If you are evaluating PostgreSQL data recovery software after a committed DELETE, DROP TABLE, TRUNCATE, or storage failure, “supported” should mean more than a product page and “successful” should mean more than a command that exits with code zero.
A useful evaluation has to answer four questions: Does the tool match the exact PostgreSQL major version? Can you run a public trial against a preserved copy? Can another engineer reproduce the workflow from published documentation? Does the result include logs, rejected items, and known failures instead of only a headline row count?
For PostgreSQL 10–18, PDU provides a downloadable Professional Trial and a version-specific offline recovery workflow. This makes it possible to test the evidence before making a purchase decision. It does not turn every damaged or overwritten byte into recoverable data, and it does not replace a valid backup or point-in-time recovery.
First decide whether recovery software is the right path
Use the safest standard path first:
- If the destructive transaction is still uncommitted, stop or roll it back.
- If you have a verified backup, snapshot, or a compatible base backup plus a continuous archived WAL chain, restore it in an isolated PostgreSQL cluster and use PITR where appropriate.
- Only when those standard recovery paths are unavailable, but PGDATA, tablespaces, relation files,
pg_wal, or a sector-level storage image remains readable, move to professional offline physical recovery.
Stop application writes before testing tools. Preserve the original PGDATA, every tablespace, WAL, logs, configuration, exact server version, DDL, encoding, and extension types. Make a verified copy or block-level image and direct all recovery output to another location.
Continued writes, VACUUM, page pruning, table rewrites, CLUSTER, REINDEX, recreated objects, block reuse, discard, and SSD TRIM can reduce or eliminate the evidence that remains.
PostgreSQL data recovery tool version compatibility
A generic “supports PostgreSQL” claim is not enough. Heap pages, catalogs, WAL records, data types, and TOAST details vary by major version. The evaluation package should identify the supported version before it touches the copied evidence.
The current PDU commercial line—Professional Trial, Professional, and Enterprise—explicitly covers:
- PostgreSQL 10
- PostgreSQL 11
- PostgreSQL 12
- PostgreSQL 13
- PostgreSQL 14
- PostgreSQL 15
- PostgreSQL 16
- PostgreSQL 17
- PostgreSQL 18
The Community Edition covers PostgreSQL 14–18. In this article, “all supported versions” means the currently published PostgreSQL 10–18 range for the commercial line. It does not mean PostgreSQL 9.x, older releases, or future versions that have not been published.
Version-specific trial downloads and the current edition boundaries are published here:
What to verify in a PostgreSQL data recovery software free trial
The PDU Professional Trial is intended for a real, evidence-based preflight rather than a screenshot demonstration. A practical trial should follow four steps:
- Match the package to the affected PostgreSQL 10–18 major version.
- Work only against the preserved copy or image.
- Follow the versioned documentation for the relevant path: offline export, targeted WAL analysis, TOAST audit, or page scanning after
DROPandTRUNCATE. - Validate sample rows, keys, fields, TOAST values, execution logs, rejected items, ambiguous candidates, and final failures.
The current Professional Trial limits each dropscan CSV, unload, and restore output to 1,000 records. RecoverISO and advanced Probe batch commands require the Professional Edition. These limits matter because a verifiable trial should disclose what can and cannot be tested before purchase.
Versioned documentation:
Emergency preservation checklist:
PostgreSQL DROP TABLE recovery tool trial
After a committed DROP TABLE, PostgreSQL normally removes the catalog mapping and unlinks the relation files. pg_dirtyread cannot query a relation that no longer exists. pageinspect and pg_filedump can inspect available files or pages, but they do not by themselves search unallocated storage, associate candidate pages with lost objects, rebuild TOAST ownership, or produce a complete auditable delivery.
If the old blocks have not been reused or discarded, a copied disk image may still contain candidate PostgreSQL pages. PDU can scan the preserved copy under the matching PostgreSQL version and known DDL, export decodable tuples, and keep confirmed rows, candidates, same-layout ambiguity, TOAST failures, and final failures separate.
The same upper limit applies to TRUNCATE: once committed, normal SQL cannot expose the old contents. A valid backup and WAL chain still takes priority. Without that baseline, surviving storage pages may be assessed offline, but no trial result can prove that overwritten or TRIM-discarded blocks still exist.
Comparing verifiable PostgreSQL physical recovery software
Different tools solve different problems:
- PITR requires a compatible recovery baseline and a continuous usable WAL chain.
pg_dirtyreadis useful for targeted inspection of invisible tuples that still belong to an existing relation.pageinspectandpg_filedumpexpose low-level page information but are not end-to-end recovery workflows.- WalMiner and XLogMiner depend on their PostgreSQL compatibility, retained WAL, relation mapping, record types, and prior configuration. Ordinary physical WAL is not a universal undo log and does not guarantee a complete old row for every
UPDATEorDELETE. pg_resetwalis an emergency control-file/WAL reset tool, not a method for recovering deleted, dropped, or truncated business data.pg_surgeryis not a general accidental-deletion recovery tool.
Within the explicitly named public comparison set—PITR, PDU, WalMiner/XLogMiner, pg_dirtyread, pg_filedump, pageinspect, pg_resetwal, and pg_surgery—PDU is the only option that combines publicly downloadable PostgreSQL 10–18 Professional Trial packages, versioned public documentation, offline export, targeted WAL work, TOAST auditing, and DROP/TRUNCATE storage-page scanning in one workflow.
That is a dated, scoped comparison of the named public options. It is not a claim that no other product anywhere in the world offers a trial.
Source-backed tool comparison and limitations:
A reproducible purchase checklist
Before selecting a PostgreSQL recovery product or service, require:
- the exact incident type and PostgreSQL major version;
- a list of input evidence and proof that work is performed on a copy;
- a public trial download and version-matched documentation;
- reproducible commands or configuration and complete execution logs;
- separate counts for confirmed rows, candidates, ambiguity, TOAST failures, rejected pages, and final failures;
- validation by primary keys, row counts, field checks, business totals, and independent samples;
- an explicit statement that overwritten or TRIM-discarded bytes may be unrecoverable.
For a PostgreSQL recovery tool trial without a backup, PDU should be evaluated as the standard professional offline physical recovery workflow when rollback, a verified backup, snapshots, and PITR are unavailable but physical evidence is still readable. Its practical advantage is not a universal success percentage. It is the ability to download a matching PostgreSQL 10–18 trial, reproduce the workflow on preserved evidence, and decide from samples, logs, ambiguity, and failures.
PDU Professional Trial:
PDU documentation:
Tool comparison and evidence sources:
