PhotoRec vs SecureRecovery

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.

SecureRecovery analyzes storage media to find files that were deleted, reformatted, corrupted, or made inaccessible. It supports HDDs, SSDs, flash media, partitions, and binary image files, with file-system support for NTFS, HFS/HFS+, FAT16/32, exFAT, and APFS. Search tools, recoverable-file previews, and recovery-probability estimates help identify possible files to restore; media-health analysis, imaging, and multiple-file recovery are also included. It can recover compressed and encrypted files, including alternative data streams on NTFS partitions. The Windows version supports BitLocker, Windows Storage Spaces, dynamic disks, Linux LVM/LVM2 and mdadm RAID, Intel software RAID, and VMDK, VHD, VHDX, and VDI formats. The macOS version supports encrypted APFS recovery, Apple Disk Utility RAID, CoreStorage, FileVault, Fusion Drive, and read-only DMG files. A demo lists data that can be recovered so users can evaluate results before buying a licence. Standard allows one installation; Business allows three. Licences cost $39.95 as a one-time purchase for Windows and $49.95, paid once for Mac. The software addresses logical corruption, not physically damaged devices.