Hi, Thank's GAOTD.

Iwould like to know if this can recover files after a bad crash & windows has been re-installed.

Crikey- tell 'em it's broke and they're still installing?

Ready, Fire, Aim?

Check this out.
At posting 33 a person shows limited understanding about this software.
At post 39 the same person askes for advise on freeware options on recovery software, Then 2 hours he is back to post his advice at posting 67, check it out.
Some of the "experts here giving advice" are experts only in their own head...
At post 67 our Bulgarian friend is telling us best ever used software and not software but magic.
Be carefull they say be very careful, it’s dangerous. Read the instructions during the installation process.
What all that in 2 hours of looking at a program for the first time....Get real...The poster was asking for help furthe up the list at 39.

Limited Time Software isn't good for recovering software when you've lost everything and have to download the program again to use it only to realize that the trial or limited time availablility of the product no longer applies.

# 30

I tried to install it on a flash. Works but save the registration number the program wants it for every computer you run it on. You do not have to enter the code after using the program(I think).

From BuBBy: Each new computer will need the registration number, as those details are stored (or read from) on the computer the software is running on, and not on the flash. (ie. not a good candidate to run from a flash drive, compared to others that may not have a dependency on the windows registry.)

not only did i have to disable DEP on XP for this program to function, but it gave an out of memory, due to the fact that it isnt prepared for the maximum disk size XP can handle.

I have tried quite a few data recovery programs, and just a few months ago i discovered: EASEUS DATA RECOVERY Wizard Professional-V4+
this program changed my view on data recovery as it even restored deleted partitions its got a nice interface and is tops in my book.

#1, BuBBy, I tried some of the software you mentioned. Runtime Software GetDataBack is very expensive, and you have to get separate versions for NTFS and FAT. I tried the NTFS version, but it does a full sector-by-sector scan and was going to take several hours to complete, so I aborted it. iolo Search and Recover has that capability, but that's a desperate choice, when all else fails. Those types of scans attempt to find related data; your chances of finding anything recoverable beyond what a fast scan will find are almost zero. Next, I tried Convair PC Inspector File Recovery. It was terrible. It has a horrible UI, and listed most found files as being in good condition, when most were not recoverable. Then, I tried Recuva. It doesn't have the features of Search and Recover, and it's much slower, but for basic file recovery it performed well. I may try some of the others later.

From BuBBy: When it comes to data recovery, "expensive" is a very subjective criteria. Depending on how important a successful recovery is - and what value you place on getting your data back - some people might pay hundreds or thousands of dollars. Other people might just give up if they can't recover their data with a free tool. Regardless of which tool you use, a data recovery tool that you cannot rely on to recover your data is worth absolutely nothing. In fact it might even end up costing you (in lost time, or losing the data itself).

The fact that while a tool works, but that can take several hours to complete the job, is something that is harder to accept when you are "just testing". If you are in a legitimate DR scenario, most people will normally not mind waiting for a successful outcome. A speedy failure or inconclusive result doesn't help anyone.

I'm going to hook up my failed drives, a check if Search and Recovery can make heads or tails of them - (I haven't tried this product before, so I can't really comment). I'll update this post once I have done some more testing.

Update: iolo Search and Replace - looks like a much more capable program than SDR. From my limited 2 of 3 trial tests, it will identify delete files and recover without any issues that I struck. On a failed drive set (I prepared earlier) - a corrupted Hardware Based RAID 0 (Stripe Set without parity) - still it was only GetDataBack that could give me files back. Search and Replace came back with just "no partitions detected", whereas GetDataBack didn't care for the partitions - it just scanned at the sector level. GDB did take 50% longer to scan than iolo S&R, but at the end of that period, I had something I could start to recover with GDB.

I used PC Inspector on one occasion, and it worked well.

Bubby, hi mate ;-)

I have a system here almost entirely dedicated to recovery; many of the alternative programs I see mentioned here are on that system. One tip: Try to find "Find and Mount", it even helps with partitions that are gone, or not detected by the OS.

