Best Photo Recovery Software FREE Download for Windows

If you deleted a bunch of images but now want to recover them, keep reading below to get the best free photo recovery software for Windows and try it out!

By @Ivy
Last Updated February 2, 2026

Losing digital photos can be one of the worst things, making you indulge in the pain of losing precious memories, especially for those photos that are collected over such a long time that you no longer recall them.

Luckily, with the help of professional photo recovery software for PCs, you can easily recover deleted or lost photos. Here in this guide, we will introduce you to the best photo recovery software for Windows 11/10/8/7, as well as comprehensive instructions about how to recover them.

What is the best photo recovery software?

 

“Can anyone give me some advice on the best software to use for recovering lost images? I have a hard drive that still works fine no damage or anything I just deleted a bunch of images from it and now realise I may still need them and there are a good few GB worth of them so I would appreciate any help. Thanks.”

- Question from Reddit

The best FREE photo recovery software for Windows 10

The professional data recovery software - AOMEI FastRecovery, released by AOMEI, a benchmark in the data recovery industry, is highly recommended. It helps you recover lost/deleted photos from HDD/SSD, external disk, USB drive, SD card, and any disk-based storage device. 

 It is such a user-friendly data recovery tool, and you can handle it in minutes. Without complicated steps, you can recover lost/deleted images within three steps. The following are the features and advantages of the AOMEI FastRecovery software:

AOMEI FastRecovery
Free Data Recovery Software for Windows
  • ✅Recoverable Scope: Recover data in any scenarios, such asaccidental deletions, disk formatting, system crashes, virus attacks, etc.
  • 2️⃣Scanning Modes: Perform a quick scan automatically and integrate Deep Scan for more thorough results.
  • 👍A wide range of image formats, such as JPG/JPEG/JPE, PNG, TIF/TIFF, HEVC/HEIC/HEIF, GIF, PSD, SVG, ARW, X3F, etc.
  • 🧬Flexible Layout: Organize and display deleted or lost files by Type or Path, allowing sorting across multiple options.
  • 🔥Highlight Features: Support file filter, search, preview, and crashed PC recovery, making recovery simple and efficient. You can even recover deleted files from hard disk without OS.
  • 👍Free data recovery, supporting up to 500MB.

Now, free download the Windows photo recovery tool for Windows 11/10/8/7, and keep reading to know how to retrieve deleted/lost images from Windows with it.

How to recover deleted or lost photos  in 3 steps

Here are the detailed instructions for the three-step photo recovery using AOMEI FastRecovery. If you want to recover the images from USB, external hard drives, etc., plug them into your computer, and follow the same steps below to make it.

Step 1. Find the drive and click Scan.

Open AOMEI FastRecovery on your computer > Find the location where the deleted photo is stored and click Scan.

Step 2. Search for the deleted photo.

AOMEI FastRecovery will run Quick Scan automatically to find all the recoverable data. Wait until the scan process to complete. Under the Type field, click Images > Date modified, Type, Size, or Path to locate deleted or lost images.

🌟Tips:
✅ Alternatively, click Path >Deleted Files/Recycle Bin/Existing Files directories tobrowse the deleted/lost images.
✅ For quick search, type specific file extensions, names, etc., in the search box.

Step 3. Select the target photo and click Recover.

Once found, double-click to preview deleted photos and select them. At last, click Recover and choose a new path to save the files. Otherwise, the data may be overwritten, causing permanently deleted files.

Besides photos, you can also make use of this recovery software to recover deleted/lost excel files, videos, audio, documents, and so on with no effort.

Bonus: backup Windows photos to avoid data loss

Hope you can succeed in recovering lost photos with the photo recovery software. However, you should note that recovering data from disk on your Windows using AOMEI FastRecovery is your final hope for retrieving deleted/lost data.

To avoid photos and other data loss on your computer, it is suggested to take some measures in advance, and backup files on Windows may be one of the most reliable ways. You can try another professional software from the AOMEI family - AOMEI Backupper Standard.

The powerful AOMEI Backupper Standard offers you three types of backup solutions to meet your backup needs, which are full, incremental, and differential backup.

Download Freeware Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7
Secure Download

Three steps to backup Windows images with AOMEI Backupper

Step 1. Launch AOMEI Backupper Standard and click File Backup in its main interface.

Step 2. Click Select SourceAdd Folder/Add File to browse and select the files or folders that you want to back up from your computer.

Step 3. Choose a backup destination as you like. You are allowed to back up your Windows data to any external hard drives, NAS network locations, or other locations as long as it can be detected by your computer. Finally, click Start Backup to start the process.

Conclusion

That’s all for the detailed introduction to the best photo recovery software - AOMEI FastRecovery. Hope you can get back all your deleted or lost photos and other types of files with it.

Meanwhile, you can also try AOMEI Backupper to back up selective Windows files to avoid data loss to some degree.