Recuva
Personal use onlyPiriform
- Category
- System tools
- Version
- 1.55.0.133
- Size
- ~25 MB
- Licence terms
- Free for household use only · business, public sector and schools excluded by the EULA
- Supported OS
- Windows 11 · 10
- Install method
- Automatic install supported
- Developer
- Piriform
- Downloads via this site
This links to Piriform’s own download source. AfterFormat neither stores nor modifies installer files.
Check before installing
- Once new data is written over it, a deleted file is gone. Stop using the drive you want to recover, and save what you recover to a different one.
- Do not install it onto the drive you are recovering. To recover a USB stick, install on the PC.
- The EULA limits free builds to personal, non-commercial household use. For work, PhotoRec is the alternative.
What it is
A file recovery tool from Piriform, the maker of CCleaner. It finds and restores data left behind after an emptied recycle bin or a mistakenly formatted USB stick or SD card. It handles any file type and marks each result green, amber or red so you know what stands a chance before you start.
When to pick this
The easiest recovery tool to start with when you have deleted a photo or document at home. At a company, school or public body the licence rules it out — use PhotoRec, which is GPL open source and free for business.
Details
It tells you the odds first
Every result carries a status marker. Green means intact; red means already overwritten and unrecoverable. That saves recovering everything and opening files one by one to find out.
Stop using the drive immediately
A deleted file stays where it was until something new is written over it. So the drive you want to recover must not be written to — do not install the program there, and save whatever you recover to a different drive entirely.
The free build is household-only
The licence limits free products to use "by a natural person, or members of his household for personal, noncommercial purposes" and explicitly excludes businesses, government entities, non-profits and educational institutions. Recovering a file on a work PC falls under that exclusion.
Distribution
- winget ID
- Piriform.Recuva
- Redistribution policy
- Official source link only
- Last checked
- 2026-09-09
- Official site
- https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva
