Best Recuva Free Alternative – File Recovery Software Free Download
Recuva is data recovery software that can help you recover data you may have accidentally deleted, lost through a computer crash, or a virus attack. It can enable you to recover data from your windows PC internal hard drives and equally external hard drives along with other devices such as USB keys, your memory cards, and even your mp3 player. Also, you can recover files from your newly formatted drives and equally from damaged drives with these tools.
Using Recuva, you can recover various types of files such as video files, audio files, documents, images, and even other rare file extensions which cannot be detected by some other apps. Recuva is also present on android phones hence you can equally recover any lost data from your phone using Recuva.
Recuva also has the security deletion feature which can permit you to delete information in a secured manner to maintain your privacy.
To effectively recover your data, you should install Recuva or other data recovery software on a drive different from that from which you want to recover the data to increase your chances of success in the process.
How to use Recuva to Recover Files
To use Recuva, you will have to download and install it on your Windows PC. Mac users will have to find an alternative to Recuva for Mac since this software is not present for Mac. To proceed with installing Recuva,
1. Go to Recuva’s Website and download the setup file from there. When the download is completed, double-click on the installer. You will be given a choice between installing CCleaner alongside Recuva or proceeding with the installation of Recuva without installing CCleaner. Choose what is good for you.
2. Click on the Install button to begin with the termination of the installation process.
3. Once the installation is completed, click on the icon to launch Recuva. Then proceed by clicking Next. If you are specific about the type of file you want to recover from your drive or storage device, select that file type. In case you don’t know the specific file type or you want to recover everything that was present in a particular location, you can select All files as an option then you click on Next.
4. Now, you have to select the drive from which the files were lost or deleted. You can choose between recovering from your whole computer, recycle bin, in My Documents, and equally from a specific location such as a particular drive on the computer or an external drive then click on Next.
5. Once you arrive at this step, you can click on Start without ticking the deep scan box in order to perform a quick scan. If the quick scan does not yield the results you want, you can tick the deep scan box and click again on start to begin a more in-depth search.
6. Once Recuva finds the files, you can recover them by selecting them and clicking on Recover.
7. Next you will have to choose the location to which you will want to recover your files. It is advisable to recover your files in a location different from when they were initially to increase your chances of recovery.
8. Finally Click on Ok to approve the selected location and Ok again to complete the recovery.
- Pros of Recuva
- Some of the advantages of Recuva over its competition are;
- Recuva filters its search results into categories easing the recovery of files.
- The free version can enable you do unlimited number of data recovery processes.
- It is easy to use with a good user interface.
- The deletions done with Recuva are much more secured.
- Cons of Recuva
- Recuva is only present in the Windows version; it excludes Mac users from its services.
- Recuva is not present on iPhone.
- Sometimes its recoveries are not the best. Some other paid services handle recovery processes better than Recuva.
- When you use the free version, you are restricted from official support.
- During the installation, you may unintentionally install an app you may not need.
- It was lastly updated in the year 2016 hence it may have unhandled bugs.
Best Recuva Free Alternative – iBeesoft Free Data Recovery
Given some of the Cons of using Recuva, people usually tend to use alternative recovery software for their data recovery processes. The best alternative for Recuva is iBeesoft Free Data Recovery. It is safe software and will not download any additional software during its installation process. It can equally help you in your data recovery processes no matter how the data was lost ranging from a permanent unintentional deletion to a formatted drive. Very compatible with all the different file types, it can recover anything from any drive internal or external, and equally from drives with any file system such as Fat32, exFAT among other file systems even when it is RAW. The free data recovery software for Windows 11, 10, 8, 7, XP can also recover data from a hidden, deleted, lost, or even corrupted partition.
Very effective in action, you are always guaranteed of recovering your files if you follow the right procedure for recovering your data. iBeesoft Data Recovery is present on both Windows and equally available on Mac, unlike Recuva which is only present on Windows. Additionally, iBeesoft Data Recovery is present on iPhone and android making no system to be left out.
How to use the Recuva alternative for Windows to recover files
In order use Recuva’s free alternative, iBeesoft Free Data Recovery, you need to download and install the software. The free version is available for you to recover deleted and lost files up to 2GB for totally free.
1. Once you have installed the software, it will automatically launch on its own. If it does not launch, you will have to manually launch it by clicking on the icon on the desktop to launch the app.
2. Once the app opens, select the location from which you want to recover the files. It is divided into three parts, the internal drives which come first, the external drive which come second and more specific locations such as recycle bin and desktop. Navigate through these locations and find the location from which you want to recover files.
3. If you don’t know the exact folder from which you want to recover the files, you can scan the entire drive by clicking on the scan button next to the drive which shows up when the mouse pointer is placed on it.
4. After choosing a scanning location, you can click on scan to start the scanning process. The process duration will depend on the number of files present in the location and their sizes. The more numerous and heavier the files, the more the scanning time.
5. During the scan, you can put the scanning process on pause to go through found files or you can stop it once you find your files even before scanning the entire drive to save time.
6. Once you find your files, you can recover them by clicking on the check box next to the file or folder name and finally click on Recover to recover the files.
This will enable you to complete your scanning process effectively and hence recover your files with ease. iBeesoft Free Data Recovery is a good alternative for Recuva since it is very effective at data recovery, very easy to use making it user friendly and regularly updated giving its users the best possible experience.