[Tutorial] How to Recover Your Data for Free with Recuva

Losing your data isn’t inevitable, yet we’ve all been faced one day with files accidentally deleted or lost following a mishandling. Don’t panic! You can always try to recover them for free by yourself by following our tutorial on data recovery with Recuva.

What are the causes of data loss?

The causes are unfortunately numerous and varied: human error, mishandling, hardware failure or breakdown, software malfunction, hacking… None of us are safe from any of these causes and we can, from one day to the next, find ourselves facing inaccessible or corrupted files. The types of faults are of two kinds:

• Software faults (logical fault or system fault): the computer still works but the files have disappeared or are corrupted.
• Physical faults (mechanical fault): the hardware (hard drive, SSD, USB drive…) no longer works and the user can no longer access the files.

Good news: data is often not irretrievably lost, and as long as nothing has been overwritten it is still possible to recover it. The important thing is to act as quickly as possible after the loss and to stop using your computer so as not to risk overwriting your recoverable files.

The 4 rules to follow when using Recuva

These rules aren’t all essential, however they give you a better chance of recovery:

• Do not install Recuva (or any other recovery software) on the partition or storage space where you want to perform your recovery.
• Do not save the recovered documents on the partition or storage device where they originally were.
• Do not use the program on a hard drive with a physical fault (suspicious noise or smells, damaged hard drive…) as you risk permanently losing your data.
• Do not use it with encrypted or enciphered files.

If needed, you can refer to our guide to recovering data yourself for general advice.

What is Recuva?

Deleted files, an emptied recycle bin, a Word document accidentally not saved, a formatted disk… Windows doesn’t delete your files right away, it marks the location as available, and as long as you haven’t overwritten the partition your document remains present on your device, so you can find it again with recovery software. Recuva will scan the hard drive in depth to find your lost files, follow our tutorial to start your recovery.

Recuva is a free data recovery software, it is available in French for all versions of Windows in 32-bit or 64-bit (there is also a more advanced paid version). It lets us recover our deleted or lost files, photos, music, videos, documents, emails or any other type of file. It can find and recover your precious data on various types of media: hard drives, USB drives, memory cards… This program is software by Piriform, developers of the popular CCleaner.

How to install Recuva?

Download Recuva

Download Recuva from its official page . Ideally, in order not to overwrite the data you want to recover, you should download and install it on another partition of your system and recover your documents on another device.

1 . Click the green « Download free version » button to download the free version.

Save the executable in the location of your choice. Above all, don’t forget that downloading and installing the software will create new files on your device, so it’s important, in order not to erase your lost files and documents, to download and install Recuva on another partition whenever possible.

Install Recuva

 Click the executable in the folder where you downloaded it, we’ll go through the installation steps together. Warning! If you click right away on « Install » Recuva will install itself with its default options (language, shortcuts, install location, users)

1. Recuva in English, simpler to understand everything, right? Click the chevron to open the drop-down menu and choose the language. If you missed this step, you can of course still change it later in the options, but why complicate things if you can do it right away.
2. Warning, if you click « Install » at this stage, you won’t be able to choose your installation folder and Recuva will install itself with its default options.
3. Clicking « Customize » lets you choose advanced options 

Configure Recuva

In this window you’ll be able to start setting up your custom installation. You probably don’t need all the options, it will largely depend on your computer habits.

1. Choose your advanced options such as:

• Add a desktop shortcut
• Add a shortcut in the Start Menu
• Add « Search for deleted files » to Explorer’s right-click menu
• Add « Search for deleted files » to the recycle bin’s right-click menu
• Automatically check for updates for Recuva

By default all these options are checked, if you don’t want to change them you can skip this step and click « More ».

2. Click « More » to open the window that will let you choose the location of your install folder. By default Recuva suggests your programs install folder.

Choose the installation location

Last step of the custom setup, here you’ll be able to set the partition and folder of your choice. To avoid risking overwriting and permanently erasing your lost data, be sure to choose a location different from the one where your files to recover were located.

1. Click « Browse » to choose  the partition and folder where to install Recuva
2. You can choose to install Recuva for all users of your PC or for yourself only.
3. Click « Install » to start the installation, which happens very quickly.

Finish the installation or launch Recuva

A window opens to inform you that the installation is complete and ask you if you want to launch the program.

