PhotoRec is a free, open-source file recovery utility that ignores file systems to hunt for the underlying data. It recovers lost photos, videos, documents, and archives from hard disks, CD-ROMs, USB drives, and digital camera memory—even after formatting or severe file-system damage.

Download PhotoRec
Recover lost files safely (read‑only)

Features

Core capabilities that make PhotoRec a trusted choice for file recovery.

Ignores File Systems:

Scans raw media and carves data by signature, working even on formatted or corrupted partitions.
Bypasses FAT/NTFS/exFAT/ext2/3/4/HFS+ metadata to locate file content directly.

Broad Format Support (480+):

JPEG/PNG, RAW photos, ZIP/7z, Office documents, PDF/HTML, video and audio formats, and more.

Read‑Only and Safe:

Never writes to the source drive; recover to a different destination to protect data integrity.

Multi‑Platform:

Windows, macOS, Linux, and DOS support for cross‑environment recovery.

Safe recovery practices

Stop using the affected media immediately to avoid overwriting data. Always recover to a different disk or partition. Prefer running PhotoRec from removable media when working on a system drive.

Common file types recovered by PhotoRec

Photos: JPEG, PNG, RAW
Documents: DOC/XLS/PPT, PDF, HTML
Archives: ZIP, 7z, RAR
Media: MP4, MOV, MP3, WAV
Other: TXT, XML, JSON

Typical PhotoRec workflow

Select disk → Choose partition
→ Select file families (JPEG/Office/etc.)
→ Choose destination (different drive)
→ Start recovery (read‑only)

Download PhotoRec only from the official CGSecurity project or trusted repositories. Verify package integrity when possible and follow the documentation for CLI or QPhotoRec.

PhotoRec screenshots

Click a thumbnail to enlarge, then use arrows to scroll left or right: