List of data recovery software. In computing, data recovery is a process of retrieving deleted, inaccessible, lost, corrupted, damaged, or formatted data from secondary storage, removable media or files, when the data stored in them cannot be accessed in a usual way. The data is most often salvaged from storage media such as internal or external hard disk drives (HDDs), solid-state drives (SSDs), USB flash drives, magnetic tapes, CDs, DVDs, RAID subsystems, and other electronic devices. Recovery may be required due to physical damage to the storage devices or logical damage to the file system that prevents it from being mounted by the host operating system (OS).
Logical failures occur when the hard drive devices are functional but the user or automated-OS cannot retrieve or access date stored in it. It can occur due to corrupt engineering chip, lost partitions, deleted data, firmware failure, failed formatting/re-installation.
Data recovery can be a very simple or technical challenge. This is why there are specific software companies specialized in this field.
Bootable
See also: List of live CDs § Rescue and repair
Data recovery cannot always be done on a running system. As a result, a boot disk, live CD, live USB, or any other type of live distro contains a minimal operating system.
- BartPE: a lightweight variant of Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 32-bit operating systems, similar to a Windows Preinstallation Environment, which can be run from a live CD or live USB drive. Discontinued.
- Finnix: a Debian-based Live CD with a focus on being small and fast, useful for computer and data rescue
- Disk Drill Basic: capable of creating bootable Mac OS X USB drives for data recovery
- Knoppix: contains utilities for data recovery under Linux
- SpinRite: a FreeDOS-based data recovery tool for hard disks and magnetic storage devices
- SystemRescueCD: an Arch Linux based live CD, useful for repairing unbootable computer systems and retrieving data after a system crash
- Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE): A customizable Windows Boot DVD (made by Microsoft and distributed for free). Can be modified to boot to any of the programs listed.
Consistency checkers
- CHKDSK: a consistency checker for DOS and Windows systems
- Disk First Aid: a consistency checker for Mac OS 9
- Disk Utility: a consistency checker for Mac OS X
- fsck: a consistency checker for UNIX
- gparted: a GUI for GNU parted, the GNU partition editor, capable of calling fsck
File recovery
- CDRoller: recovers data from optical disc
- EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard: Windows and Mac file recovery utilities by EaseUS
- Disk Drill Basic: data recovery application for Mac OS X and Windows
- dvdisaster: generates error-correction data for optical discs
- SecurDisc [ru; de] from Nero AG: “Data Reliability” feature generates redundant and checksum data in the remaining space of optical discs.
- GetDataBack: a Windows recovery program
- Hetman Partition Recovery: data drive recovery solution
- IsoBuster: recovers data from optical discs, USB sticks, flash drives and hard drives
- Mac Data Recovery Guru: Mac OS X data recovery program which works on USB sticks, optical media, and hard drives
- MiniTool Partition Wizard: for Windows 7 and later; includes data recovery
- Norton Utilities: a suite of utilities that has a file recovery component
- PhotoRec: advanced multi-platform program with text-based user interface used to recover files
- Recover My Files: proprietary software for Windows 2000 and later—FAT, NTFS and HFS
- Recovery Toolbox: freeware and shareware tools plus online services for various Windows 2000 and later programs
- Recuva: proprietary software for Windows 2000 and later—FAT and NTFS
- Stellar Data Recovery for Mac: data recovery utility for Mac OS
- Stellar Data Recovery for Windows: data recovery utility for Windows
- Stellar Photo Recovery: photo recovery utility for Mac OS and Windows
- TestDisk: free, open source, multi-platform. recover files and lost partitions
- TuneUp Utilities: a suite of utilities that has a file recovery component for Windows XP and later
- Windows File Recovery: a command-line utility from Microsoft to recover deleted files for Windows 10 version 2004 and later
Forensics
- Foremost: an open-source command-line file recovery program, originally developed by the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations and NPS Center for Information Systems Security Studies and Research
- Forensic Toolkit: by AccessData, used by law enforcement
- Open Computer Forensics Architecture: An open-source program for Linux
- The Coroner’s Toolkit: a suite of utilities for assisting in forensic analysis of a UNIX system after a break-in
- The Sleuth Kit: also known as TSK, a suite of forensic analysis tools developed by Brian Carrier for UNIX, Linux and Windows systems. TSK includes the Autopsy forensic browser.
Imaging tools
- Clonezilla: a free disk cloning, disk imaging, data recovery, and deployment boot disk
- dd: common byte-to-byte cloning tool found on Unix-like systems
- ddrescue: an open-source tool similar to dd but with the ability to skip over and subsequently retry bad blocks on failing storage devices
- Team Win Recovery Project: a free and open-source recovery system for Android devices
