CASES Data Recovery Cases
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PhotoRec

Maker: CGSecurity (Christophe Grenier) Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD, Solaris, DOS

PhotoRec ships alongside TestDisk from the same download, but solves a different problem — it ignores the file system entirely and scans raw data for recognizable file signatures instead.

PhotoRec

Free

File carving: scans underlying data for recognizable file structures rather than depending on file-system metadata. That lets it work on damaged or reformatted file systems, but original paths and filenames are generally not reconstructed from the file system.

  • LicenseGNU GPL v2+ — free, open-source
  • InterfacePhotoRec text interface; QPhotoRec graphical front end is included in supported builds
  • Current version7.2 (February 2024), distributed together with TestDisk
$0Free and open-source, always
View on cgsecurity.org →
When this is the right tool

PhotoRec is especially useful when file-system metadata is unavailable or unreliable, or when a signature-based search is deliberately preferred. It can also complement file-system-aware recovery rather than serving only as a last resort, but the loss of original names and directory structure is an important tradeoff.