Recovering data lost due to system malfunction or user error requires hours of work preceded by hours of research from unsuspecting victims. Educate yourself about possible ways to recover data from damaged disks and corrupted flash memory cards before the failure happens.
While there is no lack of data recovery tools on the market, downloading and trying one after another is the worst idea ever. A badly executed unsuccessful attempt to recover lost files can and does cause irreparable damage to corrupted data.
How would you choose the right data recovery tool to do the job? There are several criteria to data recovery software that you should be aware of. First, there are tools designed to recover your files and data, such as Office documents, archives, pictures and other stuff, and there are tools that repair the damaged disk structures such as the file system (FAT or NTFS), MBR and partition table. Note that the second class of recovery tools cares little about what happens to your data, often messing up with your files while repairing the damaged system structures.
Second, if you are new to data recovery, you need a tool that is as easy to use as...