▷ Recover deleted data from hard drive [best methods]

In this article we are going to see different ways to recover data from a hard disk when we erase it or directly format our drive, in clear fast mode. We will always try to provide programs that are really useful and that are free as far as possible. Although it is true that most of those that operate under Windows, are paid, or are seriously limited.

Without a doubt, the biggest concern of 95% of computer users is keeping their files safe, without anyone being able to remove or delete them. Each of us stores large amounts of personal information within storage units and the last thing we want is to lose all of this, which we may have been storing for years.

Fortunately, there are a multitude of programs that offer us the possibility of recovering data from a hard disk, even if they have been deleted long ago, or the hard disk has been formatted. Many others are able to do it despite the fact that the hard drive is physically damaged, although for this we must already invest a sum of money in the vast majority of cases. There are even companies dedicated to these tasks for cases such as corporate data of special relevance.

Best programs to recover data from a hard drive

Without further ado, we will start with this small list of recommended programs to recover our precious files. In it you will find both free, trial and paid license programs.

Piriform Recuva (free)

Recuva is one of the few programs that will let us recover files for free under the Windows platform. It belongs to the Piriform family of programs, just like the well-known CCleaner. We can download it from this link, and it is surely the easiest program to find and use if we are in a hurry, although the results will not be as good as other paid programs like Remo Recover.

We even have a portable version to avoid having to install the software. With the free version we can scan our hard drive and portable devices and recover photos, documents, music, videos, etc. It is as simple as opening the program and following the steps.

Recover data from hard drive

It is a quick option since it can save us from a fix, although the successful recovery rate is not too great, everything will depend on the size of the file, the time it has been deleted and whether we have formatted the hard drive.

TestDisk (free and command mode)

TestDisk is another of the most commonly used tools under Windows platforms to recover files from our hard drives. It is a free tool that we can download from this link and it will not be necessary to install it.

Its operation will be through the command console of our system, that is, it does not have a graphical interface or anything like that, but neither is it necessary because it is quite simple to use. In addition to recovering data from our internal hard drive, it also perfectly detects other drives such as portable hard drives or USB flash drives and SSDs

Well, once we download the folder, we must unzip it into a directory that we have created for this purpose. In this same directory we will also store the data that we are going to recover. Next, we must right-click on the executable file and open it as administrator.

A CMD window will open with the storage units that we have on our computer. We select the hard disk that we want to analyze and press Enter

Now we select a partition style, which in the vast majority of cases will be the first of the available options " Intel " if we are on a PC. Although if we have a hard disk with GPT partitions we will have to use the second option as in our case. Anyway, the program automatically detects the one we have. We give Enter again.

Now we will have to select the first option again to analyze the hard drive that we have selected. Each of you can investigate the options of "Advanced" and others.

On the next screen, the hard drive partitions will appear so that we can select the one we want to recover.

At this point, we will see a list of partitions of our hard drive and a series of options in the lower area. We are interested in recovering files, so we are going to pay attention to the “ list files ” option, whose activation key is “ P ”, so we press P.

From now on, the files on the drive will be listed so that they can be recovered. To select a file or directory, press the "C" key and select the directory to save it. With the "A" key we can select all the files.

DiskDigger (free)

DiskDigger is another free software to recover data from a Windows compatible hard disk. It works very well if we choose deep scanning, with which it will detect a large number of deleted files and it will be possible to recover most of them. We will be able to download them from their official website without any problem.

The drawback comes now, and that is that every time we want to recover a file, we will need to wait 5 seconds to do it for free. So if we want to recover a large number of files, the process can be considerably longer.

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Free

We continue with a program that also works quite well and has both a free and professional version. This program, unlike others, will allow us to recover a number of files of up to 2 GB in total. What does this mean? Well, every time we want to recover a series of files from our hard drive, the amount will be limited to 2 GB. So to recover all the files we want or a complete hard drive, we will have to do it step by step in 2 GB sections, but at least we have this possibility, unlike others.

We can download it from its official website if there is one. After installing it easily with a few clicks, we will have the typical list of hard drives installed on our computer, in addition to portable storage devices. We only have to select one of them and click on " Scan ". The program will list all the files that it finds, whether or not they are deleted, and also divided into their respective folders if it detects them.

It will be as easy as selecting the ones you want and clicking on “ Recover ”.

Remo recover (recommended to recover data from portable hard drive and USB)

Remo Recover is a payment program that will give us great possibilities to recover deleted files from a hard disk. We did the review ourselves a few months ago and we were very satisfied with the results obtained, especially in the recovery of files from USB flash drives and portable drives. With it we managed to recover amazing amounts of files that had been deleted a long time ago. And where we got better results is in the recovery of photos, videos and music.

The problem for many users is that this software is paid, despite having a free version, it will only serve to scan our disk for files, in no case can we recover them.

Since we have a complete review about it and we tried all its options, we recommend visiting it to know it in depth. That is why we will not see its operation here, although the features it has are:

Data recovery from SD cards, portable hard drives and USB flash drives Recovery from defective partitions Recover files from Android devices Especially recover multimedia files like photo, video and music.

For now these are the best options that we have seen and that really work. As time goes by, we will update this article with new programs or others that we discover to be useful.

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Do you know of any programs other than these that are useful for recovering data from a hard drive?