1. Click « Run Recuva » to start recovery immediately.
2. You can also close the program by clicking the cross, you can then run the program by clicking its shortcut icon if you checked that option during setup.

How to configure the Recuva search?

Launching Recuva

The first time you launch the software a welcome window will open to guide you through your data recovery. Depending on your level of computer knowledge, you can choose to follow it or not. However, we recommend following it during your first encounter with the software, you can always choose afterward to skip it and go directly to the Recuva interface  to configure the search for your lost data.

1. Check the box if you don’t want this wizard to open every time you launch Recuva
2. Click « Next » to start choosing the files to recover.
3. Click « Cancel » if you want to make this choice directly in the interface. This option is mainly aimed at advanced users, we recommend following the setup wizard instead when getting to grips with the software for the first time.

First step of recovery: choosing the files to recover

This step consists of choosing the types of documents you wish to find. Be as precise as possible because if your storage devices (hard drives, SSDs, USB drives…) are large the search process may take quite a long time. Recuva will therefore ask you to select your file type to avoid wasting time searching for everything.

1. You’ll be able to choose among the following options :

• All files
• Pictures
• Music
• Documents
• Video
• Compressed files
• Emails

. In the case of our tutorial, we chose pictures, but you can of course choose « All files » if you think you’ve lost several types of documents.

2. Click « Next » to choose where to search for your data on your hard drive (or any other device)

Second step of recovery : choosing the location of the files to recover

Here again, the more precise you are, the faster the recovery can be.

You have a choice between various options :

• I’m not sure
• On my memory card or my iPod
• In « My Documents »
• In the Recycle Bin
• In a specific location
• On a CD/DVD

1. Choose the folder where your files were located before they disappeared. You can target a specific folder to narrow the scope (and above all the time) of the recovery scan.  If you don’t know where your data was stored, you can choose a  more generic location such as a partition, for example your computer’s C drive, or check the box « I’m not sure » which will tell Recuva to scan your entire disk.
2. Click « Next » to finalize your search configuration.

Third step: starting the search for recoverable files

Before starting the scan and closing the recovery wizard, Recuva offers you one last option : deep scan. This function allows for a more detailed search, but it considerably slows down the scan time. It’s always possible to run it if you find files that are too damaged and you want to try to recover additional data, which is why it’s best to only check this box if the first scan fails.

Recuva tells us on their website that : « If you’re looking for a file you’ve recently deleted, or a file that isn’t on a damaged or corrupted disk, you should first try the default scan. It’s fast and will find your file in 90% of cases. »

1. Optional deep scan, this scan can take several hours depending on the size of your disks and the power of your processor.
2. Click « Start » to launch the search for your missing files.

How the scan proceeds

Now is the time to arm yourself with patience, or not, if you’ve already been able to precisely target the file type and the location where Recuva will perform its search. Recuva starts, you can go make yourself a coffee while you wait because you’ll need to let the software work without using your computer.

How to restore your lost data with Recuva?

Once the scan is complete, Recuva will open a window with a visual representation of the files. For more detail and to switch to advanced mode, a  list of all recoverable or permanently deleted files will be displayed. This list will show you which documents were found and their degree of recoverability using colored dots. All you’ll need to do is select the files you’re interested in to recover them.

Switch to advanced mode for more detail

1. Click « Switch to advanced mode » to improve the display and sorting of your data to recover.

Review and select the data to recover

Once the list mode is displayed you’ll have the details of your files. Each line corresponds to an image, a document, a video or music depending on the search you configured previously.

1. You can also choose to sort your data by status, size, modification date… to make your selection easier. For example for photos you’ll generally be looking for large files.

You can also refine your search by file extension type by typing an asterisk followed by a dot and your file’s format (for example : *jpg/ *.png/*.psd/*.raw).

1. Choose one or more file extensions, separated by a / (see example above)

The most interesting thing for you is in the first column, next to the file names small green, orange and red dots are displayed.

These colors indicate the chances of recovery:

• green : file in excellent condition, complete integrity and therefore recoverable.
• orange : very low, little chance of recovery but possible.
• red : corrupted file, unrecoverable with Recuva

You can still at this stage rerun the deep scan if the documents that you wanted to recover appear corrupted, you may have a chance of finding them without having to go through a professional lab.

