DiskInternals Partition Recovery vs partrevive

DiskInternals Partition Recovery scans readable storage for files on lost, deleted, formatted, RAW, inaccessible, corrupted, or damaged Windows partitions. Its recovery modes include Fast recovery, Reader mode, and Full recovery, which uses deep scanning and virtual file-system reconstruction. Sources include HDDs, SSDs, external and USB drives, memory cards, disk images, supported virtual or forensic containers, and readable logical storage exposed from RAID, NAS, SAN, or Windows Dynamic Disks. Remote Ext2/3/4 sources are accessible over SFTP.

Supported file systems include NTFS, FAT, ReFS, and Ext2/3/4, with recovery modes varying by type. The software supports MBR, GPT, and EFI layouts. Its evaluation version allows scanning, reviewing results, and previewing supported files, but saving or exporting recovered files requires a license. Source access is read-only: the software says it does not rewrite or repair the original partition. The application is for Windows; Linux and macOS file systems can be used as sources, and the application may run on those systems through Wine. Pricing starts at $39.95 one-time.

partrevive is a free, MIT-licensed utility for finding and recovering lost or deleted partition tables. It scans disks for filesystem signatures, then checks candidate filesystems through read-only loop devices and mounts to distinguish live data from ghosts. Commands cover scanning, verification, planning, file rescue, table restoration, automatic recovery, undo and disk imaging; a Tkinter interface guides users through scanning, verification, planning and restoration. The project lists NTFS, FAT12/16/32, exFAT, ext2/3/4, btrfs, XFS, F2FS and Linux swap as detected formats. It reports LVM2 and LUKS but does not rebuild them. GPT is the default restore format; MBR is available with `--mbr` and is limited to four primary partitions. Imaging uses ddrescue in two passes with a mapfile, and recovery can use a disk image. Before writing, restore and auto save the current table and check SMART health; restore prompts by default and refuses a mounted target. The single-file Python 3 program requires root and Linux system tools on PATH. The project is described as early, and fragmented or overwritten filesystems may mount incompletely.