Recuva

Overview

Recuva is the tool to reach for in the first five minutes after deleting something you needed. It is small, it installs in seconds, it can be run without installing at all from a portable build, and for the common case of a file emptied from the recycle bin an hour ago, it finds it and puts it back with no ceremony whatsoever.

The wizard covers the ordinary path. Pick a file type or all files, pick the drive or a specific folder, and it lists what it found with a coloured indicator for how likely each item is to come back intact: green where the underlying data is untouched, amber where part of it has been overwritten, red where recovery will produce a damaged file at best. That honesty about the odds is more useful than a long list with no context.

Deep scan is the second pass, for cases where the file system record is gone entirely rather than merely unlinked. It reads the volume sector by sector looking for file signatures, which takes a great deal longer and recovers content without the original names or folder structure, but it reaches formatted volumes and memory cards that the quick scan reports as empty.

The supporting tools cover the other direction as well. Secure overwrite deletes files properly rather than unlinking them, with several overwrite pass options, and free space wiping removes the traces of everything previously deleted on a volume. It works across internal disks, external drives, memory cards and media player storage, and there is no meaningful learning curve to any of it.

Key Features

• Wizard driven recovery by file type, drive or specific folder
• Condition indicator showing how likely each found file is to recover intact
• Deep scan reading the volume by signature for formatted and damaged volumes
• Recovery from internal disks, external drives, memory cards and attached media storage
• Preview of recoverable images and documents before committing
• Filter and search across scan results by name, path, size and condition
• Secure overwrite deletion with a choice of overwrite pass counts
• Free space wiping to remove traces of previously deleted content
• Portable operation so it can be run without writing to the affected drive
• Small install with no background service left running afterwards

What Changed in This Build

• Deep scan speed improved on large volumes
• Additional file signatures added for current camera and document formats
• Result list handling improved on scans returning hundreds of thousands of entries
• Interface refreshed with clearer condition reporting

System Requirements

Processor	Any x86 or x64 processor
Memory	1 GB minimum, more for very large volume scans
Storage	50 MB plus a separate destination for recovered files
Operating system	Windows 7 through 11
Permissions	Administrator rights for raw volume access

Release Details

Full title	Recuva
Version string	1.55.133
Publisher	Piriform
Category	Utilities
Licence	Full version, no term limit
Platform	Windows 7 through 11, 32 and 64-bit
Interface language	Multilingual, 37 interface languages
Archive size	18.6 MB
Mirrors	4 active, all reporting online
Listed	refreshed 2 weeks ago, checked again 40 minutes ago

Installation Notes

• Do not install onto the drive you are recovering from. Use the portable build from a USB stick if the affected drive is your system disk.
• Recover to a different drive. Writing recovered files back onto the source destroys the very data still waiting to be read.
• Act quickly. Every write to that volume reduces what remains recoverable, and normal background activity counts as writes.

Before You Start

Read the notes above before running setup. Most of the problems people write in about are covered there, and almost all of them come down to an older version of the same software still being installed, a graphics driver that predates the release, or a security suite quarantining part of the package mid install.

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Frequently Asked