How to Fix Recuva Deep Scan Stuck or Freezing Issues

Issue: Recuva Deep Scan Stuck

Some Recuva users have reported that the program can get stuck or freeze during a deep scan of a hard drive, USB flash drive, or memory card. The progress may stop at 0%, 16%, 25%, or even 100%. According to a user on the forum.piriform.com Recuva forum:

"I'm running a deep scan on an external hard drive of around 600 GB with Recuva. After about an hour, it found tens of thousands of files but still shows 0% complete and estimates eight more days to finish… How long does a deep scan usually take in Recuva? I suspect the deep scan in Recuva might be stuck."

As one of the best data recovery software for Windows, Recuva is the go-to choice for many users when they experience data loss on hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, digital cameras, and other storage devices. Like any other program, Recuva can also freeze or get stuck while running, especially during a deep scan.

What is Recuva Deep Scan? Recuva Deep Scan is an advanced feature in the data recovery software Recuva. It is designed to perform a thorough search and recovery of deleted or lost files from hard drives, USB drives, SD cards, and other storage devices. When standard scanning fails to locate files, the Deep Scan examines the drive sector by sector, looking for remnants of the file system to increase the chances of finding missing files. This process may take longer, but it offers a more comprehensive search result.

A deep scan, also referred to as a full scan, is available in virtually all data recovery software, not just Recuva. Another feature that often comes along with a deep scan is called a "quick scan." To better understand the concept, let me explain both.

• Quick Scan is the simplest way to search for files on a selected drive, as it looks for deleted entries only.
• Deep Scan includes the Quick Scan phase and the process of searching for lost files in unallocated clusters by file headers and tails. In short, Deep Scan can find more files, including existing ones, RAW files (files without specific names or paths), and so on.

Thus, if users do not find what they are looking for in a quick scan, they will opt for a deep scan.

How long does the Deep Scan in Recuva take?

There's no specific answer to “How long does Recuva deep scan take?” Why? Because the time it takes for a deep scan to complete depends on the size of the partition/disk you've selected, the number of files stored on it, and the condition of your hard drive. As such, it's normal for a deep scan to take several hours for larger disks. In extreme cases, data recovery software might take days to finish scanning.

Why is Recuva's deep scan getting stuck?

If you're scanning a large drive with many files, consider waiting longer, as scans can take hours in this case. To check if Recuva is running correctly, open Task Manager and look at the values for “CPU,” “Memory,” and “Disk.” If these values are changing, Recuva is running and hasn't frozen.

If Recuva's Deep Scan is taking an unusually long time, and it's still stuck on Stage 1 after several hours, or you're convinced that it's frozen, this could indicate that the program is overloaded, or there might be some issues with the disk or partition, such as bad sectors.

How to fix the Recuva Deep Scan getting stuck issue?

Depending on the possible causes, there are three methods to resolve the Recuva deep scan stuck issue.

Method 1: Force-quit Recuva and Reconnect the Hard Drive

The simplest fix for a freeze is to refresh the software.

Step 1: Right-click on any empty space on the taskbar, and select "Task Manager."

Step 2. Click on “Recuva” > “Abort”.

Step 3. Reconnect the drive you want to scan and make sure it's recognizable by Windows. (If the hard drive is not recognized, fix the issue first.)

Step 4. Launch Piriform Recuva and restart the deep scan.

Method 2: Fix Disk Errors and Restart Deep Scan

Bad sectors on the disk inevitably slow down the deep scan. The more bad sectors there are on the disk, the slower the deep scan will be. Therefore, you can speed up the scanning process accordingly by fixing bad sectors before scanning the disk.

However, bad sectors are of two types – logical and physical. The former can be repaired using tools like chkdsk. Unfortunately, the latter can only be masked by third-party software.

Method 3: Choose an Alternative to Recuva

The last resort would be to use an alternative to Recuva, the Tool Data Recovery Wizard - Tool Data Recovery. Tool Data Recovery software outperforms its competitors in scanning speed, recovery quality and success rate. Below are the results of 5 popular data recovery tools scanning the same hard drive on my PC.

As you can see, Data Recovery Wizard takes the least amount of time to complete a deep scan and finds the most files. Wouldn't it be a good alternative when Recuva gets stuck or frozen during a deep scan?

When you select a drive to scan, the tool's Data Recovery Wizard starts with a quick scan, and then automatically initiates a deep scan. Unlike Recuva, you can recover files using the tool while the scan is in progress. Also, you can stop the deep scan anytime.

Three steps to recover your files:

Step 1: Run the Data Recovery Wizard on your computer. Select the disk where you lost your files, then click "Scan." If the lost files were on an external storage device, connect it to your computer first.

Step 2. The software will quickly scan the deleted files and then automatically perform a deep scan to find more lost files. Once the scanning is finished, you can use the "Filter" to quickly filter files of a specific type.

Step 3: Click on the “Preview” button or double-click the file to view it in full. Finally, select the desired files and click “Recover” to save all your files at once to another secure location.

If the Tool Data Recovery Wizard also gets stuck during the deep scan, you can refer to the respective guide to solve this issue, or reach out to our support team (support@tools.com) for assistance.

Bottom line

When Recuva gets stuck during a deep scan, you first need to determine if it's truly frozen or just taking a long time due to scanning a large drive. If it's indeed stuck, you have three methods to fix the problem. Resort to a Recuva alternative without hesitation when the first two methods fail or when you find that Recuva isn't working as expected, and enjoy a fresh experience.