Recent Posts

551

General Software Discussion / Re: Paragon Drive Backup+Recovery 10 Free - good full drive imaging tool

« Last post by MerleOne on November 06, 2009, 07:25 AM »

BTW, I tried Macrium Reflect 4 on the same Vista machine as the one I used Paragon B&R on.  I was impressed by the speed in full and differential mode (twice as fast in full mode).  I also noticed that the driver pssnap.sys is installed and runs all the time.  Last time I tried, when Macrium was offered by GAOTD in June 2008, this driver had some problems, but it was with last year version.  I will probably try it some more, to see if the problem has been solved.

552

General Software Discussion / Re: Paragon Drive Backup+Recovery 10 Free - good full drive imaging tool

« Last post by MerleOne on November 05, 2009, 10:37 AM »

I just performed a quick trial and got a big disappointement :

I installed Paragon B&R 10 Free, performed a backup of a 33GB Vista system partition, the resulting image was around 23 GB after 55 min.  But I couldn't mount the image within Paragon.  Worse, the extension chosen for saving the First cylinder special backup, .pfm, conflicts with a Vista Font tool.

So I got it uninstalled right away.

I tried instead Keriver Image 4, which was much faster, around 25min for the same partition, and the resulting partition is mounted right away.  I got it from  GAOTD a few weeks ago.

553

Living Room / Re: Open source remake of the classic game Elite

« Last post by MerleOne on November 02, 2009, 01:59 PM »

Hey, Elite worked first on the ZX - Spectrum !  With a clever optical device to copy-protect the game...

554

General Software Discussion / Re: Paragon Drive Backup+Recovery 10 Free - good full drive imaging tool

« Last post by MerleOne on October 31, 2009, 04:47 AM »

Just tried this free drive backup tool and was very impressed.  I normally use Acronis but that's becoming a very bloated expensive tool.  This paragon tool did a very good job, was easy to use, and has a nice bootable rescue cd builder in the program.  Was fast too.

If you don't yet have a drive imaging tool, or especially if you have family members with desktop/laptop/netbook computers, and want a legal free good drive imaging tool to install on their computer, i highly recommend this 

http://www.paragon-s...com/home/db-express/

(see attachment in previous post)

-mouser (October 30, 2009, 03:44 PM)

It seems that this new version offers differential backup, which is new for a free tool.  Is it quick ?

555

Found Deals and Discounts / Metaproducts Inquiry Standard is today (2009-10-30) on GAOTD

« Last post by MerleOne on October 30, 2009, 02:19 AM »

Must not be missed !

556

Living Room / Re: Is Website-Watcher 5.0.5 infected with Win32/Induc.A virus?

« Last post by MerleOne on October 26, 2009, 10:34 AM »

Sorry about this problem, it seems that there are two different discount coupons available. Both should now work until the end of the year...

Could you please try again and report back if it worked?

-aignes (October 26, 2009, 10:07 AM)

Sure !  Stay tuned...

Update : it works fine now.  Thanks !

557

Living Room / Re: Is Website-Watcher 5.0.5 infected with Win32/Induc.A virus?

« Last post by MerleOne on October 26, 2009, 09:32 AM »

I just tried the purchase process with the coupon for DC members and it is rejected.  It's the coupon given that expired in March 2009, described in the special user section (https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=17289.0).

558

Living Room / Re: Is Website-Watcher 5.0.5 infected with Win32/Induc.A virus?

« Last post by MerleOne on October 26, 2009, 09:25 AM »

Hello Aignes,

I am sure I tried the coupon for LWA a few days ago, and it didn't work.  I'll try again and post it here if it fails again.

Thanks for the good news !

559

Found Deals and Discounts / Chameleon Startup Manager Pro on GAOTD Friday 23rd, October

« Last post by MerleOne on October 23, 2009, 03:22 AM »

Title says it all.  I think this software was discussed here on DC a while ago...

560

General Software Discussion / Re: What is best program to create a DVD from any video file?

