Will one file recovery software block another

ernie-money

I'm sorry if that title made no sense, but hopefully someone can help. I accidentally saved all files I wanted to keep onto the internal storage, instead of a USB before doing a factory restore. When I realised (after doing reset) I searched for data recovery software and saw free trial from MiniTool, which I downloaded. It gave me about half the files back for free, but it will cost me $82 to get the rest back, so I was looking for a cheaper option and found recuva. When I try to run it, I get an error message saying that the app has quit unexpectedly and it won't run. Is this because the other program is somehow stopping it, or do I have any other option apart from paying MiniTool..? Thanks in advance!

ernie-money

BTW - I have windows 10 on my laptop, would that explain why it isn't working & if so, do you have any suggestions of another program to use for recovering the files please..?

Neil_Jones

You can have as many file recovery programs as you like.

Recuva is free - https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva

JJ_Egan

Try removing mini tool first.

CoastingHatbox

I wouldn't be a surprised, if a tool that was written such that it will let you recover half your files free and then charge people to recover the rest, would stop alternative tools from installing properly etc..

As @JJ_Egan said, try removing mini tool if possible. Be careful though, because anything written to the disk will potentially overwrite the files you are trying to recover. This is a situation where I would drop the disk out of a machine and use another machine to do the recovery, so that the disk with delete files on is not actively used by the running operating system or any other software until the files are recovered.

Also, try and sort out an automatic backup strategy for your data in future, so a mistake like this is not such a problem.

ernie-money

Neil_Jones said:

You can have as many file recovery programs as you like.

Recuva is free - https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva

As per my initial post, recuva wouldn’t run. I got it sorted with testdisk in the end though.

Neil_Jones

Okay, so I didn't read it properly.

Point stands though, there is normally no reason why you can't have multiple programs at the same time.