No data recovery software is going to recover absolutely everything that was deleted. However, after sifting through more of them than anyone should ever have to I think it’s fair to say that R-Studio will recover more than anything else I’ve ever seen – and in a quicker timeframe. This application is and will recover, the process involved, and what you should actually expect.
R-Studio – My go-to data recovery software.
Let’s get one thing clear right off the bat: no data recovery software recovers everything. If someone tells you they can, they’re ripping you off. I’ve tested more of these than I’d care to count over the years and every one of them has fallen far short of a clean 100%. The one that consistently gets the best results, and gets them faster than the rest is R-Studio. That’s why it’s my go-to choice, and why I consistently recommend it.
If you just want the download, you can find it on the official R-Studio website, don’t get it from some site that has “helpfully” bundled it in an installer for you. Modified installers are a very real thing.
So, what does it actually do?
Well, it recovers deleted files from formatted hard drives, flash drives, memory cards and disks that windows thinks has died. That’s pretty much the core of its functionality. You format a disk accidentally, delete something you shouldn’t have, pull a memory card out during an operation, etc, and R-Studio will look for what’s left on the platter(s).
It will also recover from camera/camcorder, which can be particularly useful when somebody’s deleted the photos from their memory card after taking them!
As a comparison to the main names you will see on the web (Recuva, Disk Drill, Stellar etc.) R-Studio consistently out performs them in my testing. The overall recovery percentage is higher, and the scanning is much quicker, although it isn’t noticeably higher for each specific file as expected.
The pros and cons on the honest:
What it excels at:
Pros
- Simultaneous scanning across many drives-a huge timesaver.
- Recovering from formatted drives or flash storage.
- Available for Windows, Mac, Linux and even Pardus.
- Faster scanning speeds than a lot of its competitors.
- It can recover from the Recycle Bin even when it is emptied.
What’s a bit less impressive:
Cons
- No friendly interface: It’s genuinely difficult to navigate for the beginner and there’s no way to sugarcoat it.
- The fee of roughly $80 for the full version hurts: Ouch.
- Free version: This version scans, it doesn’t recover files. That comes at a cost.
- Some things don’t recover: Large files (like video files) do have a more difficult recovery process than small files like TXT documents.
Does it run on your OS?
The current one runs on the Windows operating systems 10, 8.1, 7, Vista and XP (both 32 & 64 bit), Mac Os, Linux (Ubuntu 18.04, Debian) & Pardus. It won’t run directly on an Android or IPhone, although there is a chance if you connect your device to a Windows machine, R-Studio may well be able to see it.
Same applies for a Mac. Connect the mac drive to a Windows machine running R-Studio and scan it from there.
How do I actually use it?
Open the program and you will get a list of all of the disks that it finds. Right-click the one you would like to work with and select Scan. There are two options in the program which are worth a little time before pressing the giant scan button.
Save to File – turn this on and point it to wherever. This saves the state of the scan so that if the power goes out on your six-hour scan, you do not need to start all over again. Just select drive then click open scan information and select your saved file, and the scan picks up right where it left off.
Detailed vs Simple – I suggest detailed. Simple only does a surface scan of your disk and retrieves 45% of what you can retrieve, this only gets up to 90%, which takes a longer time to scan. Select detailed it’s worth it.
After the scan is complete you will notice two folders which have appeared:
Recognized0 – this will contain your old folder structure for any files that it can restore. If you were trying to find a specific file that lived somewhere, it is likely in this folder. Expand Root and things are going to be organized as they were on the drive.
Raw Files – this contains all of the files it recovered sorted by file type. Useful if you are trying to find your JPEGs, or just all your Word documents regardless of where they used to be.
Select the things that you want to recover, click the RGH button, and select the destination you want to restore them too. And for this I would like to add DO NOT recover the data onto the same drive you are trying to restore it from. Recover onto another disk, this ensures that you are not writing over the data you are trying to recover, if you are trying to recover data from a particular file or even a deleted file you are sure to overwrite what you are looking for, or whatever files are still recoverable on that particular drive.
Few notes to be aware of prior to you starting this procedure.
The more recently that you have lost the data the greater your chances will be of getting the files back. The more that you write to a drive the greater possibility you have of overwriting your files which would prevent their recovery. If you have just mistakenly format’ed something and immediately realized what you had done; do not write anything to that drive and start the scan process immediately.
A Quick Format presents you with far greater possibilities then a Full Format. A Full Format writes data to the drive; a Quick Format actually only writes to the index. If you format’ed something and are unsure which type you have; run the scan. You may be quite surprised at the results.
Also, if this is your first time utilizing this type of software; spend some time prior to beginning watching a video. The application’s GUI is quite comprehensive and you may find it easier to avoid making mistakes by seeing how someone else has operated it. There are many good tutorial videos available on YouTube. If you spend just 15 minutes watching somebody use R-Studio it will save you hours of potential frustration.
R-Studio may not be cheap, and R-Studio is certainly not simple, but when it really counts- when you truly have to recover files- it is the software that I trust more than any other I have used. This counts for a great deal.
