CD/DVD/Blu-Ray Recovery is a free recovery software for Windows that can do exactly that. Don’t expect the program to do wonders though. It tries to copy all files located on an optical drive like a CD or DVD drive to the computer system. Only one source folder and multiple file names can be added to the recovery queue. Files and folders are displayed under the source folder or file name listing at the top of the program interface.

The program itself is pretty easy to use. You need to install it after you have downloaded the setup file. Skip the request to (freely) register the program. A click on Add Folder and the selection of a connected optical drive adds this drive to the recovery queue.

You can furthermore change the output folder or copying speed. Copying speed ranges from fastest, with less chances to recover unreadable or partially readable files, to slowest, which offers the best chance of recovering the selected contents.

A click on Start begins the recovery process. CD DVD Blu-Ray Recovery tries to read and copy all contents to the local hard drive. A log next to the start button indicates the process. Files that have been copied successfully are displayed as OK next to their file name.

The program is not as sophisticated as comparable recovery solutions. There is for instance no option to set the number of read retries, or to compare files on CD, DVD or Blu-Ray with the files copied to the hard drive. It is possible to use third party tools like File Check MD5 for that purpose.

Still, CD/DVD/BlueRay Recovery is easy to use and worth a try. Users who need more configuration options should look under related articles where additional recovery programs are linked.

Instructions and downloads are provided at the developer website. The program worked fine under Windows 7. It should run fine on other Microsoft operating systems.

Update:

I have been notified that Martik does not appear to be the rightful owner of the program. As a consequence, I have removed the link to the program from the article. The issue can be further discussed on the Portable Freeware website or here in the comments.

I suggest you take a look at our CD DVD Data Recovery Software Overview for alternatives to recover data from optical discs.

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.

Firefox 3 History Recovery helps in all other cases. It is a command line tool that can analyse uncompressed disk images to discover traces of the four SQLite tables moz_places, moz_historyvisits, moz_formhistory and moz_downloads. What the recovery tool can return are therefor the visited urls, the form history and the downloads.

Firefox 3 History Recovery is a forensic tool and therefor not designed with usability in mind. It can only be executed from the command line and the biggest problem that users face is that they need to create a disk image for this process. The developer mentioned a few tools that can be used to create those disk images: winhex, ftk imager and dcfldd.

The program itself is easy to use in comparison. All the user needs to do is to enter the command

ff3hr -i


to start the recovery process. The command line tool will create four new text documents in its directory that will contain the information found on the disk image. Firefox 3 History Recovery is an Open Source software program that is available at the Sourceforge website.

The developer provides some plain numbers to show the effectiveness of using the GPU to recover a rar password with four characters:

• ~168 passwords per second on single core of Q6600 @ 2.4Ghz (crark’s result)
• ~325 passwords per second on 8600 GT
• ~3120 passwords per second on ATI HD4850
• ~2075 passwords per second on GTX260/192SP

The performance of the listed ATI card is almost 20 times that of a password recovery where only the cpu is used. The password recovery software is a command line utility and the developer is offering extensive information on the possible parameters that can be used to recover the password. The suggested length of the password should not exceed six characters although it is theoretically possible to start a password recovery for a password with up to 17 chars.

The basic command for the password recovery is:

igrargpu.exe [switch:param] filename.rar

The command

igrargpu.exe /a:b /c:s /min:1 /max:4 archive.rar

will for example check all four letter combinations of lower case Latin characters. Known characters of the password can be added to the command to speed up the recovery attempt.It is advised to check the readme for a detailed overview of all possible parameters. The password recovery program can also use a dictionary based attack with rules. RAR GPU Password recovery should work on most versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. The portable software is available for download at the developer’s website.

The laptop theft recovery software Prey tries to increase the chances by collecting and sending a bunch of information over the Internet. It obviously does not help if the thief is clever enough to format the laptop before using it. If the thief boots the operating system and connects the laptop to the Internet then Prey will be able to submit the data.

Prey works by checking an url regularly for existence. If the url exists it will send out the collected data to a specified email account. The date includes:

This includes the general status of the computer, a list of running programs and active connections, fully-detailed network and wifi information, a screenshot of the running desktop and — in case your laptop has an integrated webcam — a picture of the thief

About the url that has to be created. The laptop theft recovery program has been designed that way to avoid data being send out continuously by the software. Users can for example sign up at a free web hosting service such as Blogger to create the url that the software program checks (for Ghacks it could for example be http://www.ghacks.net/stolen/).

The user needs to specify login data to a s SMTP server so that the data can be transferred. The laptop theft recovery software Prey is available for the Windows, Linux and Macintosh operating system. The Linux and Mac version are currently more advanced and come with a bi-lingual interface, automatic connection to the first open Wi-Fi network.

The password recovery software supports both dictionary and brute force methods. The first relies on known words while the second method will test all possible character combinations. A dictionary attack can only be successful if the creator has chosen a dictionary word as the password. Using dictionaries as the recovery method can be much faster than the brute force approach.

The recovery software is easy to use. All that needs to be done is to load a password protected zip file into the program’s interface. A dictionary has to be loaded if the dictionary recovery method is selected. The brute force recovery method requires a few additional parameters. The range of characters has to be selected as well as the minimum and maximum length of the password.

The password recovery software did test 13503531 passwords in 137 seconds on a Windows XP Service Pack 3 system with 4 Gigabytes of computer memory and a Intel Core Duo processor with 3.0 GHz. It would still take hundreds of years to test all possible password combinations of a size between 3 and 12 characters (alphanumerical).

Brute forcing makes therefor only sense if the password length is not greater than 6 unknown chars. It should also be noted that the recovery time is the maximum time needed. If the password length is lower it will not take that long.

The developer’s website contains dictionaries that can be used in the password recovery software.