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DiskTuna DFR - Deleted File Recovery Portable 1.0 Giveaway
$6.95
EXPIRED

Giveaway of the day — DiskTuna DFR - Deleted File Recovery Portable 1.0

A lightweight and portable undelete utility.
$6.95 EXPIRED
User rating: 76 47 comments

DiskTuna DFR - Deleted File Recovery Portable 1.0 was available as a giveaway on November 27, 2016!

Today Giveaway of the Day
$39.90
free today
Burn files and folders to any kind of disc, burn image files on discs.

DiskTuna DFR - Deleted File recovery is a lightweight and portable undelete utility. File systems supported are FAT, FAT32 and NTFS.

DiskTuna DFR helps you recover deleted documents, photos, archives or any other file type from hard disks, removable drives, cameras memory cards etc.. Unlike some other deleted file recovery utilities, DiskTuna DFR tries to make deleted file recovery as simple as possible. DiskTuna DFR is fully functional shareware!

Key Features:

  • Extremely easy operation
  • A wide variety of filtering options
  • Excellent Image Recovery Preview. DiskTuna does not show thumbnails. Instead image previews (for BMP, JPEG and GIF) are generated from the actual data stream.

IMPORTANT NOTE FROM THE DEVELOPER
Extract files to a USB key. Run software from there. Do not save recovered files to the drive from which you are recovering. Do not save the software to the drive that you need to recover data from! Please, see the readme.txt file before you run the installation file.

The best improvement idea will be rewarded with a license for iRecover + a free JPEG repair. The next 4 improvement ideas will also get a free JPEG repair. Please, use the Idea.Informer widget below to submit your ideas!

System Requirements:

Windows XP and higher; requires administrative rights for direct disk access

Publisher:

Joep van Steen

Homepage:

http://www.disktuna.com/fdrhelp/

File Size:

5.14 MB

Price:

$6.95

Comments on DiskTuna DFR - Deleted File Recovery Portable 1.0

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Please add a comment explaining the reason behind your vote.
#12

Wow! So many suggestions were made while I was sleeping ;)

I will go though them and comment on each one individually.

I want to thank everyone for the feedback and valuable suggestions!

I have also made a google drive link available for those who emailed me about the GTOD setup wrapper not working. I have replied to all emails. Please contact me again if you didn't get my reply or if the google drive link isn't working.

Joep - joep@disktuna.com

Reply   |   Comment by joepvansteen  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)

Hi Joep,

Did you choose the best suggestion idea rewarded with a license for iRecover + a free JPEG repair and the next 4 improvement ideas rewarded with a free JPEG repair ?

Mike

Reply   |   Comment by MrMike  –  7 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#11

I use System Restore Explorer to recover files from restore points and find it works very well.

Reply   |   Comment by ilikefree  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

Hi ilikefree,

Yes, if you have shadow copies/previous versions of a file then that's better than any undeleter. It's like having a backup.

Joep

Reply   |   Comment by joepvansteen  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)
#10

cannot install, downloaded package does nothing after unzip

Reply   |   Comment by billg  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-1)

billg,
Do you use AVG Antivirus? If so, you need to temporarily disable it to do the install.

Reply   |   Comment by Joe  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

billg,

I believe then you click the setup.exe. Took a while to respond on my system as well.

If you can't get it to work, pls email me: joep@disktuna.com

Joep

Reply   |   Comment by joepvansteen  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#9

after hitting setup error message pops up and says cannot connect

Reply   |   Comment by Anthony Salvato  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

Anthony Salvato,

I believe then you click the setup.exe. Took a while to respond on my system as well.

If you can't get it to work, pls email me: joep@disktuna.com

Joep

Reply   |   Comment by joepvansteen  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#8

I couldn't get it to setup at all

Reply   |   Comment by alicia  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

alicia,

If you can't get it the setup to work, pls email me: joep@disktuna.com

Joep

Reply   |   Comment by joepvansteen  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#7

I haven't "tested" the product but ran it using a monitoring program and I can say that it seems to be truly portable- a rarity these days (nothing was even added to the Windows Registry). To the author I must tip my hat! Thank you joepvansteen and GOTD!

Reply   |   Comment by Trying 2 b Helpful  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)
#6

https://www.piriform.com/recuva

Works, free, what else can I say.

Reply   |   Comment by Robert  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-7)

Robert,

There is literally thousands of other things you could say. But it's ok.

Joep

Reply   |   Comment by joepvansteen  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)
#5

Useless or beyond my abilities :-)
Unzipped on c:\desktop for trial
Deleted one file (....exe from my e:\data partition, emptied recycle bin and immediately set the tunawhatnot to hunt for it. Search did not take long, offering a gigantic mass of retrievable files. OK, narrowed down to *.exe and date.
Dates starts in 2006 (probably when the recovery masterpiece was created). As I knew my file was from early this month I used during previous 31 days. The one single find was not for the file I wanted - so I'll send today's offer where it belongs - the bin.

