Windows alternatives...: recovery

DiskDigger can recover files from any type of media that your computer can read. This includes USB flash drives, memory cards (SD, CompactFlash, Memory Stick, etc), and of course your hard drive. The types of files that it recovers include photos, videos, music, documents, and many other formats.

DiskDigger can even scan reformatted or badly formatted disks (disks to which Windows can’t assign a drive letter), and even disks with bad sectors. It bypasses the Windows file system drivers and scans your disk directly. It has its own built-in support for the following file systems: FAT12 (floppy disks), FAT16 (older memory cards), FAT32 (newer memory cards and hard disks), NTFS (newer hard disks), and exFAT (Microsoft’s new successor to FAT32).

DiskDigger is also very compact and portable. The entire program is a single executable file that you can run from anywhere. There’s nothing to “install,” and the program doesn’t leave any trace of having been run.

You may find DiskDigger useful if…

you deleted one or more photos from a memory card by accident, and want them restored.
you deleted one or more photos from a memory card on purpose, but now want them restored.
you deleted some documents from your USB flash drive, and want to recover them.
you came across an old hard drive of yours (or someone else’s) that’s been reformatted, and would like to see what its previous contents were.
you’ve “securely wiped” your media, and want to make sure that your media has actually been wiped correctly.
you’re just curious about what old deleted files are still present on your memory cards or hard drives.

DiskDigger is also a work in progress. This means that new features will be added very frequently, including support for more file formats, more configuration options, etc., so check back for updates.

DiskDigger - free data recovery made easy | DmitryBrant.com

Deleted an important file or cleared your camera’s photos accidentally ? Then you need a software to recover those files. Most of the softwares that do this are paid ones, since they know how precious your data is. We had posted about RecoverMyFiles (paid) but now we have a free software that can do this for you.

Recuva is a freeware that can help you recover deleted files from your hard drive or memory cards. Even if you emptied the Recycle bin, this software can help you to get back the files.

When a file is deleted, windows does not actually delete the whole file, it only deletes the tag which shows the OS that the file exists. The data will remain on your hard drive till it gets overwritten by new data. If you want to securely delete files, we have did a post on How to securely delete your data.

It is better to have Recuva installed on your system, since if you delete an important file and go online to search for it, temporary data will be written while browsing the internet, which could be written over the deleted data.

Recover Deleted Files Freeware - Recuva | Alfred's Tech Blog