Restore Deleted Files From Fixed & Removable Disk WIth Recuva

Recuva is a small-size freeware for Windows that can recover your lost data from both fixed and removable disks. The developer even claims that the data still can be recovered even if they've been deleted by bugs, crashes and viruses.

The good things

• The user interface design is minimalist and elegant, producing a simplicity but professional sense. Easy to use.
• The recovery ran relatively fast when I tested it. On my 7.81GB partition it could bring back around 51.712 files within approximately 7.9 minutes. It ran well, too, on a removable disk of mine.
• You are given information about the state of each file, accompanied with some other information such as the creation and last modification time. This info is useful to figure out whether a file is fully or partially recoverable.

Other features you might want to know

• You can optionally choose to display files found in hidden system folders, recover also the folder structures of the deleted, and display zero byte files.
• The information given include the header info, which I think only suitable for the advanced users to have more specific info on the files.

What I wish from this software
# File-type-based filter

The most feature I want it to be added is the capability of files filtering so the users can freely decide what kind of file types to be recovered. Without the presence of a filter, the user is forced to do a complete file recovery, which I'm sure often give more than what is needed.

Imagine you have to scan a 10GB partition resulting in thousand restored files, while actually you only need a few tens of them. Somewhat inefficient use, isn't it?

Fortunately, there is a little help provided by the search box. With it you can easily find and show only the specific files of your target. Though it cannot solve the inefficient scanning problem, it can help you a lot in displaying only the files you want to be restored.

# File-condition-based filter

Among the scan result I found some files were marked as unrecoverable, but they were kept displayed. I'm not an expert in this recovery field, so I don't know whether this is useful or not for a recovery specialist. But for a general user who just want to have their files back this may look like somewhat misleading result.

For example, on the test I got around 51.712 files. Actually, the number of the recoverables were less than that.

It would be great, then, if the developer provides a way to sort the files based on their conditions.

All in all...
I recommend you to use it immediately whenever you lose your important data. This is a very handy tool to be kept all the time. In case you don't know yet, Recuva comes from the same developer who creates the popular CCleaner.

Website : Recuva
Version reviewed: 1.09.194
OS supported: Windows 2000/XP
License: Free for commercial and personal use
Download link: Recuva