« Last post by MerleOne on October 22, 2009, 04:08 AM »

BTW, WinX DVD author is free for a few days (until Oct. 31st).
http://www.winxdvd.c...ecialoffer/oct09.htm

[I have not tried it]

561

General Software Discussion / Re: Quickest way to copy files from a surface-damaged HDD

« Last post by MerleOne on October 21, 2009, 07:03 AM »

Are you sure it can handle virtual drives?  I tried many tools such as active@filerecoverypro, Easeus Data Recovery, PowerDataRecovery, and they all want a "real" HDD to work on.  In that case, files were not really deleted, the filesystem was just slightly damaged.

562

General Software Discussion / Re: Quickest way to copy files from a surface-damaged HDD

« Last post by MerleOne on October 21, 2009, 06:56 AM »

Yet another update : I have almost completely solved my recovery problem, except for a small detail : the created drive snapshot image was not easy to use : only one folder appeared in the mounted virtual drive, and it was empty.

I tried Recuva from Pirifom, scanned the virtual drive in deep scan mode, asking to see only non deleted files, and I was able to recover all files.

The small detail is that some of these recovered files are corrupt, those who contained damaged sectors that were skipped during the imaging by snapshot.  And there is no easy way to tell which are OK and which are damaged, only by opening them in their respective applications. And even then, it may not show right away.

Anyway, that's better than nothing !

Thanks for your suggestions.

563

General Software Discussion / Re: Quickest way to copy files from a surface-damaged HDD

« Last post by MerleOne on October 21, 2009, 01:55 AM »

Just a quick update : the HDD is now quite dead, it won't be recognized by Windows any longer.  I guess that was to be expected, unstoppable copy being quite intensive.

Fortunately, I have a snapshot image, but that can be exploited only when restored onto a safe HDD, so I can run recovery tools from this restored HDD.

At that point I remembered what I should have done, or at least tried.  I mentioned I had tried Active@FileRecovery Pro.  There is a companion program, Active@Partition Recovery.  It can also make images that can later be processed with these powerful recovery tools.  Now I just hope the snapshot image will give the same result...

564

General Software Discussion / Re: Quickest way to copy files from a surface-damaged HDD

« Last post by MerleOne on October 20, 2009, 10:14 AM »

Just a couple things that occurred to me while reading this.

If the drive really is that damaged, the recovery window is rather small & experimentation can be fatal.

Given what you've tried so far, if it ain't completely dead by now...it probably wasn't that bad to start with.

So... Is there a specific reason you didn't just run CheckDisk on it? That would leave you with all copyable files (albeit perhaps less than you started with).

Granted it's not free, but I've had excellent results with RunTime Software's GetDataBack on both NTFS & Fat32 drives.

-Stoic Joker (October 20, 2009, 05:41 AM)

Yes, I wonder what a checkdisk /f /r would do, but my first impression is to get as much data from the source before modifying it in any way.

Regarding GetDataBack, I might try, but since it's not my data, and my friend is certainly not going to pay anything, I'd rather use already owned tools or free ones.

Thanks.

565

General Software Discussion / Re: Quickest way to copy files from a surface-damaged HDD

« Last post by MerleOne on October 20, 2009, 09:19 AM »

As I said previosuly.  xcopy will do this for you

xcopy c:\ x:\ /s /c /y 1>x:\out.txt 2>x:\err.txt

The errors will be ignored, but reported in the file x:\err.txt

Replace x: with the drive you want to copy to.

-awopbamboo (October 20, 2009, 08:50 AM)

As I said above, it works fine except that it takes ages when a single error is encountered.  It's something that seem to happen à filesystem level and xcopy apparently is no exception.  It's the recognition that there is an error that takes time.  After that xcopy just does it job, but I wish I could speed up the error detection process with some kind of clever utility.  So far I am sticking with Unstoppable copier with seems to be ... unstoppable.

566

General Software Discussion / Re: Quickest way to copy files from a surface-damaged HDD

« Last post by MerleOne on October 20, 2009, 08:45 AM »

Update : for the moment, I have given up with DRevitalize : much too long to repair sectors. Besides, I want to know which files are corrupt.  I have given another try to the freeware unstoppable copier and I get the best possible results, even if it is quite long when accessing hard to read files.  But it takes no CPU, so I can do something else at the same time.

