Photorec

Overview

PhotoRec is a free and open-source data recovery utility designed to recover lost files — including photos, videos, documents, and archives — from hard drives, memory cards, USB flash drives, and other storage devices. It works by ignoring the filesystem and directly scanning underlying data, making it highly effective even when filesystems are severely corrupted. PhotoRec supports a wide range of file formats and platforms (Windows, macOS, Linux), and is often used together with TestDisk for partition and boot sector recovery.

Key features

• Data recovery
• Open source
• File retrieval
• Hard drives
• Memory cards
• USB sticks
• Cross platform
• Wide format support
• Filesystem resilient
• Command line and UI
• Portable
• Free software
• Digital forensics