Recuva recovers files deleted from your Windows computer, Recycle Bin, digital camera card, or MP3 player.

Platform: Windows

Did you have the moments where you deleted something but regretted? Now the good news is that Recuva is a free, powerful, and very comprehensive tool for data and file recovery.

We have introduced another similar tool File Recovery program, but Recuva is more powerful than File Recovery.

Recuva features:

• Undelete files on your computer.
• Recovery from damaged or formatted disks.
• Recover deleted emails.
• Recover deleted iPod music.
• Restore unsaved Word documents.
• Quick-Start Wizard
• Deep Scan
• Securely delete files you want to erase forever
• Portable version
• Full Windows OS support and many 37+ interface languages.

What Recuva cannot do:

• Recuva won't work if Windows has overwritten the area where the file used to be, or sometimes the file is too corrupted to recover.

• Recuva won't recover files you've deleted securely. For example, if you've used our CCleaner software to delete files using the Secure option, they're gone for good.

• Recuva won't securely delete certain very small files that are held in the Master File Table (MFT) and files of zero-byte length.

The following is a demo showing how to recover a deleted file by Recuva.

Recuva provides you with two ways to recover your files: a Wizard mode, and an Advanced mode. Below shows how to use recovery wizard within Recuva to recover a deleted image file.

Step 1: Delete the image file 001.JPG from thumb drive.

Step 2: Open Recuva and the wizard will automatically start.

Select what type of file you want to recover. We select the last one - Other. You can also select the first option - Pictures.

Step 3: Select the location of the file.

We know the deleted file is on F drive so we selected the last item (In a specific location) and click Browse button. After done, click Next button, Recuva is ready to search for the folder you selected. Review the next screen which lets you confirm everything. Then click Next.

Step 4: Display search result.

Recuva searches the dedicated folder. After finishing search, it displays the result in a grid view. See below.

Find the file you want to recover and check its values in all the columns. If you see the file's State is excellent, that means the file is recoverable. Right click on the file and select Recover Highlighted in the pop-up menu.

Step 5: Saving the file

In this step, Recuva prompts you for a location to save the file. It's a good idea to save the recovered file to a different drive. Recuva will remind you if you try to save on the same drive.

Overwrite a deleted file

The best feature that I like about Recuva is the Secure Overwrite Highlighted. To prevent anyone to recover a deleted file, you can overwrite it.

To further make it hard to recover the deleted file, you can define (in the Options area) how many passes the overwrite should take - 1, 3, 7, or 35 passes.

There are quite a lot of great features that I haven't covered in this simple review. Recuva is a freeware, so feel great to download and try it out yourself. Visit Recuva download page.