How To Restore An App Off Of An Sd Card On Android

There are countless apps for PC designed to allow you to recover data that has been lost from your SD card. While everyone obviously hopes that they'll never need to use it, it's important to ensure that you have the best SD card software available in case something does happen.

It's easier than you think to have your files accidentally deleted, and there are several potential causes. These can range from hardware or power failures to viruses, to simple human error.

You can take measures to reduce the risk of data loss, but nobody can completely eliminate the possibility. Once you've discovered that files have been deleted, you should stop using the SD card and start up one of these 5 programs – the best pieces of memory card recovery software for Windows.

SD Card Recovery Software Testing Statistics

Number of SD card recovery tools tested	18
How long we test software	1 month
Data loss scenarios	Files deleted from an SD card, formatted card, file system is corrupted
Memory card types	SD, microSD, CF

1. Disk Drill SD Card Recovery (Windows & Mac)

SD card data recovery software

✅ Pros:

High success rate
Supports all file systems
Verifies recovery chances with "Preview"
RAW photo & RAW video recovery

⛔️ Cons:

No portable version

Among the various free SD card data recovery programs, Disk Drill is a great place to start and we recommend it as a must-download if you are storing anything important on your SD card.

Another hero of the day: @Cleverfiles Disk Drill! Had a corrupt SD card with timelapse footage. None of the data recovery apps could see or mount the card. I then formatted the card in a @GoPro , after that the card mounted and Disk Drill recovered everything :))
— Sybren Arnoldus (@IetsMetFilm) March 18, 2019

✔ Available for most current versions of Windows, including Windows XP, 7, 8 & 10, Disk Drill Free version allows you to recover up to 500MB of photos and pictures, music, videos from an SD card for free.

✔ It's also compatible with a wide range of storage devices, from SanDisk and Samsung SD and micro SD to SDHC, SDXC, and CF.

✔ Additionally, it can read a variety of uncommon file types, such as EXT, NTFS, HFS+, and FAT32.

While any attempt at recovering lost files is more likely to succeed when they were deleted more recently, Disk Drill is also capable of searching through older files with its Deep Scan feature. This examines your drive and memory cards in their entirety, searching for deleted files to reconstruct. Among the freeware options, there's a good argument in favor of Disk Drill as the best SD card recovery software.

2. Recuva (Windows only)

Recuva sd card recovery software

✅ Pros:

Portable version available
Free version available

⛔️ Cons:

The free version doesn't include support
No updates since 2016

Piriform Recuva includes many of the same features of the other options on this list, and it comes with its own benefits and drawbacks. Recuva offers both a free and premium version, but the set of features locked behind the paywall is slightly different, as data recovery is unlimited in both.

Instead, the premium version—available for only $20—offers a few unique features that make the experience more seamless. First, premium users are given priority technical support and automatic updates.

"Recuva is one of the best free file recovery software tools available. It's easy to use and is as effective as any other freeware or premium file recovery program on the market." – Tim Fisher, lifewire.com

Possibly more important to some users, the premium software also gives you the option of creating a backup using a virtual hard drive before making any adjustments, thus allowing you to reverse any unforeseen negative consequences.

➡️ Read more: Recuva Review

3. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard (Windows & Mac)

Easeus memory card recovery software

✅ Pros:

Simple interface;
Good overall recovery results;
RAW photo & video recovery.

⛔️ Cons:

It isn't clear how long the scan will really take, the ETA is always irrelevant;
Very few file formats are supported for preview.

Like several of the other options on this list, EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard is available in both a free and paid version. It also offers standard quick scan and deep scan features, allowing you to look for recent files or conduct a more thorough check. With its premium edition costing $90, it comes in as one of the more expensive pieces of software, but it also has a trial for those who want to try before they buy.

"No data-recovery app can retrieve everything, but EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Pro does the best job in testing at recovering lost and deleted files" – Edward Mendelson, pcmag.com

EaseUS gives you the ability to search for a specific type of file, targeting your scan to a specific set of files and thus reducing the total scan time. Since the trial is limited to a total of 500 MB of data restoration, you'll need to pay for a license before scanning your memory card for any larger files.

If you're interested in EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard, you should run its trial version first before making any purchases.

Compared to other similar pieces of software, including those on this list, EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard can sometimes run slower scans. The flipside of this is that its performance in finding corrupted and deleted files is among the best on the market, and it also takes up a lower amount of energy on your computer. If you have the time and patience to wait for the scan to finish, EaseUS is one of the best options available.

