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Lost or deleted files or data? You need our Top 5 free file recovery tools.
Whether it’s due to a virus, hardware failure, or just good old human error, it’s all too easy to lose vital files. That critical report you’ve got to deliver tomorrow; the huge end of year paper; your massive music collection; or those precious family photos… nightmare! But don’t worry, help is at hand! When a file is deleted, it isn’t actually erased immediately. Instead, the space it occupies is marked as available to be overwritten, which means it can (in most cases) be restored using recovery software. Phew!
So, without further ado, here’s our list of the five best free data recovery software titles – that might just save the day. And don’t forget, you can download them all now, here on FileHippo.
Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery
Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery Home is a powerful application, with some really cool features, such as the built-in preview function that enables you to view recovered files, and the ability to save recovered files to an FTP server (not Secure FTP though). It’s also relatively ‘lightweight’ and so it doesn't sap loads of processing power when scanning your system. We love its simplicity, too. The user interface offers a simple menu with two options: What To Recover and Where To Recover from. You first select the drive where you want to recover data, then choose from two levels of scanning: Quick Scan and Deep Scan. Quick Scan is usually enough to do the trick for recovering most lost data. If the app can’t locate the data, though, it automatically switches to Deep Scan. Very smart! As you’d expect, Stellar Phoenix will find MS Office files, photos, videos, and all other types of multimedia files.