Packet Capture (cStor®) vs PhotoRec: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros and cons, compared head to head.
Packet Capture (cStor®) is a commercial digital forensics tool by cPacket Networks. PhotoRec is a free digital forensics tool. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best digital forensics fit for your security stack. Independent and vendor-neutral: we never sell rankings.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of NIST CSF 2.0 coverage, core features, integrations, company size fit, here is our conclusion:
Enterprise and mid-market security teams investigating protocol-level incidents will find Packet Capture (cStor®) invaluable for its lossless capture at 10–200 Gbps paired with petabyte-scale persistent storage, letting you replay and forensically analyze traffic weeks or months after compromise. The onboard indexing and Wireshark integration mean you're not shipping raw PCAPs offsite for analysis; incident response happens at wire speed with full packet fidelity. This is deliberate forensics tooling, not a detection platform; if you need real-time threat hunting or automated anomaly flagging across the network, you'll want this feeding data to a separate NDR layer.
Forensic investigators and incident responders who need to recover deleted files from seized devices or failed storage will find PhotoRec invaluable because it works offline, requires no installation, and recovers data from dozens of file systems without proprietary dependencies. The tool has recovered files across Windows, Linux, Mac, and legacy systems for over two decades with zero licensing friction, making it the default choice when you need results fast and cheaply. Skip PhotoRec if your mandate includes chain-of-custody reporting, automated triage of recovered data, or integration with commercial forensic suites; it's a recovery engine, not an investigation platform.
