R-Studio is a data recovery program from R-Tools Technology for Windows, macOS and Linux. It retrieves deleted files, files lost after formatting or partition changes, and files left behind on damaged, corrupted or unknown file systems. It works with local disks, networked computers, disk images and RAID arrays. R-Studio is sold commercially; its demo mode runs every recovery step but will not save recovered files larger than 1 MB.
Opening drives and scanning for lost data
R-Studio lists every physical disk, partition and image in its Drives panel. When a logical disk still has a readable file system, double-clicking it shows its folders, including entries for deleted files. Recovery can start right away.
When the file system is missing or badly damaged, R-Studio runs a Drive Scan. The user sets the area to read, in bytes or sectors, and chooses the file systems to look for: FAT, exFAT, NTFS, ReFS, Ext2/3/4, XFS, HFS/HFS+, APFS and UFS. A scan can be stopped and resumed later, or repeated on unscanned areas only.
Results appear as colored rectangles, one per recognized partition. The color shows whether R-Studio found boot records, file entries or both. Users can save scan results to a .scn file on another drive and reopen them later, avoiding the need to repeat a long scan.
Signature search for known file types
An optional extra search looks for files by their internal signatures, such as JPEG images or Office documents, rather than through file system records. Matches go into a separate Extra Found Files group. It recovers only unfragmented files, but it is the only way to bring back deleted files from HFS, HFS+ and HFSX volumes. Users can narrow the list of types to speed up the scan or define their own.
Selecting, previewing and recovering files
Users can mark files across folders or locate them with file masks, regular expressions and a search that can also find previous file versions. A previewer shows picture thumbnails, document content and video, which helps estimate the chances of a successful recovery.
The Recover dialog sets the output folder and decides whether R-Studio recreates the original folder path. It also decides whether the program restores alternate data streams and security or extended attributes, recovers file system metafiles, or skips files that contain bad sectors. Output must go to a different disk.
Disk images and failing drives
R-Studio can image any object in the Drives panel and then scan and recover from the image as if it were the original disk. An image can be an exact byte-by-byte copy or a compressed image compatible with R-Drive Image. The compressed image can be split into parts and protected with a password or AES encryption. A scan can run during imaging, and an interrupted image can be resumed.
Besides its own images, R-Studio opens VMDK, VHD, VHDX and VDI virtual disks and images made by DeepSpar Disk Imager. Cloning straight to another physical disk is part of the Corporate, Technician and T80+ licenses. Multi-pass imaging is a Technician feature. It reads the healthy areas of a damaged drive first and returns to the problem sectors later.
RAID arrays and volume managers
R-Studio rebuilds RAID arrays virtually from the member disks or their images, without writing anything to them. The user places the members in order and enters the block size, offset, block order and parity positions. For RAID 5 and RAID 6, the user can instead let R-Studio detect these settings. Supported layouts include RAID 0, 1, 4, 5 and 6, nested levels such as RAID 5+1, and custom layouts. A missing member can be replaced with a placeholder object, so a RAID 5 can still be read with one disk gone.
R-Studio automatically assembles Windows dynamic disks, Storage Spaces, Apple software RAID, Linux mdadm and LVM volumes, even when their metadata is slightly damaged. BitLocker volumes and encrypted APFS volumes can be opened with the right credentials.
Recovering data over a network
With a network-capable license, R-Studio connects to R-Studio Agent running on another Windows, Mac or Linux computer. That computer’s disks then appear as if they were attached locally. The agent can be installed, run portably from a USB drive, or booted from emergency media on a machine that no longer starts. It works over a LAN, VPN or the internet, and recovered files can be saved on either computer.
Editions and additional tools
R-Studio Standalone covers local recovery on a single operating system. Corporate adds network recovery with agent licenses. R-Studio Technician is a permanent license for commercial recovery services and covers all three platforms. It adds a portable version, parallel tasks, a forensic mode, E01 and AFF formats, and support for DeepSpar and PC-3000 imaging hardware. T80+ is a time-limited license that runs for a fixed term from activation. Users can upgrade it to the Technician package before it expires.
Each package also includes R-Studio Emergency, which boots from USB or CD on a computer that will not start. It needs its own activation key. R-Studio also has a hexadecimal editor for raw disk and file content, S.M.A.R.T. drive health monitoring and a secure wipe function.
