How it compares
How Unlost compares, and how to check any recovery tool
This page will not tell you what other recovery programs do. We have not tested them under controlled conditions, their behaviour changes with every release, and a comparison table written by one of the products in it is worth nothing to you. What this page does instead is state exactly what Unlost does and does not do, and give you the ten questions that actually separate recovery tools — with a way to check each one yourself, in any program, including this one. If a tool's answers are better than ours, use that tool. Getting your files back is the point.
What Unlost does
Every row here is described in more detail on the technical page, and every row is something you can verify rather than take on trust.
| Question | Unlost |
|---|---|
| Does it charge to save the files it found? | No. Scanning, previewing and recovering are all free. There is no point in the program where it knows something about your drive that it will not tell you until you pay |
| Is there a cap on file count or size? | No cap, no trial period, no licence key, no account |
| What does it read? | The file table, the file system journals, and — when there is nothing left to walk — the contents themselves. The journals are the unusual one: they return files the current file table has completely forgotten |
| Which file systems? | NTFS, exFAT, FAT32, FAT16, FAT12, ext2, ext3, ext4 and XFS, plus MBR and GPT partition tables, Linux LVM, and volumes with no partition table at all. The full list, including what is recognised but not read |
| Is the source drive opened read-only? | For scanning and recovering, yes, and it is the operating system that enforces it: those handles are created with read access and nothing else. The one exception is Erase, which exists to destroy files rather than to find them, is never part of a scan, and cannot run without being asked for by name |
| Can it write recovered files back to the source drive? | No, and it is not a setting. The destination picker refuses the drive being read, because writing there lands on the clusters that still hold the rest of your files |
| Does it tell you what survived before you recover? | Yes. Each file carries a bar showing which of its stretches are still intact, measured against the volume's own allocation map, and a count of the stretches that were lost — a map rather than a percentage, because the drive knows which clusters went and not how much of the picture they held. Where that map could not be read, it says so rather than drawing everything as whole |
| Does it check what it wrote? | Yes, against the file's own format, with three possible answers rather than two — intact, damaged, or cannot be checked. Why the third one exists |
| Does it send anything anywhere? | Nothing about your drives or your files — recovery happens entirely on your machine, and there is not even an update check. Unplug the network and run a full recovery to confirm it. The only thing sent is an anonymous count — one line when the installer finishes, one line each time the app is opened, and a switch in the window stops the second one |
| Does it invent anything? | No. A missing first letter in a FAT name is shown as a missing letter. A file with no recoverable parent goes to [unknown folder], not a plausible path. A guessed length is marked in the file name. A format with no checksum is reported as unverifiable, not as fine |
The ten questions, and how to check them yourself
These are the differences that decide how much of your data comes back. Most of them can be checked in half an hour with a spare USB stick and a few files you do not care about — which is a far better basis for a decision than any review, including this page.
1. Is there a paywall between finding and saving?
The critical thing is when you find out. A tool that scans free and asks for money at the save step has your attention at the moment you are least able to walk away. Install it, scan a stick you have deleted files from, and try to save one before you decide anything. Look for the words "preview only", "registered version" and a file-size limit.
2. Does it read the journals, or only the file table?
On NTFS this is the difference between a short list and a long one, and it is rarely stated on a features page. A file whose table record has been reused is invisible to a table-only reader and fully recoverable from the transaction log. To test it: delete a file on an NTFS volume, then create a few hundred small files so the record gets reused, then scan. A tool that still finds the original by name is reading a journal.
3. Does it carve, and does it admit what carving costs?
Signature carving is what still works after a format, and it always loses the names and always fails on fragmented files. A tool that presents carved results without saying so is setting you up to think your folder structure is gone forever when the file table might have given it back. Look at whether the results have real names or numbered ones, and whether the program tells you which.
4. Does it open the source read-only?
Ask directly, and look for a specific answer about how it is enforced rather than a reassurance about intentions. This is the one property where a mistake is unrecoverable.
5. Will it let you save recovered files onto the source drive?
If it lets you, that is the single most damaging thing a recovery tool can permit — the recovered file can land on the clusters holding the rest of your missing files. Try to pick the source drive as the destination. A tool that stops you has thought about it.
6. Does it tell you what is damaged before you recover?
Any tool can list file names. The useful question is whether it compares the file's addresses against the volume's free-space map and tells you what fraction survived. Without that you find out by opening two thousand photographs one at a time.
7. Does it verify the file it wrote?
And if it says a file is fine, ask what that claim rests on. A PNG or an Office document can be checked arithmetically, because they carry checksums. A JPEG or a PDF can only be checked structurally. A camera raw file cannot be checked at all — so a tool that reports every raw file as intact is telling you something it has no way to know.
8. Does it need the network?
Unplug the network cable, or turn off Wi-Fi, and run the whole thing. Recovery is local work; nothing about it needs the internet. Anything that stops working has been doing something it did not mention.