In the free version the transfer rate is limited, but further it is fully functional. Last known link and version:

http://www.findandmount.com version 2.2

Hope this helps you and others to recover data.

A few remarks:

1. Move is actually copy + shift-delete
2. If a file is shredded by a decent shredder, then it's gone.
3. Same goes for hard disks that have been security-erased! (ERASE!)
4. If the hard disk is encrypted: Before you even can think about
recovery, you'll have to get through the encryption first, then
proceed as with a normal system. If you can't get through
encryption then you're really up the creek without a paddle...
I.o.w. all is lost.
5. Even if the recovery software permits this: NEVER, EVER RESTORE
TO THE SAME DRIVE AS THE ONE YOU'RE RECOVERING FROM!!! In the
process you could overwrite sectors still in use by other deleted
files!
6. Recovering large quantities of data is a lengthy process, both in
finding files and actually recovering them, so the best advise is:
BE PATIENT!
7. If you delete data from a disk you want to recover: Don't use that
drive to install programs to, or store data on. Doing so strongly
enhances the chance that you will be able to recover the deleted
data!
8. An old - multi-gig - laptop drive and an USB-case can be an
excellent external medium to restore to.
9. If you have imaging software installed: MAKE AN IMAGE BEFORE YOU
START!!! If necessary you may return to the original status of the drive by restoring the image!

What worries me is that this program gives you a false impression of being of secure in case disaster strikes...

But we sure have some nice alternatives mentioned in this comment's section.

(my special thanks to BuBBy-as always-,Kiril and goodgotd)

BuBBy,you are very much appreciated to be around here(at least by me)answering and smoothing things ,will consider a collection benefit at x-mass time for your services ,thanks, jack

Fully endorse runtime software's getdataback. The IT department at our hospital was also impressed at how it found stuff that ontrack never did. Can run this as a trial and pay for it only if it finds stuff. The support is also superb. Definitely worth the $90 licensing fee for getdataback. However, this is in a different category from software that recovers files where the file system is basically intact. Getdataback recovers at the physical hard drive or partition level, which is a lower level than most recovery software.

Hi BuBBy, tried out the four freeware ones in comment #1.

Restoration would not install (error "not a valid win32 file")

Other 3 all worked perfectly with SoftPerfect being easiest - no installation required, simply run the exe.

My fav, which I'm keeping is Undelete Plus which worked the fastest and also, used to cost $29.99 and is now free.

I already uninstalled it.... Not great for free, but ok. Not good when you have to pay for it..

#65 Spaz:"The best recovery software I ever used is called R-Studio"- http://www.data-recovery-software.net/

Guys,
It's unbelievable, it's not a software- it's a magic. A real magic. R-studio recovered my .cdr files after n-time-formating-rewriting my HD. I yet can't believe this. Try this program but be very careful, it's dangerous. Read the instructions during the installation process.

R-studio- THE NEXT GAOTD?

The best & easiest drive backup tool is unbelievably Stellar Smart, which is also a S.M.A.R.T watch device! I copied over C & D drives perfectly in Windows ME then used Partition Manager in DOS to alter the free space as the drive was larger than the source : Paragon partition manager then deleted the extra minimal Partition and it`s been working fine for nearly a week. Their drive backup is capable of adjusting the size on the fly if this seems a bit of a fiddle however so many backup progs promise but don`t deliver the copy from 80GB master to 160 GB slave took around 1 hour 30 mins & to add to my surprise Stellar Smart is part of Avenquest which can be a bit flaky I`ve found, just goes to show... Yours, Bill

BuBBy
The best recovery software I ever used is called R-Studio, for either NTFS or FAT. I don't work for them, but they save 4 years worth of (un backed up) tax data and emails and they were worth the $50 I spent.
It goes in at the raw device level, finds any partition tables on the disk and asks you which to start recovering. IIRC, it does not do a recovery in place - you have to provide a second disk to move the data to. Because it does not modify the system, it lets you try as many different strategies as you want, until you run run out of room to write recovered data.
It is slow in an absolute sense, but not for this kind of s/w, as it is reading the entire disk, at least a couple of times.
Hope it is not too late to help you.
I'd love to see one of their lighter versions on here.

http://www.data-recovery-software.net/

Bubby

I have no idea what it takes to run and maintain a site like this so I'm just indulging in a little curiosity when I ask, do you have nobody on staff who can test these programs before you post them, just to sort of weed out the disasters like this one??

