AOMEI WinfrGUI

Windows File Recovery is a tool implemented in Windows since 2004. You may not have heard of it unless you are familiar with the command-line tool, or CMD. Winfr is the base rule for activating this recovery service that scans your partitions and removable drives to dig up deleted files. AOMEI WinfrGUI takes what WFR has to offer and merges it with a graphical user interface, hence the name.

Recovery applications are not a scarce resource, choosing one being influenced by personal criteria. If you are looking for eye candy, this app can keep up. Despite it being a simple emulation of a CMD tool, WinfrGUI manages to display itself as a neat, standalone program.

Launch the app and wait for it to identify your drives and partitions. Select the partition you wish to examine and decide the scanning mode — quick scan or deep scan. Picking the output partition must follow a simple rule, though. A drive cannot be scanned if the output folder is set on it. You must change the location based on the drive you want to scan.

WinfrGUI is capable to recover files from drives formatted as NTFS, FAT, exFAT, and ReFS. As for what file types can it recover, that's the information we deduct from Custom extensions options from the Advanced settings area, and it means all formats.

The Advanced settings menu changes a bit depending on the scanning mode. If you are going with the Quick Scan, you'll have the ability to target specific folders for the scan. Targeting files types for recovery is a common set of features shared by both methods.

In case you are looking for a Deep Scan, you'll get access to different tweaks. More precisely, you can input values for starting sectors, cluster size, or the total number of sectors. These settings apply to users who know their drives bit by bit, increasing scanning accuracy.

AOMEI WinfrGUI is a neat reinterpretation of the Windows File Recovery tool. This app proves that a simple user interface can facilitate access to old services casual users didn't even know to exist.