Data Disk recovery software

[Contro]

I have an external seagate hard disk of  2 TB

Some days ago the unit don't go well and was not possible to read data.
I have used several utilities to check the disk with no errors and considerable usage of time.

I decided to format the unit and recover data after that

Now I can access the unit.

What are the best tools for this purpose ?

I remember testdisk and photorec to recover photos or images from flash drives.


Best Regards

Please only tested programs you have use in the past with good results.
I need the program to run under windows 8.1 or windows 7

[tomos]

Recuva is good in my experience for image/video files:
haven't tried it with other file formats.

[Contro]

Recuva is good in my experience for image/video files:
haven't tried it with other file formats.

-tomos (October 11, 2016, 04:11 AM)

I tried photorec for images too.
The disk to recover is a data disk.
Most of the content are multimedia files. But include some pdf, docx, etc.
 

[tomos]

If the disk is not working well though, what you want is to be able to copy the contents as quickly as possible.
I'm not sure that these recovery programmes are a good idea if the disk is in poor condition:

would creating a sector by sector image of the whole drive be a good idea first ?
Then you can mess around all you like with different recovery programmes, if the HD dies, you have a copy.

Disclaimer: I have not made a sector by sector image of a drive. I think it should have everything on it though (see if other people confirm that).

[4wd]

would creating a sector by sector image of the whole drive be a good idea first ?
Then you can mess around all you like with different recovery programmes, if the HD dies, you have a copy.

-tomos (October 11, 2016, 05:14 AM)

If you make a sector level copy you don't need the original HDD to recover from, just mount the image (or plug in the HDD you made the clone to) and perform the recovery on that - no need to stress the original HDD any further.

Try Recuva first, if it can't see them then try PhotoRec which is probably the best freeware data recovery tool out there atm - PhotoRec is not restricted to just images.

[michaelkenward]

Nothing flashy, it just works:

EaseUS Data Recovery Software to Recover Lost Files Back

Never pay list price. Sign up for the email and get the (every) weekend discounts.

[Contro]

If the disk is not working well though, what you want is to be able to copy the contents as quickly as possible.
I'm not sure that these recovery programmes are a good idea if the disk is in poor condition:

would creating a sector by sector image of the whole drive be a good idea first ?
Then you can mess around all you like with different recovery programmes, if the HD dies, you have a copy.

Disclaimer: I have not made a sector by sector image of a drive. I think it should have everything on it though (see if other people confirm that).

-tomos (October 11, 2016, 05:14 AM)

Recuva Pro does
I think the disk is in good health. Is under guarantee too. I don't know what happen.
I have lost two hard disk by little moves during work and now I fear everything.
It's time to think about a NAS....

[Contro]

would creating a sector by sector image of the whole drive be a good idea first ?
Then you can mess around all you like with different recovery programmes, if the HD dies, you have a copy.

-tomos (October 11, 2016, 05:14 AM)

If you make a sector level copy you don't need the original HDD to recover from, just mount the image (or plug in the HDD you made the clone to) and perform the recovery on that - no need to stress the original HDD any further.

Try Recuva first, if it can't see them then try PhotoRec which is probably the best freeware data recovery tool out there atm - PhotoRec is not restricted to just images.

-4wd (October 11, 2016, 05:23 AM)

May be a good idea.
Just because Recuva is not free. And the free version only repair some gigabytes. 2 GB I think.

The disk is 2 TB

[4wd]

would creating a sector by sector image of the whole drive be a good idea first ?
Then you can mess around all you like with different recovery programmes, if the HD dies, you have a copy.

-tomos (October 11, 2016, 05:14 AM)

If you make a sector level copy you don't need the original HDD to recover from, just mount the image (or plug in the HDD you made the clone to) and perform the recovery on that - no need to stress the original HDD any further.

Try Recuva first, if it can't see them then try PhotoRec which is probably the best freeware data recovery tool out there atm - PhotoRec is not restricted to just images.

-4wd (October 11, 2016, 05:23 AM)

May be a good idea.
Just because Recuva is not free. And the free version only repair some gigabytes. 2 GB I think.

The disk is 2 TB

-Contro (October 11, 2016, 08:26 AM)

The difference between Recuva Free and Pro is you don't get support with the free version and I think the Pro version offers to create a VHD before doing anything, something you can do for free with other tools.

Data Disk recovery software

The free version of EASUS is limited to 2GB of data recovery.