I want to thank the entire giveawayoftheday community for making this site a daily must in our house. I don't always download the day's offering, but the feedback and alerts to other freeware alternatives have really opened my eyes to some fantastic software I would not have known about otherwise. Undelete Plus is a perfect example. And Roboform has changed my internet habits completely!

Thank you to everyone who takes the time to post intelligently. This is one of the greatest sites on the web! A screensaver or two is a small price to pay... (I try and do my part by telling everyone I know about it. ;)

Thank goodness GAOTD gives us the chance to try this stuff for free! I tried Niksaver yesterday but was unable to comment on it today because the offer is ended. For anyone who might be contemplating purchasing that product, DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY! I tried to save my installation of Macromedia Flash MX 2004 version 7.2 so I could move it to better machine. Niksaver found it on the old machine but was unable to find a fresh installation on the new machine, nor was it able to restore the configuration it had saved. I manually restored the configuration from the files it created, but Flash still came up as an unlicensed trial program. As best I can determine, this product is about as useful as write-only memory!

As for today's Smart Data Recovery, the numerous remarks recorded here today would seem to indicate that the smartest thing about it is to not bother downloading it at all!

In addition, there are always programs such as Norton Ghost which I use regularly to back up to an image file the contents of my hard drives. I then burn those images to DVD, basically making my own restore disks, so the majority of the time, I don't even have to start from scratch after a crash. I just slip in the recovery DVD, and the system restores itself to pre-crash state in a jiffy, basically unattended.
it is really too bad that Microsoft system restore has never been properly programmed so it is successful the majority of the time.
Back in the good old days of Windows 95, I programmed a utility called "System Sentry" which added system restore capabilities to Windows 95. It won many awards, and was successful virtually 100% of the time, so I know it is possible. I still have the program, and it is free, so if anyone is still running Windows 95, they can pick it up from my website. I had to rename it TotalRecall95 because of a copyright problem.

In response to #1 mainly. Anything I have of any importance, and especially things that are "irreplaceable", are backed up on at least 2 separate CD/DVD media, as well as flash drives and protected partitions. Yes I have probably 3-4 exact copies of everything, but I would never even have a use for a program such as this as a result, unless I was working on someone else's system.
As far as the operating system itself, I have become so proficient at restoring a system (and you could too), that upon a catastrophic OS failure, I can have the system restored to it's previous working state within 45 minutes starting from scratch. I therefore would certainly not waste hours, or even days trying to recover Windows itself.

@ BuBBy

if u were to install a data recovery device on HD: C and that HD failed how would u be able to run the data recovery program?

doesn't this make it so that u should always install the recovery program on another HD?

Sorry I'm jumping in to this conversation so late, everybody. I have not reviewed data recovery utilities for my blog yet, so I can't recommend any.

However, last year I learned the hard way about losing digital photos. (Hint: Format memory media before using them... and read the manual before using your cute new camera!). I tried many free utilities that specialize in recovering picture files, including the ones listed below and some that Bubby listed, as well as some "teaser" shareware.

Unfortunately, my card was too far gone and nothing worked. But maybe knowing about these free utilities will help some of you: Zero Assumption Recovery (free for photos only); MJM Photo Recovery; PicaJet Photo Manager); Art Plus Digital Photo Recovery; Smart Flash Recovery.

I hope this is helpful.

Pardon my English. In fact, another horrible software, but now we have BuBBy for to learn, to laugh and to play! Thank you, BuBBy!

