitute for dedicated data recovery software. Most of these programs have premium versions that offer deeper scans and quicker searches and are capable of recovering more types of files, but they cost anywhere from $50 to $100 per license.
For many people though, the free version will be enough to get back recently deleted documents, photos or videos from a hard drive or SD card found inside PCs or laptops (think Windows computers), as well as USB drives, SD cards and other storage devices used with cameras, tablets and smartphones (think Apple iOS and Android devices).
Which Is The Best Data Recovery App?
There are many ways you can lose the data on your computer. You could accidentally delete a file, overwrite it, have a hard drive failure, or experience some other data disaster. If that happens, you need a good data recovery app to help you get back what you lost. We tested and reviewed more than a dozen programs to find the best one out there.
We tested several different products, including the free and paid versions of Recuva and Pandora Recovery, as well as EaseUS Data Recovery and Puran File Recovery (both free). The best data recovery app we found was Disk Drill for Windows. It’s fast and easy to use, plus it can recover deleted files from both internal storage and external media like USB drives.
How Can I Recover My Lost Data For Free?
There are a few things you can do to try and recover your data for free.
The first thing you should do is stop using the computer. If you have deleted a file, or lost a file due to accidental reformatting, then the data still exists on your hard drive, but it has been marked as “deleted” so that new data may be written over it. The longer your continue using your computer after losing the files, the more likely it is that they will be overwritten and unrecoverable.
You can use free utilities like Recuva (Windows), TestDisk (Linux/Windows) and PhotoRec (Linux/Mac OS X/Windows) to attempt to recover your files. Before you do anything, though, make sure that you have backups of the files on another drive. If you don’t have a backup, then this will at least give you another chance at getting the files back.
However, if you want any chance of recovering your files after severe corruption or physical damage to your hard drive, then you will need to take it to a professional data recovery service. These services are not cheap — $500-$1000 for an average sized hard disk.