Apr 20, 2023 • Filed to: Recover Files • Proven solutions
When you have lost or deleted important files and photos, and have tried to recover them to no avail, all can seem lost. The feeling of despair is overwhelming. But, what many people don't realize is that once a file is deleted, all that happens is that the reference to the file is removed, preventing the computer from accessing it. In reality, the file still resides on the disk and is recoverable using specialized document recovery software.
Lost or deleted files are a way of life. It is common to accidentally delete files. There are also causes of file loss such as malicious deletion or data corruption due to viruses, malware, and ransomware. When a file is deleted, it ordinarily goes to the Recycle Bin or Trash. It resides here until it is automatically purged or deliberated deleted permanently by emptying the bin. When the bin is emptied, the file still resides on the disk but the computer is unable to access it because the file system reference no longer exists.
When this happens, the only way such as file can be recovered is through document recovery software. File recovery software programs can scan the storage media and recover the lost file. Each tool operates differently, some require to be installed while others are stand-alone tools that can be carried in a USB stick and used to recover data from a computer.
In this article, we discuss five of the top file recovery software programs.
Recoverit an easy to use tool that you can use to recover various file types including documents, emails, videos, audios, and images from computers hard drive, memory cards, digital cameras, and external media storage. It has four recovery modes that can restore data as a result of deletion, partitioning, formatting, and virus or malware manifestation. It is easy to use the tool and comes with a preview feature that enables you to crosscheck scanned files before actual recovery. Moreover, it supports both Mac and Windows version
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Ratings: 5/5 stars
Undelete Plus is a powerful recovery tool that can recover lost data files. It can recover files from DDR memory cards, floppy disk, hard drives, memory cards, computers, and digital cameras. This software is effective and very to use. It can recover deleted files from recycle bin, due to formatting, virus attack, and system failure or data loss due to virus attack. Recovering files is super fast you just need to specify file types and path and scan. It supports Windows operating systems such as; Windows 10, 7, 8, 2003, 2008, Vista, and XP. Undelete plus can recover music files, photos, emails, videos, and Documents. The documents include Word, Excel, HTML, and PowerPoint Text just to name a few.
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Rating: 3.5/ 5 stars
Still, looking for document recovery software that can recover your entire MS office file? Recuva software can do you justice. It will also recover images, music, videos, and audios that are in FAT, NTFS, and exFAT file system. It supports memory cards, media players, digital cameras other storage media devices. Recuva restores data lost due to deletion, formatting, and partitioning or even virus attack. All you need to do is deep scan and restore the lost files.
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Pandora Data Recovery is another ultimate software that enables you to recover your lost files. It can recover deleted files from the recycle bin that is in NTFS and FAT file system. This software does not only recover deleted files but also those lost due to formatting and system failure. Due to its powerful scanning, it can recover files from a drive that had been damaged. You can also recover files from hard drives, memory cards, flash drives, and digital cameras. Pandora supports windows OS namely, Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, and 10. Finally, this software can recover a wide variety of data types like music, videos, audios, documents, emails, and photos. The latest version supports Digital Negative image (DNG) and Quick Time movie File (MOV). If you lose your Word, PowerPoint, Excel, or HTML documents are assured to have them back.
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Ratings: 4/5 stars
This is Mac-based software that enables you to recover, archives, emails, photos, videos, music, and Documents. Its powerful recovery allows the recovery of various documents including Excel, HTML, Word, PowerPoint, and texts. You could have misplaced these file types due to virus attack, software crash, power failure, formatting name them, but this software will restore them. It can scan lost files in hard drives, flash disks, media player's digital cameras, and IOS devices. It is easy to use software that lets you preview files before recovering them
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Ratings: 4.5/5 stars
This another intuitive data recovery tool that you can use to recover all your documents such as HTML, Texts, PDFs Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Moreover, it can recover images, videos, audios, archives from your PC, storage media, hard drives, digital gadgets, server, recycle bin, and RAID that are in FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS/NTFS5, and EXT2/EXT3 file system. This powerful software can recover files lost due to different scenarios such as partition loss, virus attack, deletion, formatting, system failure, and improper operation. It is compatible with windows and mac OS so you just need to download the appropriate software.
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Rating: 4.5/5 stars
DiskDrill is an all in one-tool tat lets you restore and protect your data from future loss. It is a professional easy to use tool that recovers data due to; deletion, formatting, partition loss, and system crash as well as virus attack. Your l lost files should be in HFS & HFS, FAT, FAT32, exFAT, NTFS, EXT3 or EXT4 file system. Disk Drill can recover documents such as eBooks, PDFs, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. This document recovery software can also recover music, photos, and videos from media players, digital devices, servers, external hard drives, and computers. Furthermore, it has three protection modes to secure your data on your Mac.
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Rating: 4.5/5 stars
Tenorshare is scaling the heights of data recovery with its software Tenorshare Any Data recovery. As the name suggests, it can recover any form of data including music, videos, documents, images, audios, emails, and archives. To be precise it can recover PDFs, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and others. Whether your hard drive is damaged, storage device corrupted, camera broken or you clicked Shift + Delete on your computer, you can still recover your precious files. Using Tenorshare is very easy and accurate. You also stand a chance to preview scanned files before the final recovery. Also, it supports Windows, Mac, and Linus OS.
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Rating: 4/5 stars
Read More: A Full Guide for Tenorshare 4DDiG Data Recovery
This freeware data recovery software allows you to recover formatted, deleted, corrupted, images, music, video archives, email, and documents. This data can be restored from cameras, computers, flash drives, media players, and any form of the external storage device. Compressed files can also be restored. If you are eager to recover your PDFs, HTML, Word, Excel, Texts, and PowerPoint documents then this is the ideal tool.
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Rating: 3.5/5 stars
UndeletedMyFiles is a professional data recovery software. It supports to recover accidentally deleted document files from computer hard disk, USB drive, SD memory cards, and another storage device.
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Rating4/5 stars
Puran comes as a set of more than 20 utilities, one of which is document recovery. This program recovers deleted/lost files/partitions and can recover data from formatted disks as well. Just about anything detectable as a drive in the Windows system is scannable regardless of its file system. These drives can be hard disks, memory cards, pen drives, mobile phones, DVDs, CDs, any storage device.
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TestDisk is freeware command-line file recovery software whose primary function is file partition recovery and makes non-booting disks bootable again. Some of the key features include:
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Windows File Recovery is a file recovery software program created by Microsoft. This tool recovers files from hard disk drives, memory cards, USB drives, and to a certain extent some solid-state drives. Windows File Recovery supports the recovery of many file types that have been deleted from the Recycle Bin. You can recover photos, documents, videos, and much more. The tool is downloadable from the Microsoft store.
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SoftPerfect document recovery software is a free and simple tool used to restore and rescue accidentally deleted data. It recovers data from hard disks, memory cards, SD cards, USB drives, and any other type of storage media. The tool has support for the most popular file systems such as NTFS, FAT32, and others.
The tool is user-friendly with a clean interface. It runs as an executable from an external drive such as a USB or Pen Drive.
Some of the main features include:
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If you have a computer running on an old Windows version such as XP and Windows 7, then this is a good tool. Some of the main features include:
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The above are five free document recovery software programs. When all else seems lost, these applications can help you get your files back. They all have their pros and cons which should guide your particular circumstances.
Amy Dennis
staff Editor