➡️ Read more: EaseUS Data Recovery Review

4. Recoverit SD Card Data Recovery (Windows & Mac)

Recoverit SD Card recovery software

✅ Pros:

Deep Scan available
Clean and modern UI

⛔️ Cons:

Not all files can be previewed
Doesn't show a file's quality before recovering it
Overpriced

This option is designed for those looking for a professional data recovery solution, and while it comes with a price tag—$75.99 (macOS version – $109.99) per month, $99.99 for a year, or $159.99 for life—its features may be worth it if you need the best software available. You can recover only 100MB for free with Windows version.

If you're not sure whether to pay or to stick with one of the freeware options, Recoverit offers a free trial period in which you can test it out without a commitment.

The highlighted features of Recoverit Data Recovery include the sleek, professional interface, good rate of file restoration, speed, and ease of use. If you're looking for a specific file or type of file, you can narrow your search by file extension, and many of the more advanced options are made accessible to those with less technical experience. It's extremely easy to understand the options Recoverit offers, and its menu system seamlessly takes you from step to step.

"Recoverit is a safe and convenient tool for data recovery on PC and Mac." – Roxana Raducanu, handyrecovery.com

In the end, nobody but you can determine whether Recoverit's steep price tag is worth it's set of high-quality features. Those looking for a reliable, easy option, or for software to license throughout a business, may be willing to pay for an application with better ease of use and a simpler interface, but it may be too expensive for those willing to negotiate the slightly more complicated menus of other programs.

5. IObit Undelete (Windows)

Iobit free sd card recovery software

✅ Pros:

User-friendly Interface
Quick scan

⛔️ Cons:

Good results in recovering only recently deleted files
No advanced options

Another good choice for free SD card data recovery, IObit Undelete focuses on ease of use. One of its main advantages over the competition is that it's free to use regardless of how much data you need to restore.

This gives you the ability to recover anything you need without having to worry about hitting the limit, and you can restore large files for which other programs would require payment.

Unlike other software designed for this purpose, IObit Undelete doesn't actually need to be installed on your hard drive—installing new programs can overwrite "lost" files, which is specifically what these applications are designed to avoid.

This feature transcends what other pieces of software can offer, guaranteeing that it won't prevent itself from recovering files. Instead, you can simply put the program on a USB drive, making the application portable and stopping it from interfering with its purpose.

For these reasons and more, IObit Undelete comes with very positive reviews and most of its users are extremely satisfied, especially with the value it provides without any cost.

"IObit Undelete is a simple program to use which is already appreciated, because simplicity is our times is very important, another feature that I like in the depth of the scan which allows the deep and exhaustive search of the deleted files…" – Ines S, g2.com

For simple, free memory card recovery software, IObit Undelete is among the top options, for its unlimited recovery ability, portability without installation, and easy to use interface.

Conclusion

While the five programs on this list are among the best available for SD card data recovery, each one comes with a unique set of features and shortcomings that makes it particularly useful for a certain audience. In the end, you're the best judge of your own needs, and there are plenty of other applications out there.

For software that requires a paid license, you should always take advantage of the free trial until you're sure that the program is right for you.

Moreover, if you're looking for one to recover files that have already been deleted, don't be discouraged if the first application doesn't find them—each one works slightly differently, and a deep scan by a certain program may find files that another will miss.

FAQ

After reviewing multiple free SD card recovery software solutions, we've determined that the following applications deliver the best SD card recovery performance and experience in 2021:

Disk Drill SD Card Recovery (Windows and Mac)
Recuva (Windows)
EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard (Windows and Mac)
Recoverit SD Card Data Recovery (Windows and Mac)
IObit Undelete (Windows)

Unless you have the right equipment and technical skills, you most likely won't be able to recover data from a physically broken SD card without professional help. A professional data recovery center should be able to transplant the flash memory chip from your broken SD card to a suitable donor SD card and recover your data for you.

Both Windows and Mac come with a utility that you can use to repair SD card corruption. In Windows, this utility is called CHKDSK, and you can invoke it from the command-line with the following command: chkdsk c: /r (replace "c" with the letter assigned to your SD card). macOS users can use the First Aid feature in Disk Utility.

Yes, some SD card recovery applications, such as Disk Drill, are able to restore files from a RAW SD card. Restoring files from RAW SD cards usually takes slightly longer than restoring files from formatted SD cards, but the results can be just as great.

Android users can choose from several SD card recovery apps, each offering a slightly different set of features and capabilities. Based on our testing, DiskDigger delivers the best results and a truly straightforward data recovery experience.

Robert Agar

Robert is a freelance writer who graduated from Pace University in New York with a Computer Science degree in 1992. Former computer specialist at IBM. Over the course of a long IT career, he has worked for a number of lar...

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Brett Johnson

This article has been approved by Brett Johnson, Data Recovery Engineer at ACE Data Recovery. Brett has a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Systems and Network, 12 years of experience.