The limited longevity can be problematic if the CD or DVD becomes unreadable, which it will eventually, especially if no backup is available.

Get My Videos Back has been designed as a video recovery software that offers to restore media found on CDs, DVDs and other optical discs.

The file recovery application can only recovery videos that have been directly burned to disc. It does not support video DVDs or CDs.

The Open Source application supports a variety of media formats, including avi, mkv, mp3, mpg and wmv. A click on Open and start in the program interface opens a file browser to select a video file for recovery. The program can unfortunately process only one video file per recovery session, a queue to select multiple video files for recovery is missing.

Another file browser window opens after the video file has been selected. This time to select the location the recovered file should be saved in.

Get My Videos Back starts the recovery immediately after the save location has been selected. The program displays the copied bytes, errors, skipped bytes, speed of recovery and elapsed time.

Options are available under File > Settings to switch from the default mode of keeping the original file size to trimming the file size if errors occur. It is also possible to enable byte mode to save all readable bytes.

Get My Videos Back is a portable open source application for Windows. The program desperately needs a queue or some form of processing multiple video files at once but is otherwise well versed for the recovery job.

Downloads are provided on the project homepage over at Sourceforge.

The name would suggest that it can only be used to recovery digital pictures but that is not the case. PhotoRec can recovery and kind of data on a drive providing that it has not been overwritten yet.

Windows users need to start photorec-win.exe after unpacking the application to a local directory. That makes PhotoRec a portable application on Windows.

The program displays a list of devices that the application can scan for deleted data. PhotoRec will only display internal hard drives if the program is started with elevated rights (right-click the program and selected run as administrator to do that). The program supports a variety of file systems including FAT, NTFS, EXT2/EXT3 and HFS+.

A device can be selected with the arrow keys and pressing enter after the selection has been made. It is then necessary to select a partition type on the next screen. This may pose troubles for inexperienced computer users. The default one is usually correct and should be selected as PhotoRec auto-detects the partition table type.

The source partition has to be selected in the next step, and then the file system of that partition. The default values are usually correct. Finally, the destination for recovered files needs to be selected. Users can configure some options to configure the file types that should be recovered or if corrupted or partial files should be recovered.

The analysis of the file system can take a while depending on the size of the disk It is usually not a good idea to run the program on a large disk, as there is no option to select specific file types for recovery. PhotoRec will recover all files that it finds to the selected destination directory. This makes it ideal for usb sticks, memory cards and other devices with little storage space.

PhotoRec is available for download at the CGSecurity website.

Glary Undelete is another free file recovery solution. It can recover deleted files from connected storage devices. Users who want to recover deleted files can search for all deleted file information or filter the results by search phrase, size, date or recovery state.

The file recovery tool will then scan the selected partition or hard drive. This can take quite some time depending on the storage size and amount of files that have been on the drive in the past. Glary Undelete will display a folder and file type list in the left sidebar and a file list in the main window. The file list contains file names, the file path, file size and path, a recovery evaluation and the last modified date. Deleted files can be recovered by putting a checkmark in their box and clicking on the Restore button. It has to be noted that it is not always possible to recover a file completely.

Many of the files and folders are recognized by the file recovery software without their original name. They are then listed as folderxxxx in the program. Users who want to install Glary Undelete should pay attention during installation as the program tries to install the Ask toolbar on the user’s computer. Both options in the dialog have to be unchecked to avoid this from happening. Glary Undelete is compatible with most Microsoft operating systems including Windows XP and Windows Vista. It’s a good choice for a second or third try to recover deleted files on a computer system.