LH Top 10: Free Computer System Recovery Tools

Your data's trapped on a dead computer. You lost your login password. You never wrote down the product key on a non-working Windows installation. Your Mac won't start.Don't pay the extortionists at the computer repair shop 800 bucks to get your data back or start up your dead computer. Plenty of free tools can help you and are available for download right now. Today we've got our top 10 system recovery picks which span operating systems but all cost the same: exactly nothing. Which one of these tools is right for you depends on your skill level, operating system and particular problem. Do yourself a favor and burn yourself a disc with a couple of these before the terrible day when you need 'em happens.

Lifehacker's Top 10 Free System Recovery Tools
Lifehacker photo gallery thumbnails require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click here to see the LH Top 10: Free System Recovery Tools photo gallery in a Javascript-enabled web browser.

Got any tales of victory or defeat with a free system recovery tool? Tell us about it in the comments. — Gina Trapani


Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <b> <i> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote> <a>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Images can be added to this post.
  • Each email address will be obfuscated in a human readble fashion or (if JavaScript is enabled) replaced with a spamproof clickable link.

More information about formatting options

To combat spam, please enter the code in the image.