9. What does the installer bring with it?
Check the installer for bundled offers, toolbars, second programs and search-engine changes, and check afterwards whether anything was added to startup or installed as a service. Upload the installer to VirusTotal before running it — that takes a minute and applies to every tool, this one included.
10. Does it say what it cannot do?
This is the fastest test of all, and it costs nothing. Look for the limits: overwritten data is gone, SSDs with TRIM are usually gone, encrypted volumes need the key, fragmented files cannot be carved, some file systems are not supported. A product that presents no limits is either not thinking about them or not telling you about them, and in this field both cost you data.
What Unlost does not do
Applying question ten to ourselves. These are real gaps, and for some of them another tool is genuinely the better choice.
- No macOS or Linux build. Windows only. A Mac or Linux disk can be connected to a Windows PC and scanned there, within the file system limits below.
- APFS and HFS+ are not read, so a Mac's own file systems are recognised and named rather than recovered. Nor are btrfs, ReFS, ZFS or UDF.
- No RAID reassembly. Member disks can be imaged and scanned individually; Unlost will not reconstruct a stripe set.
- No BitLocker decryption, and none is possible without the key. Unlost identifies the volume and reports the recovery key identifier so you can find the right key.
- No repair. Unlost recovers files off a damaged volume rather than mending one: it will not fix a partition table, rebuild a file system in place, or make an unmountable drive mountable again.
- No phone recovery. A phone over USB is a media device, not a drive. A card taken out of one works normally.
- Previews are for photographs only. A found picture is decoded and shown in the panel beside the list, so you can see which one it is before recovering it. Documents, video and audio get their details and the map of what survived, and no preview — a page of a Word file or a frame of a video means carrying the software that reads them, which is not what this program is.
- No SmartScreen reputation yet, so Windows still warns on the installer even though it is signed. What that warning means, and what it does not.
- No support contract. Email reaches a person, not a rota. If you need somebody contractually on the hook, a recovery lab is the right shape of answer.
- No independent audit or published test results beyond the automated suite described in how this is tested. That suite builds real FAT32, exFAT and NTFS volumes, deletes files the way Windows does, and compares checksums of what comes back — but it is our own suite, and you should weigh it accordingly.
If you came here looking for an alternative to something specific
People arrive at pages like this searching for a free alternative to a recovery product they have already found and do not want to pay for, or one they tried that did not work. Both are reasonable, and neither is well served by a page claiming the named product is bad.
So: we will not tell you what any other program does. Take the ten questions above to whichever product you are weighing Unlost against, check the answers in the products rather than on their websites, and pick on the answers. If you already tried another tool and it found nothing, the useful move is not a tool that costs more — it is a tool that reads something the first one did not. What to try when nothing was found goes through that properly, and the section on when an empty list is the correct answer may save you from trying anything at all.
One thing that is worth saying about price
Price is not the variable that decides whether your files come back. What the tool reads is: whether it reads the file table, whether it reads the journals, whether it can carve, and whether it is honest about which of those produced each result. There are excellent free tools and expensive ones, and the money is not the signal. Trying five programs in a row is not a strategy either — every install and every scan is more activity on a drive you want left alone.
Questions
Is Unlost really free, with no catch?
Yes — scanning, previewing and recovering, on any number of drives, with no file cap and no trial period. What is collected instead is a count of downloads and installs, kept without cookies and with nobody attached; nothing about your drives or the files you recover is collected anywhere. What it costs to run, and where the money comes from explains why that is sustainable rather than suspicious.
Is the source code available?
No. Unlost is closed source, and that costs it the strongest trust signal a program like this can offer — so here is the reason rather than a shrug.
Recovery software is one of the most repackaged categories there is. Somebody takes a working tool, wraps it with something extra, and puts it on a download portal under a name close enough to be found by people who are frightened and in a hurry. Published source makes that trivial: not a copy of the installer, which a checksum catches, but a genuine rebuild that behaves correctly and carries a passenger. The people most likely to land on that build are the ones who have just lost their photographs and will click the first result. Keeping the source closed does not make that impossible, and it is not claimed to — it makes the shortcut a good deal less short.
What it does not buy is your trust, and it should not. The checks that need no source access are on the security page, and there are five of them: the signature, which names the publisher and proves nothing has altered the file; the published checksum; VirusTotal; a scan with Defender; and running the whole program with the network unplugged, which is the one that answers "does it phone home" without anybody's word for it. What Unlost reads on a drive describes the engine in more detail than most open projects document theirs.
Which tool is best?
There is no answer to that question that is not situational. The best tool for a formatted camera card is not the best tool for a NAS disk with a Linux file system or for a drive that is clicking. Match the tool to the case: check the file system it reads, whether it reads journals, and whether it carves — and if the drive has a physical fault, use no software at all and read when the answer is a recovery lab.
Unlost is a Windows application. This download is a Windows installer, and it won't run on the device you're reading this on.
Free · Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit · 4.0 MB installer · a scan only reads, so it costs you nothing to find out