The software program displays a list of options on startup, they are:

• Lost Partition Recovery
• Advanced Files Recovery
• Deep Scan Recovery
• Format Recovery

Partition Recovery

Partition recovery can help the user recover hard drive partitions, for instance if the file system or MBR have been damage or become corrupted, if the partition has been deleted by mistake or if the partition is no longer been detected by the PC.

The partition recovery module scans the computer’s hard drives on selection and all available ones are displayed in the disk listing. The user needs to select the drive on which the partition was located.

The device will be scanned and the available partitions displayed in a menu in the end. A click on Show files after selecting one of the partitions lists the available files found on that partition so that they can be recovered by the program.

Advanced File Recovery

Advanced file recovery works best in situations where files have been deleted by human error or by malicious software. A prime example would be a case where a user deletes file in the Windows recycle bin only to find out that one of the files is still needed on the system.

The module will scan the selected hard drive for deleted files that can be recovered. the scan may take some time depending on the size and speed of the hard drive.

Files can be selected for recovery in the file browser. The data recovery software offers a search to find files by name and a file preview to see if the complete file can be recovered.

Deep Scan Recovery

Deep scan recovery is a RAW recovery mode which means that it will scan the device sector by sector ignoring file systems. Raw recovery can find files that the other recovery modes may not be able to find. A disadvantage of this mode is that the files cannot be identified by their name.

Format Recovery

Format Recovery has been designed to address formatting related problems on the system. Helpful if a hard drive or other storage device has been formatted in error. This module is used to scan the formatted device to find out if data can be recovered from it. This depends largely if the device was quickly or fully formatted.

PC users who are looking for a good file recovery software should visit the promo page to snag a copy of iCare Data Recovery Software. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system.

Data can become inaccessible because of several reasons. It can be that the user accidentally deleted the data, that the partition or hard drive was formatted or that the partition headers became corrupt so that the operating system is not able to read the data.

The recovery software iCare Data Recovery provides a solution for all three scenarios. It can be used to recover formatted drives and partitions including external storage devices like flash cards (for instance to recover deleted photos from the digital camera’s flash card), ipods and basically any storage device that can be connected to a PC.

The second option of the file recovery software is the ability to restore partitions which have become corrupt and therefor unreadable by the operating system.

Data recovery options are provided as well. It is possible to restore deleted files and to run a deep scan recovery.

All levels of Hardware RAID supported.
Advanced and unique deep searching and scanning algorithm that recover lost files in seconds
Recover formatted sd card, hard drive partitions, ipod etc.
Recover files from RAW drives or file system; You do not have to convert file system back to FAT/NTFS
Recover photos, documents, video, music and emails.
Preview lost photos, office files before buy.

The data recovery software is relatively easy to use. It displays four icons in the main menu that lead to the program’s modules to recovery partitions, unformat drives and to recover deleted files. Beginners will notice the lack of information and onscreen aids. The deleted file recovery module will for instance display the partitions of the computer system and the options to perform an advanced or undelete recovery with no information on what these actually do.

The developer’s website offers a tutorial for some usage scenarios which is a recommended read for users who want to know more about the software’s capabilities.

• Formatted partition, camera card, usb drive, external hard drive – You should try iCare Data Recovery Software – “Format Recovery” wizard. It brings everything back from the formatted drives no matter quick formatted or regular formatted etc. It supports to recover formatted disk drive, external hard drive, digital camera card like SD card, flash card, cf card, memory card, usb drive, pen drive, ipod, iphone, etc. – If you deleted your partition by mistake, failed to see your partition in “my computer” or cannot find partition in disk management(lost without a reason), and there are important files/photos in the lost partition, iCare Data Recovery Software can help you take files back.
• Partition Deleted, partition lost, partition missing – If you deleted your partition by mistake, failed to see your partition in “my computer” or cannot find partition in disk management(lost without a reason), and there are important files/photos in the lost partition, iCare Data Recovery Software can help you take files back.
• Partition inaccessable, partition unreadable, Drive shows RAW file system, The disk in drive * is not formatted, do you want to format it now? – When your partition which contains important files are no longer accessable or becomes unreadable; when you try to visit a drive or try to open an external drive, or camera card etc, it says “The disk in drive H is not formatted, do you want to format it now?”; When you click the partition, it shows RAW, and the property says RAW in file system;
• Emptied Recycle Bin, shift+delete and files gone – when you deleted files and emptied the recycle bin, when you performed SHIFT+DELETE, you can retrieve deleted files via iCare Data Recovery Software

Installation

The zip file offered at the Giveaway of the Day website contains a readme with instructions and a setup to install the software. All that needs to be done by the user is to install the software which will be activated automatically at the end of the installation.

The download is provided today at the Giveaway of the Day website. Make sure to install the program today so that it becomes registered. The developer’s website is available here.

Positive

• Can recover partitions, formatted drives and recover files
• Can recover files from Raw partitions
• Full hardware raid support

Negative

• No documentation or online help
• Does not recover all partitions or drives connected to a system

ICare Data Recovery Software is a sophisticated file, partition and drive recovery software for the Windows operating system. It lacks documentation but makes up for that (at least for users who know what they have to do or those who try out until they know) with functionality and speed. Recommended.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.