Hi,
as an alternative to the suggested programs:
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.
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!
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 looked at CD Roller 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).
Regards,
Brahman