Reply   |   Comment by Sigrid.DE  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)

Sigrid.DE,

Just because a deleted file can not be recovered, it doesn't make this or any other undeleter useless. It made it useless for recovering that particular file.

It is not a given that a deleted file can be recovered. It's something you can try using some undelete software.

Having an undeleter installed, means you have increased your chances of recovering a deleted file. Binning it decreases this chance again.

Reply   |   Comment by joepvansteen  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+14)

joepvansteen,

I agree, to a point. I'd think that if the file were deleted immediately after the install of the recovery program (which ever RC it was), it should be easy to find and recover. If ANY write to the disk after the file delete occurred, then that might drop the chances of locate and/or recover.

I guess a better test would be to install the file to a USB per their instructions and try the experiment again.

Reply   |   Comment by Pushmataha  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+4)

joepvansteen,
granted, but do you honestly believe that one particular file, within less than one minute deleted and emptied from the recycle bin cannot even be found anymore?
That is what I call failure in such software.

Reply   |   Comment by Sigrid.DE  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-1)

Sorry forgot to add, anything in the recycle bin can be retrieved.

Reply   |   Comment by Sigrid.DE  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)

Hi Sigrid.DE,

Well, all I can say is that I have seen that happen. Of course when I wrote the software, I have tested it thousands of times: copy a bunch of files somewhere, delete them (SHIFT DEL) and scan ...

All the software does is:

In case of NTFS: Parse MFT and gather ALL files marked 'not in use'. A file is either marked in use, or it's not. It's binary.

In case of FAT(32): Scan directory entries and gather all entries of which file name has first character replaced by E5h.

What was the file system on the drive you tried this on?

Joep

Reply   |   Comment by joepvansteen  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+3)
#4

Worked for me. Downloaded fine. Did a small test deleted 2 small notepad files from "D" drive, 1 to recycle bin and 1 permanently deleted and it recovered both.
But the files are simple files that were just deleted. There is no installation. It is just placing the files where you choose during extraction. So either choose a convenient place or take note of the default location.

Reply   |   Comment by C N  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)
#3

Download link via mail, ok, installed without problems. W10. started scan

Reply   |   Comment by guus  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-6)
#2

Successfully downloaded and extracted to my usb drive. As soon as I run setup.exe I get the error message "Setup Has Stopped Working". Will not install for me.

Reply   |   Comment by timb12957  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+10)

I disabled my anti-virus, then ran setup as admin. Installed successfully to my usb drive..

Reply   |   Comment by timb12957  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)

timb12957,

Can't do anything about that unfortunately, GOTD made the setup. I am not sure if it allowed for me to sent you just a ZIP file ...

Reply   |   Comment by joepvansteen  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

joepvansteen,
Some of the giveaways on this site have been provided without the GAOTD wrapper, so it apparently is possible for the developer to request that option.

As I mentioned in one of my other comments, the wrapper's pointless in this case anyway, as it does nothing to prevent reinstallation when there's no actual installer for it to protect.

Reply   |   Comment by Jim Stone  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+3)

timb12957, I haven't tried it yet, but my guess would be to try making a folder for it on the usb drive, downloading it to that folder, then extracting it to that folder before running setup.exe. Usually you need to extract files to the folder holding the zip file, even when it is not a portable application, and is being installed on c: drive somewhere. Hope that helps -- I'd like to know because I plan to try it later.

Reply   |   Comment by beans  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-1)

Dear joepvansteen,
We do not imply any restrictions on that :) We've made the setup to prevent unauthorized installations after the end of the giveaway, but you are always free to share the original installation file with our community if you feel that it is required. If you wish, we can replace the protected installation file with the original .zip archive. Please, contact the manager who arranged your giveaway and we will replace the files ASAP.

--
Always yours,
GOTD team

Reply   |   Comment by Giveaway of the Day  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+5)

Hi, Jim Stone

Okay, then ... Anyone having trouble using the GOTD installer drop me an email (joep@disktuna.com) and I can sent the file (or make it available for download).

Joep

Reply   |   Comment by joepvansteen  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+4)

All,

My contact form was broken (Yes, I did something wrong). Several people used to contact form to get in touch, but the contact form didn't sent their email address to me. So, I can't reply. I do not have an email address to reply to.

Please contact me again (fixed the contact form - or just email me at joep@disktuna.com)

Sorry about that!

Joep

Reply   |   Comment by joepvansteen  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)
#1

Why is it that every undeletion utility always provides those same don't-put-this-on-the-drive-you want-to-recover-from instructions without bothering to make it clear that that only applies if you want to recover files that were deleted before you acquired the software?

The issue there is that when the OS deletes a file, it marks the former contents of that file as free space so, whenever you write something to that volume, there's a chance that it'll overwrite the contents of the deleted file. It's therefore risky to add anything to a volume that contains deleted files you want to recover.

