Piriform / Gen Digital

Origin: United Kingdom Now part of: Gen Digital Brand: Recuva

Piriform, a UK developer best known for CCleaner, also makes Recuva — a small, free deletion-recovery tool that's stayed the default first thing people reach for after an accidental delete. Piriform is now owned by Gen Digital (formerly Avast/NortonLifeLock), which is worth knowing if you're wondering who's actually behind it today.

Recuva

Free

A straightforward scan-and-recover tool for deleted files on Windows, with an optional deeper scan for cases a quick scan misses. It doesn't handle formatted drives, RAID, or physically failing hardware — it's specifically built for the single most common and most recoverable scenario in this catalog: plain accidental deletion.

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