The supreme free recovery tool I have ever come across is PC INSPECTOR File Recovery. It's not the fastest working program, but in return it's supreme in the amount of deleted files is detects. You can find it here:
http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file_recovery/info.htm?language=1

A quick alternative is Recuva, it scans pretty fast, but is not as advanced as PC Inspector.

It's a smart thing to experiment with these types of programmes before something is deleted by mistake.

Always check out what's available on Giveawy but it's become a lot more informative and interesting since BuBBy entered the mix here. Learned a lot just reading the comments. Thank you GOTD, BuBBy all the comments that make you go Hmmmmmm I should try that...

This app is painfully SLOW. No option to
not show zero byte files. What a loser!
Recuva is the one!

My 16 year old son caused our home network to totally corrupt. I found that he had been using software from Russia among other places. Even his security software was compromised. In short, none of the pc's would boot and all lost their disk directories. I used an old pc to attempt recovery. I researched all I could find on the Internet. Took me about 2 weeks of intense work to recover. Tried about 30 solutions and many could find files but none could get me 100% of the files. Tried the free versions (teaser and limited recovery) and I was desperate. I had backups of critical data but not thousands of documents, pictures and more. Finally found http://www.disk-doctor.com/ I tried it and it claimed to be able to recover everything. Bought the software for $40.

It was NOT intuitive and I really had to read and reread all the instructions and it did NOT recover the entire XP pro o/s. BUT it recovered 100% of all the other files. It saved my a$$. Son is no longer allowed on network. Everything is recovered, secure and working although I still use the names of billy gates and steve ballmer in vain frequently.

Be very careful. Some of these solutions can cause more harm than cure. Always but always make absolutely sure that you somehow NEVER allow your crashed disks to be written upon when trying to recover. Those were the 2 worst weeks of my life.

#46, Josh

Thank you very much, Josh, as well as BuBBy!

#36

I use Recuva on my U3-enabled flash drive. I installed it on my PC, and used a program called Package Factory to convert the .exe file to a .u3b file. I installed it on my flash drive, and it shows up on my flash-drive start menu. It works fine and runs entirely off the flash drive (no install needed.

Good discussion going on here.

I currently have a situation where I was installing a dual boot XP/Vista on the same hard drive. I have another drive with data with I should have disconnected but didn’t because I was impatient. Using Vista format tool, I must have either did a quick format on the data drive or the OS decided to use that drive to put the Boot ini file. The data, other than a few hours of time I spent on the rare task of organizing files, has been backed up and can be restored. However, this is now an exercise in data recovery and fixing the damaged done to my data drive. Someday I may really need to get it right the first time.

What I would like to do is to get an old hard drive put some files on it. Then be able to repair damaged files using programs like Smart Data Recovery. I only know how to damage files through accident. Any ideas on how to intentionally cause damage to hard drives? What I need are some test scenarios. I am sure there are many different causes of drive failure and would like to test as many of those as possible.

Becoming familiar comfortable with such software is very important. After all most computer tasks are easy if you know how.

JBR

From BuBBy: ideas on how to intentionally cause damage to hard drives? Well obviously physical damage (power tools, throwing from a moving vehicle, setting in cement, immersion in salt water, fire, playing football using the drive as the ball etc) - the list is never ending. If you are wanting to use Smart Data Recovery to recover files from damaged drives, I should probably mention we aren't getting very encouraging results trying to recover files 60 seconds after being deleted on a drive in perfect working order. I suggest one of the programs listed in #1

#39 The two freeware alternatives (Undelete Plus, Recuva) mentioned by the moderator, BuBBy are among the highest rated, and most popular.

I personally use Runtime Software! Very good, it recovered my even dead sticks...and i also love to recover data from ebay sold hardware.

I must have misunderstood how this program was suppose to work. Quite often I don't download what is offered as I don't see a use for them. This I thought might work. I'm running Windows Vista.

