Best Data Recovery Software (2026): What Professionals Actually Use. – DiskTuna // Photo Repair & Photo Recovery

Last updated: October 2026 · By Joep, DiskTuna

Search for “best data recovery software” and you’ll find dozens of top-10 lists, most of them written by the companies selling the software (Clever Files and WonderShare for example) or by sites earning a commission on it, in reviews written by so called “experts” (Tech Radar, GuideFlow, DataRecoveryFix and too many to name). I’ve been recovering data professionally for over 25 years, I’ve written data recovery software myself, and I work with around twenty data recovery labs. On this page I’ll tell you which tools we actually use, and more importantly, how I use them. Once you’ve seen the workflow, it becomes obvious why some tools are worth your money and others aren’t.

The short answer

There is no single best data recovery software. Which tool works best depends on the file system, the kind of damage and the file types you’re after. The three tools you’ll find in nearly every professional lab are UFS Explorer, R-Studio and DMDE, and all three let you scan and preview for free, so you can see what they find before paying anything.

If you’ve already run a tool like EaseUS, Recuva or Stellar and its preview shows your files correctly at full size, you don’t need to switch. If it doesn’t, don’t conclude your files are gone: try one of the tools below first. And if the drive clicks, disconnects, reads very slowly or doesn’t show its correct size, stop. No software will help with that, and every scan makes it worse.

The tools at a glance

Tool	Runs on	Free scan & preview	Where it shines
UFS Explorer	Windows, macOS, Linux	Yes	Widest file system support; reliable reconstruction of damaged file systems
R-Studio	Windows, macOS, Linux	Yes	Strong reconstruction and RAID support; a long-time lab workhorse
DMDE	Windows, macOS, Linux, DOS	Yes, and it recovers up to 4,000 files per folder for free	Lost partitions, damaged file systems; best value by far
ReclaiMe	Windows	Yes	Strong reconstruction behind a simple interface
File Scavenger	Windows	Yes	Easy to use in standard cases; wide file system support
Disk Drill	Windows, macOS	Yes	Fragmented video from GoPros, drones and other cameras

UFS Explorer

If I could keep only one tool, this would be it. UFS Explorer supports more file systems than anything else on the market, and when a file system is badly damaged, it’s usually the one that puts the folder tree back together correctly. My only complaint is the number of editions: it isn’t always obvious which one you need, so check that before you buy. Labs typically run UFS Explorer Professional Recovery, but the standard edition shares most of the same recovery engine, and for an ordinary deleted-files or formatted-drive case it gets you most of the way.

File systems: NTFS, FAT/FAT32, exFAT, ReFS, APFS, HFS+, Ext2/3/4, XFS, Btrfs, F2FS, JFS, ReiserFS, UFS/UFS2, ZFS, VMFS

R-Studio

R-Studio has been on lab benches for as long as I can remember. Its reconstruction is excellent and its RAID support is among the best. The price for all that capability is an interface that feels crowded until you’ve spent some time with it. As with UFS Explorer, labs tend to use the Technician edition, but the engine underneath is largely shared with the cheaper editions.

File systems: NTFS, FAT/FAT32, exFAT, ReFS, APFS, HFS/HFS+, Ext2/3/4, XFS, UFS1/UFS2

DMDE

DMDE is the best value in data recovery, and it isn’t close. Even the cheapest paid edition has features I’d normally expect only in professional tools, and the free edition recovers up to 4,000 files from a folder at a time, as often as you like. It looks intimidating at first. It also contains tools that can write to the drive, a partition manager and a disk editor, so stick to the recovery functions unless you know exactly what you’re doing.

