Comprehensive Guide and Evaluation: Top Choice in Data Restoration - The Ultimate Test on Recuva

Recuva is one of the best free data recovery tools available, and it’s my personal favorite choice that I always recommend before similar file recovery programs . It’s easy to use and is as effective as any other freeware or premium file recovery program on the market. It was developed by Piriform, the makers of CCleaner , another outstanding product.

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Recuva Pros and Cons

I’ve used Recuva almost exclusively over the competition for several years now, and there’s very little to complain about.

What I Like

Comes in both installable and portable versions.
Contains a simple wizard and advanced options.
Supports a wide range of Windows operating systems.

What I Don’t Like

Setup might try to add other programs to your computer.
It hardly ever updates anymore.

Recuva Features

The easy-to-use wizard asks the important questions and does the hard work behind the scenes
It’s available in a portable version, making installation unnecessary
A quick standard scan and an optional deep scan cover all the technological bases in the search for recoverable files
Recuva supports scanning inside files so that you can find documents that contain a particular text string
The recoverability state is provided for each file Recuva uncovers
It can recover files from hard drives, USB drives, memory cards, BD/DVD/ CDs, and MP3 players, even if they’re damaged, corrupted, or recently reformatted
You can securely overwrite the files the program finds to ensure that nobody else can restore the files you see in the results. The overwrite methods include DoD 5220.22-M, NSA, Gutmann, and Secure Erase
If you enable the option in the settings, the folder structure can be restored along with the file
Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Recuva are available
It supports drives as large as 3 TB

This review is of the free Recuva software, which does not include support or automatic updates like Recuva Professional .

Installing Recuva

To get started, visit the Recuva download page to get the software. The best option for someone who already has files to recover is the portable download ( get it here, hosted on Softonic ). This allows you to avoid installing anything after discovering that you need to recover a file. If you are downloading the program for future use and don’t have any files to recover, the standard installable download is fine.

A file recovery program can only recover a file deleted from your computer if the same space on the hard drive hasn’t already been used by another file. Every time something is saved or installed, the chance that your file will be recoverable decreases. Using the portable version of Recuva prevents it from overwriting anything during installation.

If you download the portable app, you need to extract the program from the ZIP archive. Once you do so, run either recuva.exe or recuva64.exe, depending on whether you’re running a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows .

Running Recuva

If a file has gone missing from your mistake, a virus infection, or a system crash, there is a good chance this tool can find it. There’s no guarantee that it can successfully recover any particular deleted file, but it’s your best bet.

Here’s a quick look at how to use Recuva to recover deleted files:

When the program starts, you’re presented with a wizard where you choose the kind of file you’re looking for, such as mail or music. Or, chooseAll Files to have Recuva search for all file types so that it doesn’t limit the results.
Next, you can define where it was last located, such as in a specific folder, drive, disc, or another device. You don’t have to do this, but specifying where the file was deleted from can speed up the overall recovery process.
SelectStart to begin the file recovery search. Turn onEnable Deep Scan if you wish, but we recommend reserving this choice for a second opinion if the normal search doesn’t help.
After a quick scan, you’re presented with a list of recoverable files. Recovering one of the deleted files is as easy as selecting it and clickingRecover .
At any time, you can switch to Advanced Mode, which reveals options and additional sorting abilities, such as previewing a file or reading its header information.