DataMiner is a portable software program for the Windows operating system that can be used to recover data from optical media such as CD or DVD. The program will analyse the data on the disc using heuristic detection algorithms. The analysis of the data on the disc is highly influenced by the type of disc, the data and the type of error that is encountered when trying to access the data.

Dataminer will analyze the whole disc, a process that can be terminated at any point. The files that have been found up to this point are then displayed in the interface. The display is basic as it will only list the file name (if it was discovered), the size, type and offset of the file on the disc.

It is possible to extract selected files or files of a certain file extension to a local storage device. Other options include a basic search to find a specific file name and saving project related information to continue working on the project at a later time. the CD and DVD data recovery software can also create and load images of physical discs which is obviously the safer way to go as it is then possible to analyze the disc image instead of the disc itself which will reduce the chance to further damage the disc.

The data recovery software is available at the Greenfish website. It is compatible with most versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system including Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP.

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Both data recovery tools are portable programs that can be executed after unpacking them. The interface looks similar in both applications. It offers options to load and save docx and xlsx files. It will analyze the selected document and try to recover its text and values. The recovered document will then be displayed in the interface of the programs. The displayed data can be edited right away or saved as txt or csv files for further editing in programs that are better suited for editing the data.

The main advantage of both Docx2txt and Xlsx2csv is that they can easily be put on a DVD or USB stick to have them nearby when all other means of recovering the data of docx or xlsx documents fails. Docx2txt and Xlsx2csv (via Addictive Tips) have a size of less than 4 Megabytes each and can be directly downloaded from the developers webpage. They are compatible with all Microsoft NT based operating systems since Windows 2000 including Windows XP and Windows Vista. They also require the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0.

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The best practice in the beginning is therefor to clean the disk properly. One could start with a quick dusting using cloth that has been ideally designed for that purpose. This wont remove fingerprints and other dirt though. To tackle those you use liquids to clean the CD. This can again be done with specialized expensive solutions or some warm water and mild soap.

Sometimes the best CD cleaning efforts do not have the desired effect. If data on the CD is unreadable so called CD data recovery tools come to use which try to recover the data from the CD.

CD Recovery Toolbox

The data recovery tool has been specifically designed for CD, DVD and HD-DVD and Blu-Ray disks. The application has been streamlined for ease of use as the recovery process can be initiated with just a few clicks. It will display the contents of the selected media giving the user the option to select specific files – or all – for recovery.

developer link

Iso Puzzle

Iso Puzzle creates an ISO image of a selected CD or DVD flagging good and bad sectors at the end of the process to give the user an overview of the situation. It will also create a file on the local disk detailing the bad sectors that could not be read. The unique solution by this software program is to utilize different CD or DVD drives to read those bad sectors as error correction differs widely among drives.

CD Check

CD Check can recover unreadable files from disks. What makes it unique is the ability to create hashes of those files at the first startup. Those hashes can be used to compare the states back then with the current state of the disk. It does come with the means to recovery unreadable files from those disks.

developer link

Copy Cat and Unstoppable Copier

Those two tools are copy software programs that try to copy files from a selected location to another one. They have been designed to use various reading techniques to copy files even from scratched or partially readable media.

developer link 1 link 2

Do you know of additional free tools to recover CDs or DVDs? Let us know in the comments.

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The data recovery software is completely portable and will display all hard drives and removable drives that are connected to the computer system after startup. The next page provides a checklist of various file types that can be recovered by DiskDigger. It is divided into the three categories photos and images, documents and Audio & Video. All files are selected by default but it is possible to uncheck file types so that the program is only scanning the hard drive for those file types.

Several popular file formats are missing in the list. The documents category for instance contains only Microsoft Office documents and the pdf format. That’s a limiting factor as it is not possible to add file types to the list.

DiskDigger will display three tabs after that selection that contain the various file formats that have been found on the selected hard drive separated into their three categories. Previews are available for some file types, mainly those located in the image category. What sets DiskDigger apart from other tools that can recover deleted files is that it acts independently of the file system. It should theoretically work with damaged partitions. Other file recovery tools might fail because of that.

Here is a list of alternative programs that can be used to recover deleted files: (all link to Ghacks)

Forensic Data Recovery Software
Smart Data Recovery Enterprise
File Recovery Undelete My Files
Data Recovery Tools Encopy
DVD Data Recovery Software
Recover Deleted Files

Got any software to recover deleted files to add? Let us know in the comments.

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Drive Look is a free forensic disk investigation tool from the developers of Drive Image XML. The forensic data recovery software is free to use and runs on many Microsoft operating systems like Windows 2000 or Windows XP but not Windows Vista. Registration data has been posted on the download page that needs to be entered into the software.

The forensic software will scan a selected hard drive, partition, logical drives, network drives or images and index all words that meet specific criteria. The user can select the minimum and maximum word length and chars during setup. There is also the possibility to specify words that should be included in the scan.

Drive Look will list all words that it has found during scan in a searchable interface in the end. It is possible to scroll through the words on the left side or enter a search term to find out if a word or phrase has been discovered in the specified location. The forensic data software will display the locations on the storage device in either Ascii or Hex mode and list the sector and offset information of each hit. It is possible to read the text that is surrounding the discovered phrase to get a better understanding.

An alternative to Drive Look is The hard drive data retrieval tool Disk Investigator which makes use of a realtime search.

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Its portability make it an excellent companion for a tool collection on an USB device. The usability of Encopy has a severe limitation. The file browser can be pointed to select exactly one file from the medium or folder. Users who rely solely on the file browser will be dissatisfied by this. It is possible to use wildcards to include multiple files in the data recovery process. To copy all executable files from hard drive d one would use the wildcard d:\*.exe to do so.

Encopy comes with a set of options that define and alter the data recovery process. It is for example possible to verify the data after, force faster copying or skip system files.

Encopy lacks the visual eye candy that many data recovery tools come with but makes this more than up by the impressive size of only 69 Kilobytes and the quality of the data recovery. It did throw a few runtime errors on a test system which could not be reproduced the next time though.

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Assuming that the initial backup completed error free the most common cause of loosing data are (partial) unreadable backups. It’s actually pretty easy to test if you have CDs or DVDs lying around that you burned several years ago. It is not uncommon that several files on those disks might be unreadable. There can be quite a few causes for this like scratches, exposure to sunlight, great heat or humidity.

One way of making sure that a DVD backup is still readable is to check it periodically with DVD data recovery software that can check file integrity on the disk and provide additional options like computing and comparing file hashes of previous tests or of files on the hard drive.

CD Check is a free for personal use CD and DVD data recovery software that can also check and compare files and directories on the disks.

The data recovery software provides four main functions that are all useful in the backup process.

• Hashing: Create hashes of files residing in a specific directory of the computer. This can be a partition, folder, CD or DVD drive. Various hash types like MD5, CRC-32 or SHA-512 are available. In addition ISO compliance can be checked.
• Check: Check a source folder for errors. Can be used in combination with a hash file to check file integrity.
• Compare: Compare two folders and define compare direction
• Recover: Data recovery that tries to recover unreadable files

The DVD data recovery software can deal with audio and data CDs, data DVDs and DVDs with media ratings. The software program comes as a portable version and an installer and is compatible with all Microsoft operating systems from Windows 95 to Windows Vista.

The download version requires a free registration at the software developer’s website to receive a free registration key to be able to use the dvd data recovery software for more than 30 days.

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