Data recovery software

What is the absolute best (in you opinion) data recovery software.
Cost is no problem, i have a client (friend of a friend) who has inadvertently formatted a HDD with some very important files on it, she is even prepared to go to a professional and pay the exorbitant charges they impose but if i can help her it would be much cheaper.

Thanks, Bill

 

Quite a few people have had success with PowerDataRecovery (free for home use) on the forum. It seems to be the most powerful free one out there. Damaged Partition Recovery option with the Full Scan (time consuming) would be the option to use. http://www.powerdatarecovery.com/damaged-partition-recovery.html

I think GetDataBack is still the go to paid program. The Demo will show you the recoverable files and you pay if you want to recover them.

Both programs are read only on the damaged drive. But you have to install on a different disk then the one you want to recover from so as not to damage any files. And save the files somewhere other than the formatted drive.

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It has been about 4 years since I have had to do any data recovery so I am going by what I have been reading. Back then GetDataBack was the one I used and it worked great but I think the files may not have had their original names when recovered (this may have changed by now).

 

I also like GetDataBack and have used this in the past. I haven't tried PowerDataRecovery.