Top 15 Undelete Freeware to Help You Recover Lost Files

Theo Lucia

Nov 11, 2024 • Filed to: Recover Files • Proven solutions

Sometimes, in an unfortunate turn of events, your files get deleted. That's when you are desperate for an undeleting software that can magically bring your files back in one click.

You may have deleted the files by yourself when you were not paying attention. Or for some reason, your hard drive has become corrupted. No matter what is the reason, when a file is permanently deleted and you are unable to restore it from Recycle Bin, an undeleter program is your last resort. 

This post will show you 15 free undelete software programs for Windows & Mac to recover deleted files from your computer, hard drive, flash drive, or SD card.

1. Recoverit Undelete Freeware

Recoverit Data Recovery is a powerful and professional tool that is extremely fast and reliable. It can undelete almost all of your files, from any drive. The undelete software is available for Windows 10/8/7 and Mac computer. 

What Can Recoverit Free Data Recovery Do?

• Recover lost or deleted files, photos, audio, music, emails from any storage device effectively, safely and completely.
• Provide a preview of the deleted files before recovery.
• Supports data recovery from recycle bin, hard drive, memory card, flash drive, digital camera, and camcorders.
• Supports to recover data for sudden deletion, formatting, lost partition, virus attack, system crash under different situations.

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How to Undelete Files on Windows 10/8/7 with Recoverit Free Data Recovery

Download and install the Recoverit undelete tool on your Windows PC and follow the next steps to undelete files in several clicks. 

Step 1Launch Recoverit and select a hard disk drive that the deleted files were stored. Click the target drive to process.

Step 2Recoverit will start to find the deleted data, you can preview the deleted files after the scan to ensure they are deleted files you are looking for. 

Step 3 After the preview, you can select the deleted files and click Recover to undelete them to a selected location.

2. Undelete 360

Undelete 360 is an undeleted freeware of a commercial product. That is why some features are left out, such as file filtering. The biggest disadvantage of this freeware is its speed. Sometimes the scanning may take up a lot of time.

However, Undelete 360 has some other great advantages. It can pick up files that other file recovery tools usually miss. Also, even though it is a undelete freeware, the amount of recovering files you have is unlimited.

Pros:

• User-friendly interface.
• Supports various file formats.

Cons:

• Limited advanced features
• May not be as powerful as other tools

3. Kickass Undelete

Kickass Undelete is a free, open-source undeleting software program for Windows PC. It supports deleted file recovery for both FAT and NTFS file systems and is capable of recovering files from hard drive, flash drive, SD card. It has an extremely simple user interface on which you only need to click the large Scan button to start searching the deleted files. And after scanning, you can filter the deleted files by name or file extension.

Since it is an open-source undelete software free, the tool hasn't been updated for a long time and some bugs are reported by the users, such as the recovered images are black, "unsupported filesystems" error shows up sometimes because the file system it supports is limited.

Nevertheless, it is an undeleter that worth a try, if you are looking for a completely free undelete program with full version for Windows PC.

Pros:

• Open-source and free to use
• Simple and straightforward interface

Cons:

• Limited file format support
• May lack some advanced recovery options

4. Glary Undelete

Glary Undelete is a very basic free software to undelete files. You simply have to choose a drive you want to have scanned and then wait for the program to finish. Its bad side is the software’s speed since it is slower than the rest of the mentioned undelete freeware.

Even though there are not many extras, Glary Undelete scores an A on the fundamentals.

Pros:

• Intuitive interface
• Offers a preview feature for recoverable files

Cons:

• Limited deep scan options

5. FreeUndelete

Even though it is a free undelete software, FreeUndelete is not a very good one. It is very slow, aging, and free for personal use only. This is the truth when it comes to FAT drives.

But, when it comes to NTFS drives, FreeUndelete shows its worth. It can identify many deleted files. FreeUndelete presents the deleted files in a folder structure, making it easy for you to locate your lost files.

Pros:

• Completely free to use
• Supports various storage devices

Cons:

• Limited customer support

6. NTFS Undelete

NTFS Undelete can recover accidentally deleted files that are shift-deleted, removed from Recycle Bin, or even formatted. It supports undeleting files from two kinds of file systems: FAT and NTFS. Files undeletion can be completed within 2 steps with the tool. It supports Windows 10, 8, 7.

NTFS Undelete is an expert at recovering deleted photos with its Photo SmartScan feature, but it is inadequate when it comes to video recovery. Document files such .doc, .ppt, .xls are supported.

Pros:

• Designed for NTFS file systems
• Offers deep scan options

Cons:

• Limited file system support

7. IObit Undelete

IObit Undelete is also an undelete program for Windows PC. Its target scan feature allows you to easily locate the deleted files on specific locations of the PC. After scanning, the deleted files will be presented as excellent, good, or poor status, which shows if the deleted files can be restored or have been overwritten completely with no chance to undelete.

Like many other undelete freeware tools, IObit only provides file undeletion for Windows PC. It doesn't work if you need to undelete files from Mac computer.

Pros:

• Includes additional system optimization tools

Cons:

• May have a learning curve for beginners

8. Recuva

Recuva is one of the best and most powerful undelete freeware tools. Besides this, it is very easy to use Recuva. You simply have to answer the questions which a wizard asks. Those questions are simple; the wizard asks you what type of files you are looking for and where do you want to search for the files.

If you feel comfortable with it, you may even use Advanced Mode, which provides more options. Recuva is reliable and fast software which helps you recover almost any file type.

