If you want a free tool to get your files or images back, you can learn about it in this PhotoRec recovery review. The flexibility and ease of use has helped this open-source recovery tool gain popularity since 2008.
PhotoRec is a simple tool which you can use to retrieve files, images, videos, documents, etc. from hard disks and CR-ROMs.
The software has a powerful and textual interface to walk you through the entire process helping you recover all the data that you need.
It is distributed under the General Public License which is a free license. Meaning, with this software license, you get the freedom to run, share, study, and modify the tool.
With the PhotoRec recovery tool, you don’t have to reprehend for any action that you take.
This tool comes along with the TestDisk software which is another tool to recover data from lost partitions and non-bootable disks.
However, this review consists of the features and pricing about PhotoRec only. In case you need to recover data from a partition or fix it, you can use the TestDisk features as well.
When it comes to compatibility, the tool can work with multiple operating systems and makes it accessible to almost everyone.
Let’s dig in it now.
PhotoRec Recovery Review – Learning All About the Open-Source Software
Other than running on Windows 11, this tool is also compatible with Linux, MacOS, MacOS X, multiple ARM-based platforms, etc.
Also, the software is available in 32-bit and 64-bit version and there is a PhotoRec tool for Windows 9x/MSDOS as well.
You can also download and compile the tool with the source code that is available. Run the tool as Live CD or DVD if you are not able to recover your OS.
Understanding the Features of the Software for Further Clarification
PhotoRec recovery tool has a huge selection of file formats. You can recover formats including JPG, PNG, etc. that are the most common image formats.
In Microsoft Office, you can recover OpenOffice formats, TXT, & PDFs formats. There is a record of over 440 file types that can be recovered using this tool.
This means that the data can be kept intact and recovered using the PhotoRec software.
There is one thing that you should keep in mind with the PhotoRec tool, there is no warranty.
The PhotoRec recovery review is a donationware tool and thus, there are no official support services for it.
But, you can raise a request for support or any other additional feature at the forums that are available.
Moreover, there is a GUI option with this PhotoRec tool. For the Windows version, this is qphotorec.exe.
It works much like the way CLI tool works along with the options that are displayed in a single window. There are no step-by-step series of commands that you need to follow.
Tests Done With PhotoRec Recovery Tool Are Shown Below
File Deletion: We deleted files from the drive and removed them from the Recycle Bin as well.
Files deleted & Formatted: All the files were removed by using the Quick Format function.
Corrupted Files Recovery: We overwrote the volume header of the drive which consisted of all the files. The drive was not mounted in the File Explorer and showed being unpartitioned.
We checked the tool if it would work in all of these cases or not. As we read above, the partition section can be recovered by the TestDisk tool.
Find More: There are a bunch of more tools from the list of best photo recovery software.
PhotoRec Recovery Review Explaining the Performance of the Tool
This tool passed the tests with flying colours.
We could recover all the deleted files within seconds and even listed them by the file type.
Also, the tool could recover all the files that were deleted 7 formatted using the Quick Format function. The drive was scanned from top to down and we selected a new folder to recover the files.
All the files were easily recovered and among those, a bunch of files were duplicated and each one of them opened without any issue.
Provides Support in Multi-Languages to Every User
PhotoRec recovery tool doesn’t have a dedicated support team but there are various forums.
Because every tool has its problems, you can refer to the support forum that they have. The subforums for this tool are available in German, English, French, etc. you will find all the help you require.
The main website has more languages than these such as Japanese, Italian, Turkish, and Russian.
There is also an online documentation available but it is in English only. You can learn the basic operations with the utility like creating a bootable USB.
Lastly
The PhotoRec recovery review consists of all the information about the software such as how it works, how it performs. It also explained the tool’s plans, and how it is bundled with another recovery tool TestDisk. For partition recovery, this tool can easily be used for every partition that you want to get the data back.
The application itself has a very basic and user-friendly interface which is quite easy to follow. The tool passed all the tests by recovering the data from the formatted drives as well. The data was kept intact and all the files were opening without any issue.