File systems: NTFS, FAT/FAT32, exFAT, ReFS, APFS, HFS+, Ext2/3/4, Btrfs

ReclaiMe, File Scavenger and Disk Drill

ReclaiMe puts a strong reconstruction engine behind a clean, simple interface, and its developers have a history of working with technicians on difficult cases. It runs on Windows only, so to recover a Mac drive you connect it to a Windows PC. (NTFS, FAT/FAT32, exFAT, ReFS, APFS, HFS/HFS+, Ext2/3/4, XFS, Btrfs, UFS)

File Scavenger is rarely mentioned, but it’s made by people who do recoveries themselves, and you can tell. Windows only, a dated interface, and no APFS support, so it covers older Macs (HFS+) but not current ones. (NTFS, FAT/FAT32, exFAT, ReFS, HFS+/HFSX, Ext3/4, XFS, Btrfs, UFS1/UFS2, ZFS, VMFS)

Disk Drill is the one I’d try for fragmented camera video, where generic tools tend to produce files that won’t play. Outside that niche it’s not what labs reach for, and some users find its interface confusing, but it’s still a very complete tool that ticks most of the boxes I’ll discuss later (What to look for..) . (NTFS, FAT/FAT32, exFAT, ReFS, APFS, HFS+, Ext3/4)

How I recover data with recovery software: my workflow

Feature lists only tell you so much. The easiest way to understand what makes a recovery tool good is to watch one being used. This is the workflow I follow on almost every logical recovery. For each step I’ll tell you what I do, why, and what it means if you’re doing this at home.

Connect the drive, protected. I connect the drive behind a DeepSpar USB Stabilizer, which shields a weak drive from the operating system and from software hammering it with requests, and lets me control its power. Only then do I power it on.At home: you won’t have one, and that’s exactly why the next two steps matter so much. Connect the drive directly to a PC if you can, rather than through a cheap USB hub or adapter. What you can do is stop Windows from mounting the drive the moment you connect it; see the box below.
Intermezzo: stop Windows from mounting the drive

As soon as you connect a drive, Windows mounts it, gives it a drive letter and starts reading and sometimes writing: it may replay the NTFS journal, update the System Volume Information folder, send TRIM commands to an SSD, or pop up “You need to format the disk”. On a damaged drive, none of that helps. Recovery tools read the physical disk directly and don’t need a drive letter, so it’s safer to keep Windows away from it. Open a Command Prompt as administrator and run:
- mountvol /n turns off automatic mounting of new volumes.
- mountvol /r removes Windows’ memory of volumes that are no longer connected. Without this, Windows may still mount a drive it has seen before.
Then connect the drive and check in Disk Management that it appears without a drive letter. When you’re done with the recovery, turn automatic mounting back on with mountvol /e, or new drives won’t show up in Explorer.

