MikeR, Quite right and in addition to all that one should not even download the recovery program on the system to have files recovered from since there will be additional writes to the drive to simply download the file, let alone extract it if it's zipped and installing it which will involve writes to the users temporary folder as well as the installation writes propper... really, serious recovery software should have a WinPE option to avoid even executing the operating system from the drive with data to be recovered since windows is frequently writing event logs and performance logs to the system drive even when the users applications are doing no writes themselves. Ideally it should mount the drive with lost data to be recovered, if possible, in read only mode, and image the drive to a clean volume or an image file on a different known good drive and then use that image or imaged copy of the original drive to scan through so nothing is changed on the source drive and if that drive had bad sectors because it was failing then the heavy load of deep scan would occour on the image on a good drive and not hammer the final nails in the coffin for the failing drive.

MikeR,
Absolutely, if the drive that needs to be checked is your c-station I would even advise to take is out and check it separately cause even switching-on your PC always writes data to the main drive; update checks and the auto launchers etc. etc.

TK, I love reading your comments. Although they are way above me, I am sure you are right.
I must learn a lot of highly technical stuff about computers so that I can begin to understand them, and have just started, but what about the others like me, poor things?

MikeR, Re "on the same hard drive from which data is to be retrieved."

I do not understand why you make this remark now. When I install the giveaway, I clearly see this warning in RED:

"To make sure the data that you want to recover won't be overwritten, please do install this software on the target disk"



I understand that by the term "target disk" they mean the hard drive from which lost data is to be retrieved. Personally, I would call that the source disk. The disk where the recovered data are to be stored, I would call the target disk. But that is because I used to be a programmer.

krypteller, something went wrong with the bold and the word NOT got lost. The original text is

""To make sure the data that you want to recover won't be overwritten, please do NOT install this software on the target disk"

krypteller, It is not enough since downloading it to the target drive has already overwitten some sectors as did browsing this page or their website they should warn visitors to use a different machine to download and create a bootable disc or USB stick of their product and to add a destination drive to put the recovered files onto and then boot from the bootable media and then work on the target media to try and find the data to be recovered and saved onto the additional destination drive. But you can't do that can you as this software cannot create bootable media. So none of the way this software is deployed is gold standard best practice... that little warning at installation is too little and too late.
Not a safe design at all.

BTW Target is fine since it is the one you are going to be aiming the tool at. If you start using different terms like "source" then the corresponding antonym is "destination" not "target".

krypteller, "giveaway portable yourself on another computer with Cameyo."
And edit the portable, so that the data-map is not written to the standard, c:drive

Ootje, thanks. I always do that. And thus forgot to mention it.

krypteller, I do like dd it is a very useful command even under windows ... the default program has one failing as far as the uses I have made of it in that it stops with an IO error on experiencing a bad sector on the source drive, making it less useful in cloning a failing disk to a same geomitry new disk to then work on rebuilding the file system or recovering files prior to a re-installation if the rebuild is unsuccessful. I am aware there is a forked port that is IO error tolerant that can be configured to ignore and replace with a blank sector every bad sector in source drive but that is the exception not the norm.

I do accept that certain groups of people do misuse words to the point that they become an accepted use in that context but source and destination are more accurate as they directly imply direction and are antonyms of each other. While a target is something you may aim for but do not necesarily reach or hit and sometimes overshoot.

Hadrianus, oh dear, I apologise if it did not machine translate properly due to the typo this browser lacks a spell checker facility, I'm sure you managed to figure it out eventually :)

Ian, About does not mention anything about this:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/dsycu1pkzkups06/AboutTaal.png
"Annual" only seen at the site for getting a code:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mrdq8odpxgsziow/Codeaanvraag.png

Sig Lane, you need password recovery software for that, today's offering in a data recovery program, which is very different. If you say what the password if for, maybe someone might be able to point you in the right direction or if you have only recently lost the password doing a system restore to a previous version, from before your password went AWOL might restore it.

Robert, looking for best and fastest software or solution to recover lost password for a Truecrypt file.

Sig Lane, No this will not recover loast passwords UNLESS the passwords were stored in a recently deleted data file you can read if it can be undeleted. What sort of passwords do you want to recover? Some are simple to recover and can be revealed in the program storing them like browsers internal storage of web site login credentials. Some software uses alorithims that are easy to brute force like MS office files password protection, or the old zip password but others are near impossible in this lifetime like ZIP AES-256 or RAR and ARJ archives or NT-Login passwords cannot be brute forced but can use rainbow files to reverse the hash files to common passwords. Programs that claim to recover windows login passwords invaribly are lying as all they can do is remove the password authentication from an account which is obvious then that the account has been compromised since you will not have the original password to put it back when you are finished and the protected store encrypted from the login passwords hash will be wiped and all the private data in it will be lost too.

George, do you hav a few millenia of spare computing time to try and brute force the key?

Wooo, lower right, in the pop-up window when you run the unregistered version