Pros:

• Wide range of file format support

Cons:

• Limited customer support

9. TestDisk partition recovery

TestDisk partition recovery is a special undelete freeware for recovering lost files. It doesn’t recover only files that you’ve lost. This tool can recover the entire missing partition.

It is a command-line tool, so there is no easy GUI interface for users. Follow its instructions and then it will scan for the missing partition. When the scan is finished, you will be able to recover the lost partition in no time.

Pros:

• Open-source and free to use

Cons:

• Command-line interface may not be user-friendly for beginners
• Advanced features require technical knowledge

10. R-Undelete

R-Undelete can recover files from HDD, memory cards, virtual disks, undamaged RAIDs, and more. It can recover not only the deleted files but also raw and corrupted files. And the recovered files can be sorted by their names, paths, sizes, or dates.

Also, although the free undelete version is available, R-Undelete is offered in a premium version to unlock full features.

Pros:

• Open-source and free to use

Cons:

• Command-line interface may not be user-friendly for beginners
• Advanced features require technical knowledge

11. Stellar Data Recovery

Stellar recovery has been known for more than 20 years and has developed into a respected name in undelete programs. It requires some developed features of other solutions but has a satisfactory certificate of successfully undeleting common file types.

Stellar Data Recovery can retrieve lost and deleted files from several types of digital storage devices. The software helps recovery on several unique platforms, including action and drone cameras. An easy and user-friendly interface makes it simple to undelete data, and you can use it to recover information on encrypted drives.

The premium edition of the software can fix images and video files that are corrupt. Stellar can work with massive storage devices surpassing 6 TB in size.

Features of Stellar Data Recovery:

1. Deep and quick scan: depending on how much patience you’ve got, Stellar Data Recovery provides various levels of scanning.
2. File repair: Repair PowerPoints, QuickBooks, and also back-up files while recovering complete data.
3. Email recovery: includes an Auditor and Reporter and Exchange Toolkit.
4. Data recovery & erasure: you can use Virtual Machine Recovery to restore data from any virtual machine or permanently delete the data from your device.

Pros:

• Recover data from all types of storage devices.
• Save scan progress and info, resume scanning at will.
• Disk image recovery.
• Advanced partition recovery.

Cons:

• It needs a yearly license.
• It has a limited free version.

12. UnDeleteMyFiles Pro

UnDeleteMyFiles Pro has a lot of useful recovery features as well as some impressive interior features. You can browse separately for media and regular files, and you can also add an extra search filter while using this software. It has two more intriguing features; the first one is “Files Wiper,” which erases any file permanently, and the second one is “Disk Image,” which makes the deleted file not get overwritten.

1. Snapshot: Take a “snapshot” of the drive and recover files whenever you want.
2. Secure file deletion: Delete files permanently so you cannot recover them.
3. Email recovery: You can recover deleted emails.

Pros

• It is free software that allows thorough scanning and recovery of deleted or lost files.
• Files wiper that promises total deletion of unwanted files beyond recovery.

Cons

• The deep scanning for recovering files is a pretty slow and time-consuming process.
• It does not support the recovery of files from a damaged or inaccessible hard disk

13. Windows File Recovery

With Windows File Recovery, Microsoft gave us a solution. It’s a Win32 command-line app, portrayed as a result of recovering data that were accidentally deleted, perhaps while clearing a hard drive. It can restore most file types, with Microsoft listing JPEG, MPEG, PDF, PNG, Office files, ZIP files, MP3, and MP4. The only condition is the need always to run Windows 10 2004 or higher.

Pros:

• It retrieves JPEG, MPEG, PDF, PNG, Office files, ZIP files, MP3, and MP4.
• It is entirely free to get back deleted files from USB, HDD, SSD, and memory cards.

Cons:

• It doesn’t work on other software, only on Windows 10 2004 and above.
•  According to the file types, you must use the command line to get back files.

14. Puran File Recovery

Puran File Recovery also recovers lost or deleted files. Nearly everything recognized as a drive can be scanned no matter the file system the file is located in. Puran Data Recovery recovers undeleted files from a damaged disk, CD, and DVD, to a selected location.

Pros:

• It has a very straightforward interface with a powerful recovery engine.
• It works satisfactorily on almost any Windows device available.
• The restored undeleted files can be saved with their path arrangement unchanged.
• This software misses bad areas automatically while recovering files.

Cons:

• No way to preview recovered files before restoring them.
• It is non-commercial but only free for home use.

15. iCare Data Recovery Free

iCare Data Recovery Free is a recovery software tool that can recover several undeleted files. It can perform essential and advanced data recovery to help you restore deleted files, which were lost due to mistakes such as drive/system crash, virus attack, etc. This program can restore files, emails, videos, pictures, and audio files from storage media such as PC hard drive, cell phone, digital camera, etc.

iCare Data Recovery software is a file recovery tool that inspects your drives for any lost or hidden files and then enables you to get back them on your computer. It doesn’t matter If the file is lost from the USB Flash Drive, RAW Drive,  SD drive, iCare Data Recovery Free works incredibly.

Pros

• It has Free Edition with the limitations.
• The scanning process is slow; it almost takes more than 1 hour to complete the deep scan.

Cons

• Mac version I ate data recovery has issues
• iCare data recovery is only available for Windows, and the Mac version is not available.
• High Price: As the limitation of the Free edition, if you need more file recovery experience, you have to upgrade to the PRO version with $69.99 but only 1GB free to reclaim your data.