PandaOffice Drecov is a data recovery program for Windows. It finds deleted, formatted or otherwise lost files on internal and external storage and copies them back to a safe location. Scanning drives and previewing what PandaOffice Drecov finds costs nothing; saving recovered files requires a paid license.
Where Drecov can look
The home screen splits targets into two groups. Under This PC, the user can scan a whole hard disk or SSD partition, the Recycle Bin (including after it has been emptied or bypassed with Shift + Delete), the Desktop, or a single chosen folder. The user can also scan a lost partition that no longer appears in Windows. Under removable media, the program lists SD and memory cards, USB flash drives and external hard drives, along with cameras and other devices Windows recognizes. A OneDrive option targets files missing from the local OneDrive folder, such as items that were deleted or never synced.
Supported file systems are FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS and exFAT.
Quick and deep scanning
Selecting a location starts a scan straight away. The quick scan reads the file records that still exist on the drive, so it returns recently deleted files fast and usually keeps their original names and folders.
If the files the user needs are not in that list, Deep Scan Recovery goes further. It reads more sectors and looks for leftover records. It can turn up older data, files from formatted drives and the contents of lost or RAW partitions. The lost-partition workflow goes directly to the deep scan.
Drecov works in read-only mode throughout, so scanning does not write anything to the drive being examined.
Sorting through results
The user can browse results in two ways. File Location (or File Path for lost partitions) rebuilds the original folder tree. File Type groups everything by format, such as Word documents, spreadsheets or pictures. This helps after a deep scan when names are lost.
Filters narrow the list by status, file type, date and size, and a search bar matches a file name or extension. The user can view the list as a grid, a plain list or a detailed view.
Previewing before recovery
Double-clicking a found file opens a preview. Documents and spreadsheets show their content, pictures appear as thumbnails, and PowerPoint files show their slides. The user can also play many videos. A clean preview indicates the file is intact. A garbled or missing preview usually means newer data has overwritten part of the file and it may not come back complete. Since preview is free, the user can make this check before buying a license.
Saving recovered files
The user ticks the files to keep, clicks Recover and chooses a destination folder. PandaOffice Drecov expects that destination to be on a different drive or partition from the source. Writing recovered data back to the same card, USB stick or disk can overwrite other deleted files that have not been restored yet. Without an active license, the Recover button opens a purchase prompt instead.
The user can store finished scans in the scan history and load them again later. They can then recover more files from the same drive without repeating a long deep scan.
File types covered
Drecov recognizes more than 3,000 file formats. The main groups are:
- Documents: PDF, Word, Excel and PowerPoint files
- Photos: JPG, PNG and HEIC, camera RAW formats such as CR2, NEF and DNG, and PSD files
- Video and audio: MP4, MOV, MKV, AVI, MP3, WAV and FLAC
- Archives and disk images: ZIP, RAR, 7Z, ISO and VHDX
- Email data: PST, OST, MBOX and EML
- Databases and system files: Access databases, Parquet, EXE, DLL and font files
