Recover data from flash drives, there are many flash drive recovery software tools you can use. We have tested the flash drive data recovery tools that are most commonly found online and picked 10 of them to give you the top 10 list. The list is made by studying the tools in the following aspects: the ability to recover files from a USB flash drive, the number of deleted files that can be recovered by the tools, and the steps that are taken to recover files via the tools, hoping to help you to find the most powerful and easy-to-use data recovery tool for a flash drive.
Best Data Recovery for Flash Drives
Data Recovery is the most easy-to-use flash drive recovery tool. Available with both Windows and Mac versions, the tool can recover photos, videos, documents, audio, and all other things you can think of from USB flash drives, SD cards, external hard drives, Windows & Mac computers, etc.
The USB recovery software offers two modes of data recovery: Quick Scan, which can quickly recover recently deleted data from a flash drive; Deep Scan, which takes a longer time to find the deleted data on the flash drive even if the drive has been corrupted or formatted.
And as a foolproof software tool that is designed to help ordinary users to recover data on their own, the tool is extremely easy to use to recover files from a USB drive.
Step 1. Install Data Recovery on your computer. It is compatible with Windows 11/10/8/7/XP/Vista, and macOS 10.14-13.
Step 2. Connect the flash drive with lost data to your computer. Run the tool.
Step 3. Select the file type that you want to recover from the flash drive and click the flash drive. Click Scan. The tool will give a quick scan of the flash drive and show you the recently deleted files. To find more files from the drive, click Deep Scan.
Step 4. Select the deleted the photo, video, audio, or document that you need, and click Recover to get them back.
PhotoRec
Do not be confused by the name PhotoRec. The tool can actually recover not only photos but also other kinds of files, such as ZIP, Office documents, PDF, and HTML, from flash drives, hard disk as well as a memory card. However, compared to tools such as AnyRecover Data Recovery, this flash drive data recovery tool is complicated to use since it requires you to run commands instead of pressing buttons to perform data recovery. The tool runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems.
Wise Data Recovery
Wise Data Recovery supports recovering data from USB flash drives on FAT32, exFAT, and NTFS. However, it only works on the Windows system. After scanning a flash drive, it will show all files that it found by file directory. Each file has a tag of different color in front of it. There are three different colors, indicating that the file is recovered completely, or partially recovered, or failed to be recovered. The files can’t be filtered by file types, which makes it difficult to find the deleted files that you need.
UndeleteMyFiles
This tool is made up of several modules, including File Rescue, Mail Rescue, Media Recover, and more. You can select a flash drive to recover data. Also, it has a Files Wiper that can permanently wipe a deleted file to make it unrecoverable. It shows the file size, date, and directory of the deleted file and allows you to search for the deleted data by file type, location, or size.
Recuva
Recuva lets you select a connected USB drive and choose to recover pictures, music, documents, videos, or any other file type from it. Data recovery from damaged or formatted USB drives is supported. For deleted photos, there is a preview from which you can determine whether this is the file you are looking for. But you cannot preview a document or video. Also, Recuva has a secure overwrite feature that can destroy the deleted files on your flash drive to make them unrecoverable.
PC Inspector File Recovery
This is freeware that can recover data from a flash drive with FAT32 or NTFS file system, which means it doesn’t support data recovery for a USB drive on exFAT. It can recover data from a formatted flash drive on which the boot sector or FAT has been erased. The files can be recovered with the original time and date. Files such as doc, Xls, pdf, jpg, png, gif, and mp3 can all be recovered.
Orion File Recovery Software
This USB flash drive data recovery tool can recover files, music, and photos from both portable drives and computer disks. After the deleted files are found, it allows users to search the deleted files by location, file type, and name. It also has a Drive scrubber, which can permanently delete a file on a flash drive if you are afraid that someone else may undelete your files with one of this data recovery software.
Undelete 360 Recovery
Undelete 360 Recovery can recover data from a flash/thumb drive whether the data are deleted accidentally or lost due to a virus or software problems in the flash drive. After finding the files, the tool will display the files by types(.jpg, .psd, .png, .rar, etc.) or by folders. You can not only view the deleted files but learn about the status of the files – whether the files have been overwritten or are good or bad to be recovered.
Active Undelete Data Recovery
This USB drive data recovery tool is offered in four versions: DEMO, Standard, Professional, and Ultimate. The last three versions are not free to use. With the DEMO version, you can scan out the deleted files from a flash drive but is not able to save them on your computer. It has advanced scripting features, which enable you to create a special file signature to search for recoverable files, but this is not available on the DEMO version.
Prosoft Data Rescue
This flash drive file recovery tool works on Windows 7 or later as well as macOS 10.10 or later. It can recover images, audio, documents, etc. from a flash drive and other external hard drives. However, it doesn’t allow you to scan deleted files by file type, which means you have to scan the whole flash drive even if you only need to get back a single photo. The tool also classifies the files as deleted, good, found, or invalid files. Both Windows and Mac versions are available.
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