@11 AJ Cote What are you trying to say? Try straight talk
hopefully with so facts.

If it is a warez crack then it is illegal.

One possibility is this:
• Software developers do not always have a large number of in-house full time program coder employees because staff overheads are high.

• Software developers subcontract out software projects or outside vendors bid for one of its projects.

• An outside vendor won the tender to write a recovery software for Mareew. They used a "boiler plate" program code previously used to develop software for other clients e.g. DiskInternals.

• There was some inadvertent mistake in the program coding which they forgot to clean up for the new client, Mareew. Hence karl was able to discover the error.

#11, AJ Cote: A software dev companies business ethics is an indicator to how well their personal ethics is working, a developers personal ethics is our only protection against unethical programming practices like spyware, adware or other trojan activity malicious or not.
Just because a company or two sharing undesirable business ethics are offering their product here for free is not grounds to ignore the lack of ethics and give their setup program full adminastrative access to our machines! Willingness to install warez is a prime vector for malware/badware infection especially since you are unlikely to report the infection since it was aquired by doing something illegal in the first place! FREE software from an unknown source is not enough of an inducement normally, let alone when the vendors websites are collecting VAT and not providing a VAT registration number because the chances are they are not passing the collected tax on to the relevent government body. USA don't have a tax called VAT. The UK does but there is no UK company registration.
Let's look a little deeper...

whois diskinternals.com
Registrant Name: Alexay Babenko
Registrant Organization:
Registrant Street: Titova 3/9
Registrant City: Lugansk
Registrant State/Province: LG
Registrant Postal Code: 91055
Registrant Country: Ukraine
Registrant Phone: 5051336

whois mareew.com
Registrant Name: Andrey Mareev
Registrant Organization:
Registrant Street: kv. Zarechniy, 5/61
Registrant City: Lugansk
Registrant State/Province: Lugansk
Registrant Postal Code: 91016
Registrant Country: Ukraine
Registrant Phone: +380.380504768009

Andrey also owns theundelete.com and the-undelete.com too.

The Ukraine does have a VAT rate of 20% BUT most exports are VAT exempt, according to the reference websites on Ukraine VAT rules that I've read, so they probably should not be applying it for non-Ukraine customers!

This is completely unethical and raises questions of whether the software is actually a pirated 'warez.' Maybe some CEO or CFO trying to make some additional backend profits off of the company's intellectual properties while escaping the penalties and fines of the Sarbanes-Oxley act of 2002. Perhaps maybe it is not a selfish motive but a way of cooking the books before next quarters audit. Well, of course this is all speculation; conjecture by an over active imagination, and has nothing to do with the software quality and features, but definitely entertaining. (to myself) I don't come here for paid for but I am here for free! There is only one thing to do I guess... DOWNLOAD, INSTALL, and USE! Yes, Thanks for the warez!

#7 and to others, Software Or, Data recovery programs are nice in case the FAT Or, BOOT Table is corrupted? Or, When a HDD starts to Fail! Why not just do a complete backup of all your data now and then? External 2 TB Green Drives can be had for under $100.00! If you have a HDD HEAD CRASH you not going to recover anything off that drive anyway? Unless you send it to the manufacturer and pay upwards of $500.00 to attempt to get it back! When a HDD Starts to fail! They usually go very fast, Just the act of running this type of software usually will finish off the HDD and that's it! For virus attacks, Or, Corruption of the OS etc. Yeah this recover program and others work very good! But, For the Cost, Frustration, And Worry! I just Back my stuff up! My experience is these recover programs will save some to most of your photos maybe 50% of the time! The Backup Green Drive setting in my closet works 100% every time! Most Good backup software will let you just recover the files you need, Or, Want! So, You do not have to restore the hole drive unless you need to replace the drive because of failure? I know the software on GOTD, And many different brands are FREE! But, What are your UN-replaceable Photos worth? I had a drive Crash right after I copied about 200 Photos to it! So, They where not on my last back up! In that situation I used http://www.piriform.com/recuva to recover just those 200 photos ASAP! Then I replaced the HDD and Restored the rest of everything from my Backup Green Drive! Just saying! They have a place and a use! But! Sh8T happens! And when you just have to! No Way around it! Can NOT Loose them Photos! Save your Hair! And you Priceless Photos on a Backup HDD! I will Never be caught with out one again! Although I am still upset about a few Photo CD-ROM Disks that got Corrupted! Lost 500+ Photos! With some software I can SEE the photos are there! But, To date! None of these Software Recovery Programs can recover any of them to a HDD! I keep trying! Just for fun now! But, I Keep trying! (o; Have Fun Everyone! Take Care and Do a Backup Today! (o; Rick D.