This works for internal and external hard drives and SSDs. Memory cards and USB sticks may still be mounted, so check Disk Management.
Check SMART. Before anything reads the whole drive, I want to know whether it can survive that. SMART attributes such as reallocated and pending sectors tell me if the drive is degrading. The tool needs to be able to show SMART data.At home: if SMART shows reallocated, pending or uncorrectable sectors, or the tool reports the drive as failing, stop here. A long scan on a failing drive can be the last thing it ever does.
Check that the drive returns real data. I open the drive in the tool’s sector (hex) view and read a few areas: the start of the drive, the partition, a few places further in. I’m checking that reads are fast and error-free, and that what comes back looks like data. The tool needs a sector or hex view.At home: you don’t need to understand hex to do this. A mix of random-looking values is good. Reads that hang or throw errors mean the drive is failing: stop. Nothing but zeros on an SSD usually means TRIM has already wiped the data, and no software can bring it back.
If the partition is still there, quick scan it first. A quick scan reads the existing file system and usually finds recently deleted files with their names and folders intact, in minutes. The tool needs separate quick and deep scan modes.At home: resist the urge to start with the “deep scan”. For a few deleted files, a deep scan takes hours, strains the drive, and buries your files among thousands of nameless results.
If the partition is gone, search for it. After an accidental delete or a partition tool gone wrong, the file system is often still intact; only the pointer to it is missing. A quick partition search finds it, and then I quick scan the partition it found. The tool needs partition recovery.
If there’s nothing clearly defined, do a full scan for file system remnants. When the file system is badly damaged, I let the tool scan the whole drive for everything left of it: directory entries, file records, fragments of metadata. Good tools rebuild the folder tree from those remnants without depending on the boot sector or any other single structure. The tool needs real reconstruction, not just a raw scan.
Compare the candidates. A full scan often turns up more than one possible file system, for example the current one and an older one from before a reformat. DMDE shows every candidate it found. I look at the folder structure of each, and where each starts on the disk, to pick the one that’s actually yours. The tool needs to show the candidates rather than silently picking one.
Preview about 20 large photos. Before recovering anything, I open around 20 larger JPEGs at full size. If I’m recovering a formatted drive, I pick files that existed at the time of the format, not files deleted earlier. If those open correctly, the tool got the file system layout right, cluster size and start offset included, and most other files will be fine too. The tool needs previews generated from the actual file data.At home: watch out for thumbnails. Many tools preview the small thumbnail embedded inside a photo rather than the photo itself. A sharp thumbnail proves nothing about the full file; I regularly see repair cases with a perfect preview and a file that won’t open.
Recover, to a different drive. Only now do I recover the files, always to a different drive. Saving to the drive you’re recovering from can overwrite exactly the files you haven’t recovered yet. A good tool refuses to do that.At home: after a format, consider hiding deleted files and recovering only what was there at the time. Files deleted long before are often partly overwritten and just add clutter. Good tools can separate the two.

Two more features don’t fit neatly into a single step but matter more than you’d think. First, disk imaging: with a weak drive, I image it first and run every step above on the copy, so the drive only has to be read once. A good tool can at least scan an image, and ideally create one. Second, custom file signatures: when the file system is gone entirely and only a raw scan is left, no tool recognizes every file type. Being able to define your own signatures, including end-of-file markers, signatures at a fixed position inside a file, and negative signatures that rule out false matches, can make the difference. DMDE supports all of this, even in its cheapest paid edition.

What to look for in data recovery software

Look back at the workflow and you’ll notice something: every step leaned on a specific feature of the tool. Without a SMART display, I couldn’t have checked whether the drive would survive a scan. Without a hex view, I couldn’t have seen whether it returns real data. Without the list of file system candidates, I’d have had to trust the tool’s guess. In other words, the workflow doubles as a set of requirements. Here they are together, so you can hold any tool against them, including one you’ve already bought:

Shows SMART data (step 2)
Has a sector or hex view (step 3)
Offers a quick scan separate from the deep scan (step 4)
Can search for lost partitions (step 5)
Rebuilds file systems from remnants, not just a raw scan (step 6)
Shows every file system candidate it finds, rather than picking one for you (step 7)
Previews images from the actual file data, not the embedded thumbnail (step 8)
Refuses to save to the drive you’re recovering from (step 9)
Can hide deleted files and show only what was there (step 9)
Can create disk images, or at least scan them
Lets you define custom file signatures for raw scans

A tool doesn’t need every item to handle a simple case. But each one it lacks is a step in the workflow it can’t support, and that’s where you’ll hit its limits once a case gets harder.

Why EaseUS, Recoverit or 4DDiG struggle with harder cases

I’m a photographer as well, so let me put it in camera terms. UFS Explorer, R-Studio and DMDE are high-end system cameras with dials for everything: ISO, shutter speed, aperture, bracketing, built-in ND filters. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard, Wondershare Recoverit and Tenorshare 4DDiG are point-and-shoots, with a few settings tucked away in menus. Recuva is a plastic snapshot camera with fixed aperture and ISO.

In good light, all three take a decent photo, just as all three kinds of tool recover recently deleted files from a healthy drive. In difficult light, the system camera wins twice over. Its better sensor and lens get more out of the scene even on full auto. And in experienced hands, its dials make shots possible that the others can’t take at all. Step 7 of my workflow is a good example: a consumer tool silently picks one file system candidate for you, and if it picks the wrong one, you never learn the others were there.