Restore your data with Recuva

 Now that Recuva has found your data and you have sorted it, it’s time to move on to the actual restoration.

1. Enlarge the window if you haven’t already done so
2. Access the advanced configuration options for an expert mode
3. List of your found files with the colored dots
4. By clicking the « Preview » tab at the top right of this section you can often view some data before recovering it. The « Info » tab displays the information available about the file (size, status, creation date, etc.). The « Header » tab isn’t useful to you as it displays the hexadecimal code of your file.
5. Now check the documents you want to recover.
6. Click « Recover » to start the recovery

Tip : select only the recoverable green files either by clicking the column header, as we’ve already seen, or right-click on a file with the green dot -> Sort by -> State

Choose the destination folder for the files to restore

Recuva asks you to specify the recovery location for the files, be careful to select a drive or partition different from the one where the files were originally stored. You can choose to restore them to an external hard drive, a USB drive or any other device of your choice as long as it’s a location different from the original one.

1. Choose a destination folder different from the original one
2. Click « Ok » to start the recovery

And arm yourself with patience depending on the volume of files to recover as it’s best to avoid using your computer during the restoration phase. This is the perfect time to go make yourself a good coffee.

Finish recovering your data

A new window with a progress bar will open, when the recovery is complete Recuva informs you of the results.

All that’s left is to check your files in the destination folder you chose. Before opening the recovery folder it’s highly recommended to run an antivirus scan of the recovered files!

Recuva’s options

Here you can change some of the options that were offered to you during the software installation.

1. In the « General » tab you can configure the interface language, the display type for results (list, tree, thumbnails), choose whether or not to show the wizard when the software starts, choose whether or not to automatically check for updates.

2. In the « Actions » tab you can :

• Show files found in the system’s hidden folders.
• Show empty files (0 bytes)
• Show permanently deleted files
• Deep scan (warning! This option increases the scan duration)
• Scan for non-deleted files (Useful option for recovering files on formatted or faulty disks)
• Restore folder structure (indeed standard recovery doesn’t restore your folders’ original structure)
• Choose the number of passes for secure erasure (Recuva also gives you the option to cleanly wipe a hard drive in case you want to give away or sell your machine without leaving traces of your personal data)

3. In the « Advanced » tab you can choose to show options in the Windows context menu and save or not your configuration settings in a *.ini file (which can be useful for a future installation of the software)

4. In the « Disks » tab you can choose +- which disks should be shown by Recuva.

5. In the « About » tab you can view the current version of Recuva and the links to access the official website of the software’s developers.

Our opinion on Recuva

Recuva is a good free data recovery software and it can help out in the simplest cases, however to have the best chance possible of finding your data you need to run the scan as quickly as possible after losing it. Its effectiveness is greatly dependent on the time between the loss and the start of recovery, indeed the more time passes, the greater the probability of overwriting on the clusters (locations where parts of files are found) of the disk. To give yourself the best chance, act as quickly as possible!

In which cases can Recuva not be used?

In case of a mechanical or physical fault of your hard drives, it is unfortunately impossible for you to try to recover your data yourself. Your hard drive is not responding? The first thing to do is above all to do nothing and try to find out whether your hard drive is still recognized by your operating system. If your disk is detected by your computer you can still use recovery software like Recuva to try to find your lost or corrupted files.

Otherwise, you’ll need to call on a specialized lab equipped with a cleanroom. Above all do not try to open your hard drive yourself, this must absolutely be done in a sterile room, the slightest dust on a platter could mean the irreversible loss of your data. Data recovery companies are equipped with the essential equipment and spare parts to carry out these delicate operations. Shocks, mishandling or even unsuitable actions can easily damage the read and write heads, or even your entire hard drive.

What to do if the recovery with Recuva didn’t work?

If you’ve failed to recover your precious files, you can try other free or paid software. However it’s not recommended to use too many different software tools because it will always be easier to recover data that hasn’t been manipulated too much. If your data is important to you or your business, you’ll need to ask yourself whether you want to take the risk of further degrading your files or whether you’d rather entrust your device to a specialized company.

The cost will depend on the severity of the fault and the complexity of the recovery operations. We offer a free, no-obligation assessment before you decide to entrust us with the recovery of your data.