Recuva is probably the best one out there that is free. Personally, I purchased ZAR and it has served me well.

@Karl. I would like to thank you once again for the helpful testings and excellent comments you are us every day, what is really not taken for granted. And furthermore your information about "reboot" in between saved me a lot of time and avoided tons of anger. Have a nice weekend.

when it comes to data recovery programs ,the more the merrier ;i have many free and non -free data recovery software installed on my pc including many data recovery software given for free here.i like to test all of them as if something bad occurs to the hard disk atleast
one of these software might ber able to recover lost or corrupted data where others fail.

Wow! I have to give Karl a lot of credit for his research. Selling an old version under a different name and company? What's up with that?

I have a question about both the companies Karl reveals... Neither of them are UK companies nor EU companies and as far as I can tell neither are VAT registered in the UK and therefore they are not legally entitled or required to collect/charge VAT(20%) Value Added Tax which is a UK HMRC taxation rate! With Diskinternals research the VAT is added in US$ too and takes the price, once you've removed the auto-added priority support, to $39.95
Mareew add the VAT on top of the $39.95 quoted here and take the charged price to $47.94!!! In UK it is illegal to list prices excluding VAT when the target customer is retail consumer and not a buisiness entity! I smell deception in product and company origin and versioning, pricing and potential if not probable Tax fraud!

@1 Karl

You are spending a lot of time for us. Thank you very much again and again.

Address and fax of diskinternals.com seem to be an USA multi-company Postbox office ("P.O. Box 34069 #381" and FAX 206-984-3919), e.g.

1 http://www.diskinternals.com/about.shtml tells
"Contacts
Pacific Business Centre
DiskInternals Research
P.O. Box 34069 #381
Seattle, WA 98124-1069
USA
FAX: 206-984-3919"

2 http://www.everstrike.com/contacts.htm tells
"Our Offices
Our U.S. address:
Pacific Business Centre
Att: Everstrike Software
P.O. Box 34069 #381
Seattle, WA 98124-1069
USA
FAX: 206-984-3919
Voice: +1-866-70-80-900
..."

Two free programs from British Convar forensic recovery specialists:
PC Inspector File Recovery
http://www.pcinspector.de/?language=1
and PC Inspector Smart Recovery (flash cards etc.)
http://www.pcinspector.de/SmartRecovery/info.htm?language=1

It's always useful to try several programs and "deep scan" or even better: backup in time!

The week can't be complete without a recovery offering. There are too many both free and paid so I will pass on this. Let me be among the first to suggest this one. It's free and portable here...

http://www.piriform.com/recuva

Finally a good, halfway decent giveaway! I may have to download and try this out! I just wish that the softwares below this giveaway, were free as well! But, just wishful thinking!

Installed and registered without problems on a Win 8.1.2 Pro 64 bit system.

An US(?) company with address.(*)

Upon start a not needed welcome screen...

Oops, the internal program name is "DiskInternals Flash Recovery" in the version 4.5.0. A quick Google search leads to the real company and shows, that the actual program is a version 5.1

http://www.diskinternals.com/flash-recovery/

Okay, this is a second hand shop, selling the old version from June 2012. Now I understand the welcome screen. It hides the identical DiskInternals interface.

Nothing bad about second hand shops! If the price tag is lower, but it is the same price as the actual version 5.1 of Diskinternals.

Well the second hand shop share the same address as Mareev, Inc.

Should this be a trick to "sell" an old version just under a another name. Okay...

This is a media recovery. It searched and displays only Photo&video.
The interface is clear and understandable, you can create a recovery snapshot, a mountable .ISO for lossless searching. You can do a deep search or a fast one. The program works quick, the results are shown in a good way.

In my test does what it claims. One of the many recovery tools, with an interesting "marketing" construction.

Dear Maarew Inc. programmer. If you spend so much time for a new Internet page, I would spend some minutes too, to rewrite the programs header. LOL

Uninstalled via reboot.

Have a nice weekend!



(*) I do no forensic research on given address...