Unless this program does something stupid like write things to its install dir as it's working (and it certainly shouldn't need to do that), it should be perfectly safe to run it from the drive you're recovering from so long as you installed it there beforehand. In fact, it's a good idea to keep one or more undeletion utilities installed on your computer for this very reason. (Annoyingly, these sort of misleading instructions tend to stop people from doing exactly that because they give people the mistaken impression that it's not safe to run such programs directly from the computer's hard disk.)

Apparently, whoever wrote the instructions is making the unwarranted assumption that no one ever acquires the program until after they've accidentally deleted some file(s) that they want back.

In fact, the instructions provided above for this particular program are worse than usual in that they specifically tell you to put the program on a USB flash drive, which means they're making additional unwarranted assumptions regarding both the location of the deleted files and your hardware setup.

Reply   |   Comment by Jim Stone  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+15)

Jim Stone,

You are right! If you're not downloading this because you have just deleted a file you need back, then you can download and save it anywhere you want.

Thing is, IF you just deleted some files, I guess a straight forward instruction 'do not install bladibladibla' works better than describing all kinds of conditions and install instructions.

But, yes you are correct.

And I agree with the idea that it's a good idea to keep some undelete tools handy at all times.

Joep

Reply   |   Comment by joepvansteen  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+14)

joepvansteen,
"If you already have deleted files you need to recover, put this program on a different drive than the files were on" hardly strikes me as overly complex or "describing all kinds of conditions and install instructions".

My problem with the sort of instructions provided at the top of this page isn't that they're overly simplistic but rather that they're actively misleading.

As I said, they give people the mistaken impression that you can't safely run this sort of software from your hard disk.

Reply   |   Comment by Jim Stone  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)

Jim Stone, No. You do not install and run a program from the drive that you want to recover deleted files from because any activity on that drive can possibly overwrite the information that you trying to recover. Recovery of information depends on not having overwritten the information that you want to recover it has nothing to do with when the file was deleted.

Another point is fragmented files are difficult to recover because cataloging a fragment locations changed at the time that a file was deleted. Writing new information into the registry with drive activity further complicates file recovery.

Reply   |   Comment by kc4cop  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+4)

kc4cop, best form is to make an image of the drive that you wish to recover files from and work on the image rather than the actual drive. That is recover the files from your image. This is a safety factor to keep from writing additional files to the drive that you trying to recover files from.

Reply   |   Comment by kc4cop  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+7)

kc4cop,
I think you either failed to read my entire comment or failed to understand it.

It very much matters when the file was deleted relative to when you install the undeletion software because it's only risky to add new files to the volume after the file-to-be-recovered was deleted.

You can't safely install the program on that same volume if you already have a deleted file that you want to recover because the act of copying the program file(s) to the volume could potentially overwrite the very data that you want to recover.

On the other hand, if you already had the undeletion software installed on that volume before the file got deleted, it's perfectly safe to run it from there because doing that only involves file reads and those won't overwrite anything.

You understand?

(You do realize that disk activity in general does not necessarily overwrite anything, right? It's only risky to do things that actively consume free space, like creating new files or appending additional data to the end of existing ones.)


I have no idea why you mentioned file fragmentation or registry access, as neither of those have anything to do with the issue.

Reply   |   Comment by Jim Stone  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+3)

Hi kc4cop,

Just a quick remark on recovery of fragmented files:

When 'un-deleteting' from NTFS, file fragmentation is not an issue when doing a file system based (so not RAW of file carving) recovery.

When deleting a file in NTFS, the complete run-list of the file remains intact. As long as this info is available, and the actual clusters do not get overwritten, fragmented files on NTFS should recover okay.

Reply   |   Comment by joepvansteen  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+8)

Jim Stone, I'm thinking it might be a different story here because this is a portable app and is not installed on C:, as long as you don't try to recover files from the usb drive you put it onto.

Reply   |   Comment by beans  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-1)

Hi Jim Stone,

Make a suggestion ;)

English is not my native language. I am open to suggestions. What would be a good way to explain to not install/copy the software to a drive containing the lost files.

Joep

Joep

Reply   |   Comment by joepvansteen  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)

Hi kc4cop,

In general indeed the first rule with data recovery is: Create an image file (or clone the disk. Disk to disk, disk to image, doesn't matter).

Problem I see is that:

- Creating an image file of a 'live' volume will take time, and probably more time than
- Just scan the drive for deleted files and recover them.

If you want to go the image file route and the files are on a 'live' volume, you need to 'disconnect' the live volume ASAP.

Reply   |   Comment by joepvansteen  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+4)

beans, portable programs can, by definition, be run from anywhere, including C:.

Reply   |   Comment by Jim Stone  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-1)

joepvansteen,
Well, I already gave a simple example above, but I suppose we could get a bit more elaborate:

"If you already have deleted files that you wish to recover, you should not put this program on the same drive as those files, as the simple act of copying this program onto the drive could overwrite the very data that you want to recover. Put the program on a different drive, such as a USB key, instead.

If you're simply installing the program to have it available for future use, then it's perfectly fine to put it on drive C: (or anywhere else you please) and run it from there as needed."

Reply   |   Comment by Jim Stone  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)
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