To recover data from flash drive, there are many flash drive recovery software tools you can use. We have tested the flash drive data recovery tools that are most commonly found online and pick 10 of them to give you the top 10 list. The list is made by studying the tools in the following aspects: the ability to recover files from USB flash drive, the number of the deleted files that can be recovered by the tools and the steps that are taken to recover files via the tools, hoping to help you to find the most powerful and easy-to-use data recovery tool for flash drive.
# FonePaw Data Recovery
FonePaw Data Recovery (opens new window) is the most easy-to-use flash drive recovery tool. Available with both Windows and Mac version, the tool can recover photos, videos, documents, audio and all other things you can think of from USB flash drive, SD card, external hard drive, Windows & Mac computer, etc.
The FonePaw USB recovery software offers two modes of data recovery: Quick Scan, which can quickly recover recently deleted data from flash drive; Deep Scan, which takes longer time to find the deleted data on the flash drive even if the drive has been corrupted or formatted.
And as a foolproof software tool that is designed to help ordinary users to recover data on their own, the tool is extremely easy-to-use to recover files from USB drive.
Step 1 Install FonePaw Data Recovery on your computer. It is compatible with Windows 10/8/7/XP/Vista, macOS 10.14-10.7.
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Step 2 Connect the flash drive with lost data to your computer. Run the tool.
Step 3 Select the file type that you want to recover from the flash drive and click the flash drive. Click Scan. The tool will give a quick scan of the flash drive and show you the recently deleted files. To find more files from the drive, click Deep Scan.
Step 4 Select the deleted photo, video, audio file, document that you need, click Recover to get them back.
# PhotoRec
Do not be confused by the name PhotoRec. The tool can actually recover not only photos, but also other kinds of file, such as ZIP, Office documents, PDF, HTML, from flash drive, hard disk as well as memory card. However, comparing to tools such as FonePaw Data Recovery, this flash drive data recovery tool is complicated to use since it requires you to run command instead of pressing button to perform data recovery. The tool runs on Windows, Mac and Linux systems.
# Wise Data Recovery
Wise Data Recovery supports to recover data from USB flash drive on FAT32, exFAT and NTFS. However, it only works on Windows system. After scanning a flash drive, it will show all files that it found by file directory. Each file has a tag of different color in front of it. There are three different colors, indicating that the file is recover completely, or partly recovered, or failed to be recovered. The files can't be filtered by file types, which make it difficult to find the deleted files that you need.
# UndeleteMyFiles
This tool is made up with several modules, inlcuding File Rescue, Mail Rescue, Media Recover and more. You can select a flash drive to recover data. Also, it has Files Wiper that can permanently wipe a deleted file to make it unrecoverable. It shows the file size, date and directory of the deleted file and allow you to search for the deleted data by file types, locations or size.
# Recuva
Recuva lets you select a connected USB drive and choose to recover pictures, music, documents, videos or any other file type from it. Data recovery from damaged or formatted USB drive is supported. For deleted photos, there is preview from which you can determine whether this is the file you are looking. But you cannot preview a document or video. Also, Recuva has secure overwrite feature that can destroy the deleted files on your flash drive to make it unrecoverable.
# PC Inspector File Recovery
This is a freeware that can recover data from flash drive with FAT32 or NTFS file system, which means it doesn't support data recovery for USB drive on exFAT. It can recover data from formatted flash drive on which boot sector or FAT has been erased. The files can be recover with original time and date. Files such as doc, xls, pdf, jpg, png, gif, mp3 can all be recovered.
# Orion File Recovery Software
This USB flash drive data recovery tool can recover files, music and photos from both portable drive and computer disk. After the deleted files are found, it allows users to search the deleted files by location, file type, name. It also has Drive scrubber, which can permanently delete a file on flash drive if you are afraid that someone else may undelete your files with one of these data recovery software.
# Undelete 360 Recovery
Undelete 360 Recovery can recover data from flash/thumb drive whether the data are deleted accidentally or lost due to virus or software problem in the flash drive. After finding the files, the tool will display the files by types(.jpg, .psd, .png, .rar, etc.) or by folders. You can not only view the view the deleted files but learn about the status of the files - whether the files has been overwritten or is good or bad to be recovered.
# Active Undelete Data Recovery
This USB drive data recovery tool is offered in four versions: DEMO, Standard, Professional, Ultimate. The last three versions are not free to use. With the DEMO version, you can scan out the deleted files from flash drive but is not able to save them on your computer. It has advanced scripting features, which enables you to create a special file signatures to search for recoverable files, but this is not available on DEMO version.
# Prosoft Data Rescue
This flash drive file recovery tool works on Windows 7 or later as well as macOS 10.10 or later. It can recover images, audio, documents, etc. from flash drive and other external hard drive (opens new window). However, it doesn't allow you to scan deleted files by file type, which means you have to scan the whole flash drive even if you only need to get back a single photo. The tool also classifies the files as deleted, good, found or invalid files. Both Windows and Mac version are available.
