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Data recovery software suggestions?

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iphigenie:
Spinrite is not all FUD to me. Spinrite managed to recover a huge amount of data of a drive which was dying on me and was erratic, and could not be read from any other way. It also once recovered a lot of files for me on a drive where the whole partitioning had gone wrong. Both were a long time ago, but still. I also used to to recover files of a drive in a laptop which had been badly damaged and couldnt run long enough in windows to run any of those easier tools.

Spinrite doesnt make sense when your drive is fine and windows still runs and these other tools can actually run. And when the reason you have lost your files is either deleting them or something overwriting them, all of it within the normal working of your OS. Spinrite is aimed at a different situation.

Not had to use it much since as I have better backup policies in place, but will continue buying new versions until I can no longer remember why I am so grateful to it.

rjbull:
For undeletion, I don't think Recuva has been mentioned yet - see Appaholic's blog post.  Freeware - well, donationware  8)  by the CCleaner people.

For getting stuff off damaged drives, there's Roadkil's Unstoppable Copier, mentioned on TinyApps, though I didn't have much luck the only time I tried it.

brahman:
Rjbull already mentioned it, but here is some more information:

Usually the free undeleter are bested by their commercial counterparts, but this has changed in recent weeks.

One of the best undelete file utilities I have found is the new Recuva.

It is incredibly fast, yet accurate and gives detailed recovery information. :up: You can also make it show a directory view of undeleted files, which is very nice. Also it restores files to their original date, which is a feature that when missing annoys me mucho.

I took part in their beta and believe me those guys are very serious about their software! It has gone through innumerable betas before they even released it into public beta and then more and more until it went final. And you don't see it, because they keep their extremely sophisticated software simple by design. Of course free is very nice also!  :Thmbsup:

You know them probably, because they are the publishers of Crap Cleaner, which by the way is in RC status for version 2, and it is very, very good also. Completely portable now, no dependencies and even faster than the previous version, something I have thought to be impossible but they did it! Tip for upgrader: Copy your old winapp2.ini (the 2 is the important number here) to your new ccleaner folder.

Please let me know how Recuva stacks up to your other file recovery software.

I have heard very good things about Restorer v3. A freeware alternative to this program may be the very capable version 1 of Handy Recovery, which is still being given away as a service, while the higher versions (v4 now) are commercial.

BTW another favorite undeleter is BacktoLife for TC, which works seamlessly in Total Commander and therefore earned this status for pure convenience.

I also looked at CD Roller mentioned by Darwin in another thread and it seems to be a truly capable program.

If you can settle for a little bit less of bells and whistles I would consider another freeware CD Recovery.

Also all of these are very nicely complemented by the new v3 beta release of freeware standby Roadkil's Unstoppable Copier, which has enhanced its data recovery functions quite a bit. It has done wonders for me when recovering big multimedia files from DVD which had a few bad bytes in them (oh so common these days when you go over 4GB capacity on DVDs). Also take a good look at his other utilities: The only freeware REVERSE cloning program known to me (important on a failing HD, because the reverse cloning is easier on the failing hardware and you can encircle an area of bad sectors from front and behind).

Spinrite I have found a bit tricky. It used to be a life saver in the pre-IDE days, but nowadays I think HDDRegenerator is a little bit easier on the hardware while doing the same if not better task but more gentle on the drive. But really: If Spinrite reports any anomally, data should be moved ASAP and the drive retired IMHO. Both these programs cost quite a bit.

Regards,

Brahman

mwb1100:
I have heard very good things about Restorer v3. -brahman (August 31, 2007, 05:57 PM)
--- End quote ---

I recently had another opportunity to attempt recovery from a drive with a head crash using Restorer 2000 v2.  The bad news is that v2 could not recover the data; the good news is that after an inexpensive upgrade to v3, all the files that were important were successfully pulled out of the image file that v2 had made (imaging the drive took about 30 hrs due to the number of defective areas).

I gotta back up that machine more often than once a week...

brahman:
Hi mwb1100,

glad you got your data back!  :Thmbsup:

Could you elaborate on the imaging facilities of Restorer?
Can it do reverse cloning? Skip over defective areas? Long reads? Clone the physical drive even when the MBR is corrupted?  :feedback:

Usually professionals do not use Windows based programs for cloning, because Windows prevents software to have direct disk access. Therefore it will be impossible to mount a drive that is not recognized by the BIOS. (An exception is the very professional and expensive ($3000+) PC3000, which actually uses its own PCI board as a separate controller to attach drives too (not telling Windows that this is a drive controller) thereby allowing its own software complete GUI control over everything.)

Regards,

Brahman

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