RecoveryRobot Pro is a single file app -- 2 uninstall files are added to the program's folder on install -- a log file May Be added after 1st run. The registry gets a new uninstall key, and a key's added for the app: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SharpNight] . The registration or activation number is stored in the registry. While the app is otherwise portable, you'd have to attempt activation when 1st run on a copy of Windows where it wasn't installed & activated, *& hope it worked*, or possibly save the registry key & import it before 1st run. RecoveryRobot Pro Will Not run in a WinPE environment -- you cannot boot to a WinPE USB stick for example and run the app -- so you'd have to add it to something like a Windows To Go drive if you wanted to use it that way.
The way this file recovery stuff works...
A file system’s used with/on storage media, including hard drives, and it keeps track of the small chunks of data that make up the individual files stored there. When a file is deleted, it’s the records of what data makes up that file that is deleted, not the data itself. Recovery software looks at all of the data *currently* stored, and then tries to assemble the small chunks of data into files. I emphasized *Currently*, because there’s nothing preventing the data that makes up a deleted file from being overwritten, and when that happens the file’s gone forever.
So the most important thing when you want to recover a file or files, is Do Not write to the storage where their data is stored. When the data you want to recover is stored on an internal hard drive, often the best way to assure nothing is lost is to turn the PC/laptop off with the power switch, then booting to the USB stick created with your backup software, create a full image backup or clone, *including the drive’s free space*, that you can later run recovery software on. That’s more important if the drive with the lost files is an SSD, since they have an automatic function that’s called Trim to clear leftover data from deleted files. You can also remove the drive with the lost data and connect it to another laptop or PC, or if you have more than one OS installed [e.g. dual boot] you can go into the other OS, or you can boot to a USB stick or drive with an OS installed.
When they say don’t install recovery software to the drive with the lost files, the reason is because installing software means writing to that drive, & potentially overwriting what you want to recover. You can of course install the software beforehand, but, you’d still have to run that copy of Windows to run that software -- just running Windows means writing to the drive where it’s installed, and if that’s where the lost files are, that’s something you don’t want to do. If the recovery software is portable, that means you can run it using any copy of Windows without installing it, so you could run *another* copy of Windows to recover files from a drive partition with Windows on it. Or if you already have another copy of Windows, you can install the software there too while it’s on GOTD. Of course, there are a few catches…
It’s not trivial to remove a hard drive so that you can connect it to another PC or laptop, e.g. using a USB drive dock, and run recovery software there. You can buy a 2.5” SSD [they start at ~$20] and put it in an external USB housing [they start ~$5], and use the free Rufus app to create a Windows To Go drive. Once you get it to boot & working with your PC/laptop, which itself may not be trivial, you can install or use portable recovery software. You can download & install the win10 ADK [~3 GB] so that you can create a WinPE USB drive, which will boot and run a mini version of Windows, though it may take work to get it booting with your PC/laptop. And you might be able to install *some* recovery software while running that copy of WinPE, and you can run *some* portable recovery apps [NOT RecoveryRobot Pro]. You might be able to find recovery software that has the option to create a bootable USB stick that includes the recovery software, but there’s no guarantee that it’ll boot using your PC/laptop – that sort of thing’s often iffy. You can create another partition or add another hard drive and install a 2nd copy of Windows just for this and other maintenance [or emergency] tasks, which might actually be the easiest route in the long run.
That all said, the best option is to store any of your files on another partition – not the one where Windows lives – so you don’t have to worry about Windows itself overwriting anything, and you can run as many recovery apps as you want, one at a time, while you do other stuff. Otherwise the first option I wrote about may be the best, where you’d restore a complete partition backup, or create a clone of the partition with the lost files, either way *including free space*, on an internal or external conventional [not SSD] drive. If the lost files were originally on an SSD, you would not have to worry about Trim. If the lost files were on the Windows partition, you wouldn’t have to worry about overwriting the data.