Free data recovery software for Windows 11 that scans your hard drive, USB stick or SD card and pulls back photos, documents and videos you thought were gone for good — no jargon, no sign-up.
Goes past the recycle bin to find files the drive has marked as free space but hasn't overwritten yet.
Most everyday deletions turn up in under a minute — no need for a deep scan unless you have to.
Thumbnail previews for images so you're not restoring files blind, plus a health indicator per file.
USB sticks, SD cards, external HDDs and even iPods — plug it in and point the scan at it.
Going the other way — permanently wipe sensitive files so nobody else can recover them either.
A portable build runs straight from a USB stick — handy when it's the host drive you're recovering.
Run the setup file — it takes under 30 seconds and asks for nothing but the install folder.
Choose the drive, folder or device where the file used to live, then start a quick or deep scan.
Tick the files you want back and restore them to a different drive — never the one you scanned.
The scan engine reads raw file signatures, not just the file table — so it can put names back on files even after a format, in most cases.
Tap a card for the full walkthrough — how to download it, how to use it for that situation, and the FAQs people actually ask. Every guide leads back to the same free download.
The current 64-bit build installs cleanly on Windows 11 and runs the identical scan engine as the Windows 10 and 7 releases.
Read the full guideRuns straight from a USB stick with the identical scan engine as the installed version — nothing written to the drive you're recovering.
Read the full guideFocused on scan stability on larger drives and broader raw file-signature support, so more file types survive a format.
Read the full guideUSB drives don't use a recycle bin — a deleted file disappears immediately, but the data usually still sits there until something overwrites it.
Read the full guideCamera and phone SD cards respond well to recovery because photos are usually written to contiguous space.
Read the full guideA deep scan that stalls or never finishes is almost always a drive-health or permissions issue, not a problem with the scan itself.
Read the full guideIf a quick scan comes back empty, it isn't necessarily gone — quick scan only reads the file table.
Read the full guideDisk Drill's free tier caps recovery in the low hundreds of megabytes; RecuvaDownload's free tier doesn't cap how much you recover.
Read the full guideWhat separates free recovery tools: the recovery-size cap, whether raw deep scanning is included, and whether it needs an account.
Read the full guideUnder 6 MB, installs in seconds, and doesn't ask you to create an account first.
v1.55.0 · 5.4 MB · Windows 7–11 & macOS 11+
The core scan-and-restore tool is fully free with no watermarks or restore limits. An optional paid edition exists for automated scans and priority support, but you never need it to recover a file.
Not always — once the space a deleted file occupied gets overwritten by something new, recovery odds drop fast. That's why we recommend scanning as soon as you notice the file is missing, and restoring to a different drive.
Yes. The installer is digitally signed and scanned against major antivirus engines before every release. We link only to the official build on this page.
Often, yes. The deep scan reads raw file signatures rather than relying on the file table, so it can still identify files after a quick format in many cases.
Not directly — this build targets Windows and Mac drives, USB storage and memory cards. Phone-internal storage needs a different approach, covered in the recovery guides above.