Piriform’s Recuva finds and recovers files that were deleted from your computer’s hard drive, digital camera memory cards and MP3 players.
Description: Piriform makes some great software (including ccleaner) and I have used it on many computers. I’ve never had anything from Piriform crash, freeze, or act unreliably. Recuva has an interface that is simple to use. All you have to do is use the wizard that first shows up when you open the program.
Compatibility: Windows 98, ME, NT4, 2000, XP and XP 64, 2003, Vista 32 and 64
Necessary Info: Here’s how you use it:
- Download and install Recuva on your computer.
- Open the program and at the first screen click “Next”.
- Choose the type of files you want to recover and click “Next”.
- Choose where you want to look for the missing files and click “Next”.
- Click “Next”. It will now start scanning in 2 stages.
- When it has completed the scan, you will be presented with the files that can be recovered.
- Click in the check-box of the files that you want to recover and click “Recover”.
- It will now ask you where you want to recover the file to.You should use another drive to recover the files to because if you write them to the same drive, you could rewrite over some of the files that you want to recover.
- Choose your location and click “Ok”. Recuva will now restore your files to the location that you specified.
To go backwards just a bit… Once you have the list of files, you can sort the files by name, path (the file’s original location), when it was last modified, the file’s size or it’s state (how likely it is to be fully recovered). This last one, the file’s state, is extremely important. You can easily see how likely you are to get your file back. Recuva has 4 “State” listings, Unrecoverable, Very Poor, Poor, and Excellent. If you only want to see the files with an excellent chance of recovey, click on “State” and scroll towards the top.
Here are some of Recuva’s features as listed on filehippo.com.
- Easy to use filter for results based on file name/type
- Simple Windows like interface with List and Tree view
- Can be run from a USB thumb drive
- Restores all types of files, office documents, images, video, music, email, anything.
- Supports FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, NTFS5 , NTFS + EFS file systems
- Restores files from removable media (SmartMedia, Secure Digital, MemoryStick, Digital cameras, Floppy disks, Jaz Disks, Sony Memory Sticks, Compact Flash cards, Smart Media Cards, Secure Digital Cards, etc.)
- Restores files from external ZIP drives , Firewire and USB Hard drives
- It’s fast, tiny and takes seconds to run!
PROs: It recovers your deleted files, is easy to use and does it for free.
CONs: None in my experience.
Rating: 
Recuva: Download free software HERE.
Thanks,
Tim
December 22nd, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Hello Tim,
I stop by to wish you a Merry Christmas with your family and friends!
Greetings,
Thismakesmyday
December 24th, 2008 at 11:39 am
There is a good tool for recovet data-zip repair,yet as is known utility is free,it recovers information from damaged zip files and minimizes data loss during the zip recovery process,use of multiple algorithms allows the program to minimize data loss during zip recovery, therefore the user sees as much as possible about the files being recovered,will have to enter the password when prompted and the application will make a fix zip file attempt using the specified password,program supports Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows XP SP2, Windows 2003 and Windows Vista,solve problem with fix the Cannot open file: it does not appear to be a valid archive in ZIP archive error.
January 15th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Hi Tim,
Can you tell something about the velocity of this application? In the past I tried several similar programs but some were so slow that it took two entire days to recover files. Maybe this is normal for this kind of applications.
Thanks for posting your review!
Have a great evening!
February 22nd, 2010 at 6:31 pm
Having a good file recovery program is important if you do important work on your computer. You don’t want to accidentally delete something and never be able to recover it.