File Recovery Programs

[nettechth]

We have recently had a few teachers that have brought us corrupt memory sticks.

 

Normally I just use a variety of programs until I find one that works.

 

However, just out of curiosity, what file recovery programs do you use?

[bwestlake]

Tell them to back it up to their home drives

[Jamo]

Photorec and TeskDisk are the main ones i use. Testdisk will usually be able to recover a corrupt partition if one is still available.

[sonofsanta]

Recuva is pretty easy to use. We also have PC Inspector File Recovery, Data Recovery and ADRC Data Recovery Tools, but they're not so user friendly.

 

TBH most of the time here, lost Word documents get recovered by finding the tmp file for them!

[Pottsey]

Free Data Recovery Software, Backup Software, Partition Manager and Mac Cleaner Freeware in Windows/Linux/Mac - EaseUS Official Site EASEUS Data Recovery data recovery. It keeps finding files other programs cannot. Last week it recovered 4 gig of photos with 99% of the files at 100% from a CF flash card. Pandora Recovery, Recuva and other programs all said there was zero files to recover or could only find a small selection of the deleted files. Just had another laptop today and again it found files when other programs said there was zero doc's deleted. (although to be fair to Recuva it too found the docs just had the file names missing) Edited March 16, 2012 by Pottsey

[Oaktech]

i'm using reclaime, which seems pretty good. it hauled gigs and gigs of info off a corrupt external hdd. it costs about £60 and the support has been excellent. I use it at least 3 times a week!

[NikChillin]

I use PC Inspector which seems ok although as mentioned not that useer friendly. The problems I usually get are files on external drives that have been lost... with no backup.

[kaphc]

I've just been asked to look at recovering some photos that were deleted about a year ago. The hard disk hasn't been defragged or cleaned up as far as I know, but lots more files will have been saved since then, including various photos. Is it worth a shot at trying to recover the photos or am I wasting my time?

[sonofsanta]

I've just been asked to look at recovering some photos that were deleted about a year ago. The hard disk hasn't been defragged or cleaned up as far as I know, but lots more files will have been saved since then, including various photos. Is it worth a shot at trying to recover the photos or am I wasting my time?

 

Seems pretty unlikely in all honesty - I'd not not be confident after a day of continuing use, after a year, well, you can't be expected to work miracles. They wouldn't go to a doctor and say they've had this funny lump for a year and can you sort it now please?* and get very far, and expecting anything from you on this is pretty much a similar level of miracle. Give it a scan with Recuva on the off-chance but don't spend too long digging through, because I doubt you'll get anywhere.

 

 

*@sonofsanta, belittling cancer since 1997! Yeah, sorry about that.

[kaphc]

Yeah, that's confirms what I thought .... the thing is it's photos of the person's kids that were accidentally deleted and not noticed for ages so the sentimental value is strong! I ran a scan with Photorec on my hard drive to test the effectiveness and it did pick up some photos I'd deleted a while back, so I might try that and Recuva but not make any promises.

[NikChillin]

I'm in the p@@ at the mo, accidentally overwrote someones externel HDD with a ghost image and am now trying to recover the files. 12 years worth! Getting access denied message when trying to delete the ghost files so I can salvage what is left. I have scanned the drive with PC recover and found some files but it keeps hanging in the process. Any advice would be appreciated prior to my execution!

[Arthur]

@ajms1989. Reported for spamming!

[CyberNerd]

Photorec and TeskDisk are the main ones i use. Testdisk will usually be able to recover a corrupt partition if one is still available.

 

used these just this week, recovered thousands of files from a usb and had a very happy teacher.

[cpjitservices]

+1 fir testdisk!

[themightymrp]

I've had great results in the past run Runtime Software's "Get Data Back", especially with USB drives

[JJonas]

I'm in the p@@ at the mo, accidentally overwrote someones externel HDD with a ghost image and am now trying to recover the files. 12 years worth! Getting access denied message when trying to delete the ghost files so I can salvage what is left. I have scanned the drive with PC recover and found some files but it keeps hanging in the process. Any advice would be appreciated prior to my execution!

 

The lesson to be learnt here is ALWAYS remove any other hard drives from the system before you restore a Ghost image. If they are not physically connected then you can accidentally restore to the wrong drive.

[Norphy]

Surely the real lesson is "Do not keep just the one copy of your work because if the device that it's stored on fails, you'll be in the cacky".

 

+1 for GetDataBack. It just works™. Usually.

[Sandman]

I've used this before. Works well and is free! PC Inspector - kostenlose Software fr die Datenrettung von CONVAR - Die Datenretter.

[HarryMonkey]

I need to recover an entire drive ... it was the backup of my workstation D drive. My workstation failed recently and I needed to get some files off the backup drive (an ex laptop drive in a USB caddy) which subsequently went belly up. I can get at the original D drive and, whilst I can get most of the files back with Recuva, what I end up with is all 33,000 files in one folder. Is there a tool that will recover the files and the original folder structure?

[themightymrp]

Get Data Back gets a folder structure but it is a paid for product

[rich_tech]

active file recovery I would recommend, its saved us here a couple of times

[cpjitservices]

Handy Recovery ... or if you can afford the £125 license! get R-Studio!

 

Also have a look at the Hirens BootCD's there maybe some tools on there that may help.

[mistersparky]

I've had great results in the past run Runtime Software's "Get Data Back", especially with USB drives

We use this too, and it works pretty well for us. We manage to recover a good proportion of damaged and deleted files from broken and formatted drives. There might very well be better products out there, but I think you could do a lot wose than this.

Edited June 1, 2012 by mistersparky