Having written undelete tools for FAT and NTFS myself, I know how tempting the shortcuts are. The easy way to build a recovery tool is to trust the boot sector and the obvious structures, and fall back to a raw scan as soon as something doesn’t add up. That works on clean cases. I’ve seen memory cards where one deliberately damaged boot sector was enough to stop a well-known paid tool from finding anything at all.

Professional tools also handle storage that consumer tools barely touch: NAS and DAS devices, hardware and software RAID, LVM, Windows Storage Spaces, BitLocker and encrypted APFS volumes, and file systems like XFS, Btrfs and ZFS. They work with disk images made by hardware imagers such as DeepSpar Disk Imager or PC-3000, including the map of unreadable sectors, so they know which data is missing and which is genuinely empty. And they’re updated constantly, partly because labs report every odd case they hit. Some vendors build a custom version for a single difficult case, and that fix ends up in the next public release. What you won’t find on their websites are promises like “recovers 1000+ file types” or “99% success rate”.

What does data recovery software cost, really?

Comparing prices is harder than it looks, because the license models differ so much. Some tools are sold as monthly or yearly subscriptions that renew automatically; if you need the tool for one recovery, cancel the renewal the moment you’ve paid. Others sell a perpetual license, meaning you keep the version you bought forever, usually with a year of updates, which is all you need for a one-off job. Cheaper editions may leave out file systems, RAID or network drives you need, and some licenses only work on a single PC.

The headline price is rarely the real price. A low monthly fee that keeps renewing can cost more than a one-time license. Work out what you’d pay in total for what you actually need, which for most people is a single recovery. And remember the most important thing: every tool on this page lets you scan and preview for free. You’re only paying for the ability to save files, so if the free preview doesn’t show your files, a license won’t change that.

Why even the best tools sometimes fail

When the file system is gone and a raw scan is the only option left, the differences between tools grow even bigger. Every file type is a small structure of its own, and a good carver understands that structure. A simple one only recognizes where a file starts and assumes it ends where the next one begins.

A case from my own work: a memory card whose file system was completely gone, the start of the volume overwritten with an FF byte pattern. I needed the Canon CR3 raw files from it. UFS Explorer, ReclaiMe, R-Studio and DMDE all produced corrupt files. The cause turned out to be file size: every one of them recognized only the start of each file and cut it off at the next. Even the best tools have blind spots, which is exactly why professionals keep more than one around.

When no software will help

Software can only recover what the drive can still deliver. If the drive doesn’t show up, or shows the wrong size; if it clicks, disconnects or reads extremely slowly; if you deleted files from an SSD with TRIM enabled; or if the files have been overwritten, then no tool on this page or any other will get them back, and repeated scans on a failing drive can destroy what’s left. In those cases, stop and get advice before buying anything. The r/datarecovery community, which I help moderate, is a good place to ask.

Recovered your files, but they won’t open?

That’s my specialty. Photos and videos that come out of a recovery corrupt, grey, half-loaded or unplayable can often be repaired. [PLACEHOLDER: one or two sentences about DiskTuna’s photo and video repair service, with a link.]

About the author

Joep runs DiskTuna, a photo and video repair and recovery service. He has worked in data recovery for over 20 years, specializing in NAND flash, chip-off recovery, file carving, and JPEG and MP4 repair. He has also written data recovery software himself: DiskPatch, a DOS tool for repairing partition tables and cloning drives; the file recovery tools iRescue NTFS and DiskTuna DFR (undelete for FAT, FAT32 and NTFS); JPEG-Repair; and the freeware JpegDigger. He was also involved in the development of iRecover (DIYDataRecovery.nl). He moderates r/datarecovery.

Disclosure: some links on this page are affiliate links. That doesn’t affect which tools are listed or what I say about them. The recommendations, workflow and examples are my own; I used AI to help write and structure this page.