Acronis Revive

While modern backup solutions incorporate cloud-based technologies, you might still prefer backing up your data the old-fashioned way, on an external hard drive, on the local system, or a removable disk. But it so may happen that you accidentally delete or overwrite that data, or a virus erases it. In this case, a dedicated recovery solution such as Acronis Revive can come to the rescue.

Powered by the popular Acronis, Revive allows you to undo file removal by looking deep into your system and finding traces of files that can be recovered.

Relying on a wizard-based interface, Acronis Revive enables you to locate office documents and media files, estimate their chance of being recovered successfully, and restore them to your PC. Although the looks might not seem so up-to-date, the GUI is intuitive and working with the application should not pose any difficulties.

The first thing you need to do is select the location where you think the lost data is, be it a logical disk, a physical drive, a partition, an external storage drive, or a memory card.

Please note that if the lost files reside on a system disk, it is advisable that you create a portable version of Acronis Revive during setup and run the application from there. Alternatively, you can install Acronis Revive on another workstation and connect the damaged hard drive using an adapter. Nevertheless, you should not install Acronis Revive in the same location as the lost data might be.

There are different types of data searches that Acronis Revive can perform, each with its pluses and minuses. The fast search relies on speed, but it doesn't look deep into the system files.

The more detailed scan analyzes all the data structures that the quick recovery option skips and comes with file-specific search algorithms to narrow down the results. On the downside, it takes longer to complete.

Last, but not least, you can configure Acronis Revive to open a file containing previously saved information about a detailed scan, meaning there is no need for you to run the deep scan once more.

The list of recoverable files is displayed in tree-view and files that cannot be recovered are marked accordingly. Acronis Revive can sort the data in various ways, by the file extension, or the creation, modification, or last access time.

You can search for particular files using specific filtering criteria, then select the data you want to be restored and proceed to the advanced recovery options. Acronis Revive can also extract data from hard drives with bad or corrupted sectors.

While not as modern-looking as other Acronis products, Revive does deliver a streamlined experience when it comes to recovering lost files. It targets local or external drives, and memory cards, and allows you to recover data that is lost due to various reasons.