Whats the best data recovery tool for windows / mac

You haven't said so I've assumed you're wanting to recover single files, not a whole system right?

For Windows I'd recommend the WinHex trial (not because it's particularly easy to use but it is free!) and running a search for the files you want, then exporting them and hey presto you've got your data back. It works fine as long as you know the file name (or at least part of it) and the file hasn't been gone so long that it's been overwritten. Another option is Photorec although I've never tried it on Windows, only Mac, and it isn't for specific files - it just pulls all files (deleted and non deleted) and splits them up into folders based on their file extension ready for you to browse through.

For Mac OSX probably Scalpel or photorec (again both free). They work in very similar ways but Scalpel allows you to specify the file type you want (though not the specific file name) whereas Photorec, as with Windows, just pulls everything. Otherwise MacforensicsLab/FileSalvage is excellent but you have to pay for it and as @prettsons said there is Stellar Phoenix but I've never used it.

The other thing with OSX is that every time you preview or print a text/image based file, it creates a PDF of that file, writes it to the disk and then marks it as a deleted file waiting to be overwritten so you might be able to dig it out that way if you use Scalpel or Photorec to pull out all PDFs

Both Windows and MAC are different platforms and you need different data recovery software for the same, for windows, Primarily developed for restoring files from windows (FAT and NTFS) partitions Kernel for Windows Data Recovery is a professional data recovery utility that can retrieve the deleted or lost files, folders from Windows partitions (FAT & NTFS). & for MAC, Kernel for Mac Data Recovery software has got the excellent ability to successfully recover files and folders, documents, images, pictures, music files, video files and other important items from the disk.

There are several third party Windows data recovery software available today which can be used for retrieving lost, inaccessible and permanently deleted files from windows partitions. These tools are the third party software that recover lost, inaccessible and damaged data from formatted as well as deleted disk partitions. Further, these tools provide accurate recovery of windows data from the damaged partitions one of them is Recoveryfix for Window Data Recovery. You can download free from here http://www.restorepartition.org/

Thanks Lucy

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