Recuva: A Free File Recovery Tool

Ever Accidentally Deleted Files? Don't Panic, Recuva Is the Solution. Recuva, a free software tool for recovery various data that was deleted either accidentally or on purpose. No need to worry anymore if you accidentally delete important files or data, just check this out, then your data will be able to be restored.

Doing storage management so that the pc always has free storage space is an important thing to do. This will keep the pc performance optimized and fresh. However, when we are doing the data management, there are times when we forget which data is important or not. Therefore, it is quite common to find the worst case where the important data is deleted. If the deleted data is in the recycle bin, then it won't be a big problem. Just right click on the data then select restore, then the data will return to its place. The problem would happen if the deleted data is not in the recycle bin.

To solve the problem as described earlier, there is a software tool called Recuva. Recuva is a free file recovery software tool that developed by Piriform (makers of CCleaner, which was a useful software too). Recuva supports a wide range of Windows OS (Operating System) such as Windows 11, 10, 8, 7, Vista, and XP both 32-bit and 64-bit (the software will adjust automatically when downloaded). Unfortunately, it does not currently available for mac OS or Linux. It is a small and lightweight program, there are no minimum memory or hard drive requirements. However, the 64-bit version is better to utilize the software, such as the deep scan function. Recuva works on NTFS, FAT, and exFAT format drives.

How does Recuva work? Recuva utilized and scan for data in Master File Tables (MFT) of Windows with “deleted” mark. When you first delete a file, Windows does not overwrite the MFT entry. It is only marked as “deleted” from within the MFT, so the data itself will continue to exist on the drive until it is overwritten by a new data. Recuva also can recover emails you deleted 'permanently' from Microsoft Outlook Express. Please note that Recuva does not guarantee to recovery 100% of lost data, and there is still a possibility that some of the restored data will be corrupt (according to experience, Recuva can restores 90% of lost data successfully). To increase the possibility of restoring data, use Recuva immediately after the accidental deletion. Reduce adding data as much as possible, especially in the same folder, and don't turn off the PC yet.

What kind of data that can be restored by Recuva? There are thousands of file types and Recuva can identify, some of them are:

• Pictures: BMP, JPG, JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF
• Microsoft Office 2007 (or newer): DOCX, XLSX, PPTX
• Microsoft Office (pre-2007): DOC, XLS, PPT, VSD
• OpenOffice: ODT, ODP, ODS, ODG, ODF
• Music: MP3, MP2, MP1, AIF, WMA, OGG, WAV, AAC, M4A
• Video: MOV, MPG, MP4, 3GP, FLV, WMV, AVI
• Compressed/Archives: RAR, ZIP, CAB
• Other file types: PDF, RTF, VXD, URL

 

Does Recuva have any other features? Of course, some other great features of Recuva are:

• It's available in a portable version, faster to use,
• You can select the type of file it is looking for, make scanning process faster,
• It supports drives up to 3 TB,
• It supports scanning inside files, find documents which contain a particular text easier,
• 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,
• It can restore file along with its folder structure,
• 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
• It can fully erase data with overwrite methods include DoD 5220.22-M, NSA, Gutmann, and Secure Erase. So that nobody else can restore the files you see in the results.

How to use Recuva?

1.First thing to do is to download Recuva install it (you can download Recuva here https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva/download/standard ) and. When you launch Recuva, the "Recuva Wizard" will automatically start and guide you through the process of recovering files, click “next” in the welcome window to start.

2.File Type Option

After that, it will display a choice of the data type you want to recovery such as Pictures, Music, Documents, Video, Compressed, Emails or All Files (for supported data types already mentioned in the previous section). It is recommended to choose the appropriate type only to make the scanning process faster.

3.Disk Image Option

This is for premium or paid user only. If you chose “Yes. Create a disk image first”, this will create a Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) image of the entire hard drive. If you chose “No. Recover direct from my drive” this will allow you to begin the recovery process immediately, and take you to the next step.

4.File Location

Select the appropriate option, if you remember the location of the data you will restore select "In a specific location" and navigate to the location. If you forget or don't remember at all, then choose “I'm not sure”.

5.Begin Scan

Once the wizard is ready, click “start” to begin the recovery process. You can check the enable deep scan option for better results, but keep in mind that the scanning time will be longer.

6.Result Window

By default, a list view will be displayed containing Filename, Path, Last Modified, Size, State, or Comment. You can sort as you like by clicking on the header provided. There is a color code on each row in the filename column which indicates chances for a successful recovery (green for excellent, orange for acceptable, and red for unlikely or high risk of being corrupt). There are 2 other view options, tree view to see the folder and file structure, and thumbnail view to see thumbnails of the files to be recovered (those without thumbnails are the same as the red indicator).

7.Begin restoring files

There are 2 ways to recovering your files. First is with right click on the selected file, then chose “Recover Highlighted”, this will recover only the selected files. The other one is “Recover Checked”, this will recover all files that you checked/selected before. Whatever option you choose, a window will be displayed to select the storage location of the recovered files.

That's all about Recuva, hope it can help you 😊