Recovering Deleted Files

[Pear]

A teacher has a Windows XP laptop which is configured for him to put his files into his user area and for the server to back them up... however he put his most important ones with student grades on his desktop, which doesn't back up. These files unfortunately somehow got deleted today. I took the machine straight away and have tried to prevent writing to the hard drive. I've found the files I think he's lost with trial versions of recovery software but the programs want me to put buy them to actually restore the lost files.

 

So, has anyone had a good experience with really powerful recovery software for free ?

[webman]

PC Inspectory File Recovery

Bad Copy Pro

Get Data Back

[john]

So thats whay bad copy is! I found it on an old server, and though, hmm what is this, and thought better not install in case it was something dodgy!

[MkII]

hmmm - neither get data back and bad copy pro seem to be free

[webman]

Ahh.. thought they were, sorry :oops: Perhaps they might let you get a file back though?

[apeo]

I think Get Data Back will allow you to recover data for free upto a given size, and I think you can use the Trial Version of Recover My Files to get some a limited number of files back.

 

I did a quick google and found this.

 

http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/system/fwdatarecovery.html

 

Its freeware so not sure how good they are going to be.

[ConTheITGuy]

I'm quite sure I've used PC Inspector File Recovery free before to some success

 

Andy.

[tarquel]

PC Inspector File Recovery is usually a good one. The best free one i've tried - and i've tried a fair few hehe

 

Ultimately, its down to luck whether the sectors of the HDD where the file existed have been overwritten or not - if so, then there not many a-proggy that will get it back lol

 

Good luck

Nath

[pete]

We use PC Inspector File Recovery here for hard drives and floppies - works fine.

 

We also use Disk Investigator - I think this is free, but I've been using it for years. It can get back the text of a document if PC Inspector can't.

[mac_shinobi]

not sure if this is possible but cant you use knoppix live disc for data recovery ?

 

if not im sure one of the bart pe discs ie ( http://www.ubcd4win.com ) or the likes will have data recovery utils on them.

[MkII]

Here's another one: http://pjwalczak.com/scaven/index.php

[mac_shinobi]

you could just always back up your data frequently lol

[Preston]

I recovered about 80Gb of data from one of my drives after it had suffered "accidental" formating. I used NTFS file recover which worked very well for me.

[Mitch]

Dont know if yo have attempted this but i can recomend not free but cheap,

 

http://www.recover4all.com

 

mitch

(but dont tell anyone Shhh1)