I had a hard drive that I could no longer boot from so I just replaced it but installed the hard drive in an external case thinking I might be able to recover some data even if I couldn't boot from it. When I try this program I can't select anything other than drive C or D. Oh well. Then I figured I would see what I could recover from C. What I get is a message that says to disable something - just tried to do it again to see what the message actually said and now I get $ffffffffff is not a valid integer value. Are you sure this is suppose to work on Vista?

From BuBBy: I'm not sure it is supposed to work...

The results using this software are very much hit and miss. I would save the stress and confusion, and just go with one of the products I listed in #1. I can't be more honest than that. I think "Smart Data Recovery" is a stinker.

I just tried it and found that if I stopped it running prematurely it displayed a number of files I might try to retrieve. But when I let it run till it stopped by itself the file list was completely empty. The counter was well over 3000 files. I tried expanding most of the tree. So there must be a glitch somewhere? The drive I tried was an external hard drive. Any Ideas?

From BuBBy: When the time comes to recovering you data, you don't need Glitches. I'd pick one of the freeware alternatives and see if you can get a more consistent result.

CD recovery - look for the free offers
http://www.oemailrecovery.com/cd_recovery.html

@BuBBy:

That is very true - I've actually read that article before, but I completely forgot about it until you linked it.

What really gets me, is further reviewing Smart PC Solutions' site further, looking at a number of their products' pages and seeing links that state Take a look at "--Insert Product Name--" Awards -- All of which link to that exact same page, directly implying that that specific software title got ALL those awards without noting that those are lumped together awards. Heck, the Softpedia one isn't even an award, just states that at the time of posting, ONE of Smart PC Solutions' software titles was clean of known malicious code.

# 36
Flash drive are treated exactly as a hard drive when it comes to file structure and fromatting. Any tool that can recover a delete file "should" be able to recover it from a flash drive. Flash drives are formatted as FAT 32 by default in WinXP and greater.
I wrote a blog about what really happens when delete files. http://forensa.com/blog/?p=9

@BuBBy:"I just deleted about 8 files /.cdr?-K.K./ then ran the program and it found 0 files."

I'm afraid, the same here. I'll try some freebies. Thanks! If possible, recommend me any, please, especially about .cdr files.

From BuBBy: Either Undelete Plus or Recuva (see my first post). Both can do it - I've found Recuva is a bit faster to scan the disk etc.

Most of you know I usually don't follow my reviews up after in the comments unless someone addresses my review here (And sometimes I do miss comments - Sorry to those whom I have missed in the past).

I wanted to drop in and read the comments after my review this morning to see how things were shaping up on this end (Partly due to the fact that I was wondering how many others picked up on the steaming pile of poo before us).

After my review, I quickly flipped through the Author's website (As noted above), and found a link titled 'Take a look at "Smart Data Recovery" Awards' - I had to click it.

http://smartpctools.com/awards.html

Quickly noting the fact that URL was in the root folder when the application information was hosted in data_recovery/ made me wonder if the link was a bit misleading and aiming to awards that they received for another or all of their applications. The fact that none of these awards were linked back to their original source made me wonder further on this. I checked the first site, http://www.5cup.com and couldn't find Smart Data Recovery anywhere. However, I found the following two titles from Smart PC Solutions:

http://5cup.com/shareware/Windows_Utilities-Backup-Smart_Flash_Recovery-3.1.html
http://www.5cup.com/shareware/Windows_Utilities-System_Utilities-Smart_Data_Scrubber-3.4.html

Looking through further, every title had an 'Excellent' award - And all of them had a 'Buy Now' button (Most of which didn't work).

Moving on to Free Downloads Centre, I found the title here:

http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Utilities/Backup_and_Copy_Utilities/Smart_Data_Recovery.html

Version 3.2 is featured here, and is noted as freeware as well. I do not see any 'Editor's Choice' award on this title, nor any review besides Smart PC's description. It did however get 3/5 stars from 4 readers.

