Typically, photo recovery includes data recovery cases from portable devices such as USB flash drives and memory cards usually no larger than 32GB in size. Or it can well be 64GB by the time you are reading this. Specific of such recovery is that you deal with relatively small number of files (no more than several thousands) which are stored on FAT filesystem – one of the oldest and best-studied filesystems. As for reasons due to which you may need to do photo recovery these are deletion of wrong file(s), accidental formatting, or filesystem failure (so called RAW filesystem case).
Testbed
I have a 32GB memory card, which I typically use in my Nikon camera. I have formatted the card by Windows and then tried to recover data from it using each software I have chosen for this category one-by-one. Most photo recovery tools retrieved almost the same number of files except GetDataBack and Recuva which recovered significantly fewer photos. The results of test are shown in the table below.
Parameter |
Card RecoveryA |
EaseUsB |
GetDataBackC |
ReclaiMeD |
RecoverMyFilesE |
R-studioF |
RecuvaG |
Stellar PhoenixH |
ZARI |
User experience and price |
Price |
39.95 USD |
69.95 USD |
79 USD |
79.95 USD |
69.95 USD |
79.99 USD |
Free |
39 USD |
Free |
Ease of use |
Complex |
Easy |
Easy |
Easy |
Average |
Complex |
Average |
Easy |
Average |
Recovery speed |
Slow |
Fast1 |
Fast1 |
Fast |
Fast1 |
Slow |
Fast |
Slow |
Slow |
Structured folder tree |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
No |
Yes |
Preview |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Search |
No |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
RAW (carving)2 |
Yes |
No |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Movie files |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
,
www.cardrecovery.com
,
www.easeus.com
,
www.runtime.org
,
www.reclaime.com
,
www.recovermyfiles.com
,
www.r-tt.com
,
www.piriform.com
,
www.stellarinfo.com
,
www.z-a-recovery.com
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