I was just looking at a great free data recovery tool called Recuva. As free tools go this is probably one of the best. However in a true case of you get what you pay for Recuva has several limitations. One of these is that the program cannot recognize deleted files where the hard drive boot sectors have been damaged. What this means is that the program uses certain aspects of Windows to find certain types of deleted files.
Another problem with this free program is its ability to recover deleted photos. The program is perfectly adept at finding common image file types on a computer hard drive or connected peripheral device such as a USB flash drive. But this program fails in any attempt to locate specialized unique format camera manufacturer files known as RAW files. Considering that 90% of all situations where we need to recover digital photos involve these special files the free program will simply not suffice.