Active@ File Recovery vs ReclaiMe Free RAID Recovery

Active@ File Recovery recovers deleted or lost files and data from damaged, formatted, or deleted partitions and volumes on Windows. It supports file systems including NTFS, ReFS, FAT, exFAT, HFS+, APFS, XFS, JFS, UFS, BtrFS, and Ext2/3/4. The software can scan for files by signature, including user-defined signatures, and works with listed storage such as HDDs, SSDs, USB drives, NVMe devices, flash drives, and memory cards.

For damaged arrays, it can virtually rebuild RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and Span. It can create and open raw or raw-compressed disk images and work with VMware and VirtualPC HDD images. The Ultimate package adds a WinPE boot disk and Linux-based LiveCD for recovery when a computer will not boot. The downloadable demo allows free recovery only for files up to 64 KB. Paid licenses are one-time purchases: personal licenses are for non-commercial use, while corporate licenses cover business, academic, or government use. LSoft Technologies has operated since 1999 and is based in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.

ReclaiMe Free RAID Recovery is a free Windows utility for identifying RAID configuration parameters from physical disks, USB-connected disks, disk-image files, hardware RAID sets, software RAID sets, and NAS disk sets. It supports RAID 0, RAID 5, RAID 10, RAID 6, RAID5E, and RAID 5 with delayed parity. The tool determines details such as disk order, block size, and start offset. After analysis, users can create an array copy, save the parameters, or use compatible recovery software to access the data. Transfer instructions are provided for R-Studio, File Scavenger, UFS Explorer, and Zero Assumption Recovery. Named NAS examples include QNAP, NETGEAR, Synology, and Buffalo. It can create and open disk images. The software does not recover files individually and requires a multi-disk RAID array. Each member disk, including missing members in specified RAID levels, must contain 10–20 GB for analysis. RAID 0 requires every member disk; RAID 5 can be analyzed with one missing member, while RAID 6 cannot be analyzed with two missing members.