I would go on but I am short on time - Maybe someone else may want to wade through the rest. These two alone on top of my experience (See my review) are enough for me to really recommend people to avoid this title and pick from BuBBy's list (#1) or others noted here.

From BuBBy: This isn't new - but I have 110% skepticism on these awards - so much so, that I TOTALLY ignore them when I see them. If I see "too many" of them, I start to look at the program with suspicious squinty eyes.

I suggest everyone have a read of the following article: "The Software Awards Scam"

I misunderstood the scope of this program costing $50. It simply finds an accidentally deleted file and restores it to it's former location...is there more?
I was hoping to repair(restore) a damaged file which would not open. As you can see, I misunderstood the meaning of restore. Please, can you or one of your readers recommend an alternative that repairs files.
I must say that the comments are so much better since the arrival of BuBBy.

From BuBBy: File "repair" is an entirely different artform. Each program may use their document files, or spreadsheet files (for example) in a different way - and the structure is set out in a manner that only that program understands. Therefore to "repair" a file requires a program that understands what a "valid" file looks like.

This means if you want to "repair" a damaged Word document - you would need a program to repair word documents. There may be a different type of program for Powerpoint presentations, and so on. If you need to repair a particular type of file - your best option is to go to our forums sign up, create a topic and explain what you need to do, and you'll be surprised how willing other users like yourself are to help you out.

oh, the comments have probably improved because I'm also a user who tries to read these pages each day.
If "those comments" annoy me, I'm not going to make everyone else read them.

A little off topic but:
Does anyone know of a good undelete utility that runs on a USB Flash drive?

From BuBBy: Most of those in post #1 should be ok. Having a USB drive with data recovery utilities is an essential part of any tech's toolbox. The restriction wouldn't be the Flash drive, but more the requirement it install a program that has dependencies on registered DLLs and settings loaded from the registry. Most of these programs though, I believe are more-or-less self contained executables.

Not bad but I will pass today.

Hello all! Today's 15-Minute Review is up! Check it out!

http://www.bladedthoth.com/reviews/15mrs/smart-data-recovery-v3-8/

@BuBBy

Hi Goody,
Can you explain mе, how can I find only deleted .cdr files, please?

Bulgarian Thing

From BuBBy: On the result screen you could enter into the 'Find' box *.cdr or .cdr (I can't get it to work though). I just deleted about 8 files then ran the program and it found 0 files. I ran it a second time and it discovered only my "sessionstore.js.moztmp" file in my Firefox Profile folder (that wasn't one of the files I deleted). I give up. (I'm only human. I'm uninstalling my copy of this now. Best advice I can give, use something else).

Do you want to know how to do it using any of the freeware programs? ;)

was unable to recover anything from a floppy disk. Called the floppy file system FAT12? I thought floppies were FAT16. not very good as a recovery tool in my opinion

From BuBBy: Floppies formatted on windows systems use FAT12 for the filesystem. FAT12 has a capacity of 32MB, FAT16 has a capacity of 2GB.

BuBBy,

Have you heard of SpinRite? This is a low-level disk recovery program that doesn't care about file systems or RAID configurations, but restores data by reading and refreshing each bit on the disk platter. The program is not free and there is no trial version, but it is worth every penny when your data is missing.

SpinRite

From BuBBy: Hi Chris, yes I've not only heard of it - but many years ago I had to use it to get what data I could, from a hard drive that didn't have long to live. That's it's big strength is getting data off a drive that doesn't want to play ball with any installed OS. The recovery is done from outside Windows (or Linux) and accesses the disk at a very low level. They claim you can repair - or mark sections of the disk as bad and entrust your data to the remaining good portion. I've never been that confident - and prefer at that stage to cut my losses and transfer to a new drive. Spinrite has been around, it seems, forever - I don't know if it is still being updated, but I can't think of too many bells or whistles that it needs.

Question has anybody tried running on 98 from a flash drive? I still have some customer that refuse to run XP.