File recovery is a process of retrieving your lost files back, be it using software or services. File recovery tools can be used to deal with various data loss situations such as logical hard drive corruption, accidental data deletion or formatting of hard drive volumes, USB or flash drive formatting and more. These free file recovery tools are available across all the popular platforms including Windows, Mac and Linux. We are going to discuss some of the most popular free recovery tools available for Windows 8 as well as its predecessors. You may find differences in terms of their capability and performance but most of them would be capable to detect and recover your important lost or deleted files. We’ll list recovery tools based on their performance scale (0 to 10).

Recuva – 7.2 out of 10

Rucuva is a popular recovery tool from Piriform that offers very easy and do it yourself interface to recover apparently lost, deleted or accidentally formatted files from range of storage medias. This tool delivers efficient scanning mechanism to memory cards or flash drive which becomes unresponsive or corrupt due to user error or logical corruption.

Recuva offers wizard based recovery steps to make the overall recovery process not only simpler but time efficient too. You can also find files you’re looking for in just a matter of time using the find option of this tool.

Test Disk Data Recovery 7.6 out of 10

TestDisk is an open source application and offers verity of techniques to resurrect corrupt or lost data and partitions. You can have or get access to unbootable PC using bootable disc and would able to locate all the existing partitions so you can restore your files with easy. TestDisk would also help you fix or repair corrupt partition table or rebuild boot sector, important to recover data from logically corrupt or inaccessible hard drive partitions. This tool is available across all the major platforms such as Windows, Mac and Linux.

Pandora Recovery  7.9 out of 10

Pandora recovery is yet another useful utility that brings back different type of file types from NTFS or FAT formatted volumes. This tool can handle all the popular internal as well as external storage media with almost any type of logical corruption or data deletion. Pandora recovery takes full control of your problem storage media and scans it efficiently. Once scanning is completed, you can successfully go through the list of scanned files and save them to your desired destination.  

Lazesoft Windows Data Recovery Free – 8.2 out of 10

Lazesoft provides stunning scan engine to get back your data from corrupt, reformatted or inaccessible hard drive partitions. The good side is, it provides better security to the delete content and ensure that its content isn’t altered and easily accessible as before.

This tool supports all the popularly Windows OS including the latest Windows 8/8.1, both 32-bit and 64-bit. It’s available in 3 popular editions based on your requirement: Home License, Home License (Advanced) and Business license. Where Business license can be freely used for all the commercial uses including academic as well as government bodies.

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Free – 9.2 out of 10 (Winner)

EaseUS Data recovery wizard free is among the most popular data recovery tools that you need to address almost any type of critical data loss circumstances. It provides powerful methods to efficiently scan the problem storage media in shortest possible time. Do-it-yourself based data recovery wizard to recover your lost files back in fractions of seconds. This tool is completely adaptable to even basic users and requires 3 simple steps to follow: select drive, start scanning and save data to your desired place.

Featured photo credit: EaseUS Data Recovery wizard via easeus.com