Recuva

About Recuva

Recuva is the tool to reach for in the first minute after a file goes missing, precisely because it is small and it does one thing. A wizard asks what type of file is missing and where it was, scans the volume, and returns a list with a coloured indicator against each result showing whether the underlying data is still intact, partially overwritten or gone. That honesty about the odds is more useful than a longer feature list.

The quick scan reads the file system records, which is enough when a file was deleted normally and nothing much has happened since. The deep scan walks the raw sectors looking for file signatures and takes far longer, but it is the pass that finds data after a format or on a volume whose file table is damaged. Both run read only against the source.

It works on more than the system drive. Memory cards, USB sticks, external drives and music players all scan the same way, which covers the most common real disaster, a camera card cleared before the shoot was copied off. Recovering photos and video from a card is the single most frequent use it gets.

The Professional additions are virtual drive support and automatic updates, and the portable build is worth keeping on a USB stick. Running an installer onto the drive holding the missing file is exactly the wrong move, and the portable version avoids it. Secure overwrite is included for the opposite job, making sure a deleted file cannot be recovered by anyone else.

What is included in this build

• Quick scan of file system records plus a deep signature scan of raw sectors
• Recovery confidence indicator against every result before anything is written
• Works on internal drives, memory cards, USB sticks and external media
• Preview of recoverable images and documents inside the result list
• Filtering by file type, name pattern and folder path
• Secure overwrite for making a deleted file genuinely unrecoverable
• Portable build that runs from a USB stick without installing to the affected drive
• Virtual hard disk support in the Professional edition

Changed in version 1.55.133

• Additional file signatures in the deep scan set
• Faster scanning on large capacity external drives
• Improved preview support for newer camera raw formats
• Result filtering made faster on very large scan results
• Portable build refreshed alongside the installer

Installation walkthrough

These steps assume a clean machine. If a previous release of the same application is present, deal with that first, since an overlapping install is the most common cause of a setup that stops halfway.

1. Stop writing to the affected drive immediately. Every write reduces what can be recovered.
2. Use the portable build from a USB stick if the missing file was on the system drive.
3. Otherwise extract the archive and run the installer on a different volume.
4. Run the quick scan first, then the deep scan only if the file does not appear.
5. Recover to a different physical drive than the one being scanned.

System requirements and file details

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