5 Best Alternatives to PhotoRec

Disk Drill comes with a user-friendly interface and supports many types of files, file systems, and storage devices. It's also optimal for dealing with BitLocker encrypted volumes, can take byte-to-byte perfect backups of any storage device, and even recover partial files when chunks of them are lost.

Disk Drill offers a free version you can use to test it by recovering up to 500MBs of data. Apart from that, Disk Drill doesn't come with other significant limitations. If you decide you like it, it offers a range of plans starting from $89, granting you access to both its Windows and Mac versions.

It may seem strange, but somehow even the non-Qt terminal-based version of PhotoRec manages to be more straightforward in its use than R-Studio. A complicated beast with every feature a professional would expect to find in a data recovery solution, R-Studio offers everything PhotoRec does and then some.

It also comes at a price, with R-Studio's regular license costing $79.99 for use on a single PC. And we mean the "single" in this description, for the license is non-transferable and binds the software to the specific computer where you installed it (as in "you can't move the app to another PC").

What's worse, you can't test it under realistic conditions, for the trial version only allows recovery of files up to 256KBs - and most modern files are much larger than that.

Wondershare Recoverit is an easy-to-use data recovery solution that performs well and has interesting extra features. However, many of those features aren't available in its Essential plan, which starts at $59.99.

By moving to its Premium plan instead, at $99.99, you gain access to two of its most valuable features:

• Support for bootable media, which means you can immediately begin recovering data when you need the app without having to install it (or even having an OS in working condition).
• Its corrupted video repair tool, that attempts to "fix" problematic video files.

Recuva is simple, easy, and free. Those are not only the primary but, up to a point, the sole reasons to choose it over most alternatives, including PhotoRec.

Recuva's first and most crucial problem is that, by today's standards, it's an ancient piece of software. It's still useful largely thanks to Microsoft's Windows compatibility with past versions of the OS. With Recuva's last major version released in 2016, it only supports the new Windows 11 "unofficially". So, "officially", any of the alternatives is a better option.

Recuva is leagues ahead of PhotoRec regarding user-friendliness. Recuva earned a respectable 61% usability score during our testing, compared to PhotoRec's abysmal 4%. However, solid results are more critical in data recovery, where PhotoRec managed an adequate 52%, leaving Recuva in its dust at 31%.

Data Rescue for Windows hides a capable and robust recovery engine behind a very straightforward interface. And yet, it only scored a 30% in usability during our testing. It's better than PhotoRec's definition of the low end, at 4%, but re-imagining the app's interface wouldn't hurt.

Still, you might decide to erase Data Rescue from your memory. Then, run to PhotoRec, or any other solution. Even the priciest of those alternatives may look more enticing when you realize that Data Rescue for Windows doesn't offer a version you can purchase and use at your leisure or a subscription. Instead, you have to pay for each and every file you wish to recover. And the app's trial version only allows you to scan and preview a device for lost data.