Top 5 Free Open Source Data Recovery Software [2025]

Amy Dennis

Apr 14, 2025 • Filed to: Windows Computer Solutions • Proven solutions

Data Recovery is the process of restoration of deleted data. It helps recover the corrupted or accidentally deleted data. Human errors are of no count, and you can lose your relevant data due to many reasons. Sometimes you end up deleting important files accidentally or due to some malware issues or electricity break up or some other physical damage. Today we will discuss the Top 5 Open Source Data Recovery Software, which will help you recover your relevant data. Open Source Recovery Software is entirely free, and you can choose any of them as per your needs.

1: TestDisk(Windows,Linux,Mac)

TestDisk is open source recovery software and is designed to recover lost data partitions, and it can recover the FAT3 boot sector, NTFS boo sector, exFAT, and ext2 file system. It can also fix the partition and FAT tables.

TestDisk can run on Windows, Linux, Mac OS, FreeBSD, Sun OS, NetBSD, and OpenBSD.

Pros:

• TesDisk is powerful and fast file recovery software; it can also fix or rebuild FAT tables
• It requires no installation; it's the program you can use with any device like USB

Cons:

• TestDisk has a command-line interface that is not suitable for new users.

2: PhotoRec(Windows,Linux,Mac)

PhotoRec is an Open Source File Recovery Software. PhotoRec can recover your deleted documents, archives from hard drives, files, including videos and pictures as well. It will even recover your data if your file system is damaged or reformatted.

Pros:

• PhotoRec works on Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Sun Solaris
• It can recover your files from pretty much every device like from your smartphone, digital camera, memory cards, CD ROMs, Microdrives, SmartMedia card, and CompactFlash card.
• It can recover, JPEG, HTML, Office, PDF, and ZIP format files
• As it is open-source, it allows you unlimited recovery completely free

Cons:

• PhotoRec's interface is not very good, a person with no technical knowledge will find it challenging to use this program
• Using the PhotoRec software if you ever encounter any issue, you will find it a hard time to get the support from PhotoRec as they have very weak or no support

3: Recoverit Data Recovery(Windows,Mac)

Recoverit is not an open-source data recovery program, but it is easy and free to use. It has over 96% of the data recovery rate, and it can recover your deleted data from any device.

If you have deleted your data unintentionally or some other failure happened to your data, recovery is straightforward with Recoverit; it recovers all file types, including videos, images, PDF file format, and much more…

You can recover up to 100MB of data with its free version.

Pros:

• It is straightforward to use and can recover the lost data from any device like SSD, USB drive, Hard drive, memory card, micro card, digital camera, camcorder, music player, and from any other external device
• No matter how you lost your data, either it was a computer crash or unintentional deletion of data, Recoverit will recover that data

Cons:

• It only allows you to recover 100MBs of data in its free version
• You can't rearrange its window size
• Recoverit can recover years-old files, but it can't recover 1% of files which is acceptable

Recover lost data with Recoverit

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4: Kickass Undelete(Windows)

Recovering deleted files from your hard drive, flash drive, and your SD card with Kickass Undelete is just simple and easy.

Pros:

• Kickass Undelete has an excellent User Interface
• It supports both NFTS and FAT file systems
• It has a clear and large "SCAN" button

Cons:

• Recovering files from SD cards might cause some issue sometimes
• It crashes after finding undeleting files sometimes

5: FreeRecover(Windows)

FreeRecover is another powerful open source file recovery software. It can recover the files from your system and point out their original path as well. FreeRecover runs on Windows, and it is quite easy to use, you will have to tick the checkboxes: Get File Paths and Check File Integrity to have advanced control over your search.

Pros:

• FreeRecover has an uncomplicated GUI interface, and a noob can also use it quite easily
• It recovers file from NTFS drives

Cons:

• FreeRecover needs .NET Framework to run on your system

Comparison of the Open Source Data Recovery Software

Step on how to recover your lost data using Recoverit

Step 1: Download and install Recoverit for Windows or Mac OS by clicking the button below:

Step 2: Type and search for the program from the windows search option

Step 3: You need to identify the location where you lost your data and want to recover it. You can choose any hard drive under the "Hard Disk" section and can choose Desktop, Folder, and Recycle bin under the "Select Location" section and then click on the "Start" button at the bottom right corner

Step 4: Recoverit will start scanning, and it will take some minutes or hours depends on the size of the file.

You can also click on the "Advanced Video Recovery" button at the bottom left corner to find and recover large-sized video files

Step 5: Recoverit will show all of the lost or deleted files from the selected location, and you will have the option to preview the files before recovering those

Just click on the required file to preview the file. This is an extra step added by Recoverit to give you more control to let you identify and recover only selected files.

You can preview all types of files with the same procedure

Step 6: Click on the "Recover" button for the selected/required file, and your file will be recovered from your computer

Conclusion

We have discussed the Top 5 Open Source Data Recovery Software, features, pros and cons, and now we have come to our conclusion. According to us, we have found "Recoverit Data Recovery" software to be the best among all five others.

It has an excellent graphical user interface; everything is easy to use, and it has enormous features compared to others like you can recover every type of file and quite quickly and easily. Recoverit can also recover years of old files, and it allows you to recover 100MBs of files in its free version.

It also allows you to preview the file and recover the only one which you need, it allows you more control, and you can choose which file to recover and which do not.