567

General Software Discussion / Re: Quickest way to copy files from a surface-damaged HDD

« Last post by MerleOne on October 20, 2009, 06:43 AM »

I hope you ran DIXML in raw copy mode before experimenting with an application like DRevitalize

-f0dder (October 20, 2009, 06:27 AM)

I ran Drive Snapshot, but not in RAW mode.  Maybe I should use this RAW mode...

568

General Software Discussion / Re: Quickest way to copy files from a surface-damaged HDD

« Last post by MerleOne on October 20, 2009, 06:10 AM »

I had a couple of surprisingly good experiences with DRevitalize. If possible I'd suggest to make a backup of the whole disk first though, I'm usually using DriveImage XML in raw mode.

-yksyks (October 20, 2009, 04:45 AM)

Strange : after more than 50% check with Drevitalize 2.30, no single bad sector has been found.

Updated : finally, this is OK, default are at the end, I found them using HDTune.

569

General Software Discussion / Re: Quickest way to copy files from a surface-damaged HDD

« Last post by MerleOne on October 20, 2009, 04:47 AM »

I had a couple of surprisingly good experiences with DRevitalize. If possible I'd suggest to make a backup of the whole disk first though, I'm usually using DriveImage XML in raw mode.

-yksyks (October 20, 2009, 04:45 AM)

Will try that too, thanks.

570

General Software Discussion / Re: Quickest way to copy files from a surface-damaged HDD

« Last post by MerleOne on October 20, 2009, 04:46 AM »

Why not use 'xcopy' from the command line a /c  (ignore's errors)

i.e.

xcopy c: x: /c /s /b

c: being the drive to copy from
x: being the drive to copy to

-awopbamboo (October 20, 2009, 04:43 AM)

Will try that !

Update : /b doesn't exist in XP xcopy apparently
Update 2 : doesn't work either, as soon as an error is found, it takes ages to skip the file

571

General Software Discussion / Quickest way to copy files from a surface-damaged HDD

« Last post by MerleOne on October 20, 2009, 04:20 AM »

Hi,
A friend a mine has a very damaged 2"1/2 HDD.  The FAT32 fat system is reasonably OK, but several files have read error.  I just want to copy the files that are OK to a new safe location.  I have tried so far :

> Unstoppable copier
> Durable Copier
> Active File Recovery Pro
> DeadDiskDoctor

They all exhibit the same issue : when a damaged file is encountered, there is some kind of long timeout (several minutes) until the OS returns control and the file is declared as unreadable.  

Does someone know of a software, possibly free, that can skip damaged files without spending 5 minutes on each damaged one ?

I have also tried to perform a drive snapshot image, but when I mount the image, the important folder I want to backup appears to be empty.

Thanks !

572

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Sandboxie license at 51% off - $14.14 (Jan 15 only)

« Last post by MerleOne on October 15, 2009, 06:17 AM »

I am sure sure I 100% follow :
If the app you are using to capture (create) a favorite is launched within a sandbox and you don't extract it specifically, it will get lost when you clear the sandbox
If the App is non sandboxed (=run outside the sandbox, as a regular app), then it will stay.

573

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Sandboxie license at 51% off - $14.14 (Jan 15 only)

« Last post by MerleOne on October 15, 2009, 03:25 AM »

No, favorites or changed data is not lost until you clear the sandboxie your were using.  And you can recover *any* file created during the sandboxie session.  You can't easily, however, recover registry keys, which can be sometimes useful.

574

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Sandboxie license at 51% off - $14.14 (Jan 15 only)

« Last post by MerleOne on October 15, 2009, 02:22 AM »

It's on sale again on 20 Oct 2009

Sandboxie Personal License
Keep Your Applications In Safe, Secure Containers
Sandboxie creates safe space for unsafe activities, offering increased security, easy clean-up, and file management with ease. "
http://www.bitsdujour.com/previews/

Are there anyone here actively using this and find it useful, stable ?

-patteo (October 15, 2009, 01:59 AM)

Immensely useful and very stable. I only had a problem once with a given build that was quickly solved.

575

General Software Discussion / Re: What is best program to create a DVD from any video file?

« Last post by MerleOne on October 08, 2009, 08:06 AM »

Regarding the LG 492H, and WMV files : it simply doesn't read this format, so the question of FF/REW is irrelevant for this format.