PhotoRec vs Raise Data Recovery

PhotoRec is a free file recovery program for retrieving lost videos, documents, archives, and pictures from storage media and disk images. It searches the underlying data instead of relying on the file system, which can help after file-system damage or reformatting. It recognizes more than 480 file extensions across about 300 file families, and listed file systems include FAT, NTFS, exFAT, ext2/ext3/ext4, and HFS+.

Supported sources include hard disks, CD-ROMs, memory cards, USB drives, raw disk images, and EnCase E01 images. PhotoRec runs on Windows, Linux, macOS, DOS, several BSD systems, Solaris, and other Unix systems. It accesses the recovery drive or card in read-only mode; recovered files should go to a different partition. The portable download runs after extracting its archive, without an installer. QPhotoRec provides a graphical interface, while PhotoRec can also run from scripts or batch files with command-line options. The maker says it usually cannot recover original filenames and does not work well with ReiserFS.

Raise Data Recovery is software for retrieving files from internal and external HDDs, SSDs, USB flash drives, memory cards, simple RAID storage, NAS devices, and composite volumes. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, including Windows XP SP3 and later, macOS 11 and later, and Debian Linux 6.0 or compatible later versions. Listed tools include memory-card recovery, RAID recovery, bootable recovery, and file previews. A Trial License allows file-system scans, with recovered files limited to 256 KB. The Personal License with Short-Term Support costs $34.95 a month, billed as a lifetime license, and includes perpetual use, unlimited recovery from supported systems, simple and RAID storage support, and 30 days of free updates. Long-Term Support costs $49.95 a month, also billed as lifetime, with 360 days of free updates. Raise Data Recovery is headquartered in Kyiv, Ukraine.