Recuva is a free data recovery software that stands out for its simplicity.

On occasion, it's sure that we have deleted a file by mistake or some other software has deleted files and directories on the hard drive. If we are lucky, these files can be recovered from Windows Recycle Bin, but on many occasions, these files are not recoverable from the recycle bin. To recover them, we must use specialized data recovery software for Windows.

Recuva recovers all types of files from the PC's hard drives and external drives. Thanks to its user-friendly and clean interface, the program can be used by users with few computer skills. In addition, we can use the wizard that will guide us through the file recovery process, showing the available options to carry out the task.

Using the wizard, we can recover files according to their type: pictures, music, documents, video, compressed files, and email (Thunderbird, Outlook Express, Windows Mail, and Microsoft Outlook). This speeds up the process of searching for deleted files.
The wizard also has the option to choose the location where we want to search for deleted files: in “My Documents,” in Recycle Bin, on removable drives, on CD/DVD, or in a specific directory. Like the previous option, this allows us to perform a scan for deleted items more quickly.

Despite its simplicity, the program has settings allowing us to use the data recovery process more advanced.
For example, we can check the “Deep Scan” option to do an intensive search for deleted files. This option increases scan duration and the chances of finding more deleted files.
The “Scan not deleted files” option is useful for recovering data from hard drives that have been formatted or have suffered any damage.
We can also use the option “Retrieve directory structure,” which, in addition to recovering deleted files, will attempt to recover the directories that contain the files. This option is useful for those cases in which the directories are used to organize the files. For example, suppose our movie collection is organized into directories, which represent the film's year of release, with this option, in addition to retrieving the movies. In that case, we'll recover the directories and, therefore, the organization of all the movies.

The program integrates into Windows Explorer, and we can click with the right mouse button on any drive or folder to recover the deleted files on that drive or folder.

Once the system is analyzed for deleted data, it will display a list of found items. We can select the files we want to retrieve and press on “Recover” button. The program will display a menu where we can choose the location where the selected files will be recovered.
If we click on any item from the list of found files, we will see in the right part of a panel that it displays information about the file, such as name, location, size, creation date, and more. It will also show a preview of the file if it is an image file (png, gif, jpg, etc.).

In addition, to retrieve a deleted file, the program provides the option to delete found files permanently. That is to say; perhaps we want to delete a file and leave no trace of him. To do this, if the file is found in the list of deleted files and ready to recover, we can use the option “Overwrite safely selected files.” This will overwrite the file in such a way that it is unrecoverable. We configure the overwrite algorithm so that the file will be erased more effectively. We can choose between simple overwrite (1 overwrite), DOD 5220.22-M (3 overwrites), NSA (7 overwrites), and Gutmann (35 overwrites).

Recuva is updated frequently, so it is advisable to check the option “update automatically” to allow the software to be updated as soon as a new version is launched.