Free MiniTool Partition Recovery

Partition Recovery is a Free Partition Recovery Software for Windows, which can save your data and restore your drive functionality in the most disastrous conditions, when the drive is not physically damaged, but is inaccessible due to the lost or deleted partition.

MiniTool Partition Recovery can recover lost and deleted partitions from different types and verities of the drives: as IDE disk, SATA disk, SCSI disk and Removable disk. The operation can be performed fast and easily, with not much technical knowledge of the users on the professional secrets of the computers configuration. Software supports FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, VFAT, NTFS and NTFS5 file systems. 

MiniTool Partition Recovery can run under 32/64bit Windows 2000 Pro./XP/Vista/Window 7. It is must-have partition recovery software, and it is totally free for home users.

Sequence of Operations

The full process of the partition recovery from start to finish can be outlined by 7 simple steps.

1. Launch the software

2. Click Next to recover partition

3. Select a disk you which contains the lost partitions, and then click Next button to continue

4. There are three scanning rage modes:

·         Full Disk

·         Unallocated Space

·         Specified Range

In general cases, it is recommended to choose "Full Disk" as your option for simplicity. Then click Next button.

5. There are two scanning methods and you can choose one according to your need and click Next:

6. Usually, MiniTool Partition Recovery could find your lost or deleted partitions in a few minutes.

7. Then you could choose the recovered partitions and click Finish.
   

License

MiniTool Partition Recovery is for private, noncommercial, home computer use only. Use of MiniTool Partition Recovery within any organization or for commercial purpose is strictly prohibited.

Website: http://www.minitool-partitionrecovery.com/recoverymore.html

Download: http://www.minitool-partitionrecovery.com/download.html

  

Retrieve accidentally deleted files with Glary Undelete

Glary Undelete is a free and easy-to-use, yet powerful, files undelete solution for FAT and NTFS file systems, presented by Glarysoft. It will bring back files emptied from the Recycle Bin, in a DOS window, from Windows Explorer with the SHIFT key held down. It will even recover files that have been deleted by bugs, crashes and viruses!

The program supports all Windows file systems for hard and floppy drives including FAT12/16/32, NTFS/NTFS5 and image recovery from CompactFlash, SmartMedia, MultiMedia and Secure Digital cards.

Features:

• Supports FAT, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, NTFS5, NTFS + EFS file systems.
• Supports recovery of compressed, fragmented and encrypted files on NTFS.
• Supports Basic and Dynamic Volumes.
• Undelete files on removable devices (SmartMedia, Secure Digital, MemoryStick, etc.)
• Filter by file name, file date, size, and recovery state.
• Simple and User friendly interface.
• Supports Windows 98, ME, 2000, 2003, XP, NT, Vista and Windows7 Operating Systems.

Minimal system configuration

• Graphics mode 800x600 with 16-bit colors
• 5 MB free hard disk space at least
• Intel Pentium or AMD K5 processor with 133 MHz
• 32 MB RAM

Recommended system configuration

• Graphics mode 1024x768 with 32-bit color
• 30 MB or more free hard disk space
• Intel Pentium 3/4 or AMD Athlon processor with 500 or above MHz
• 128 MB RAM or more
• Internet access

Website: http://www.glarysoft.com/gun.html

Direct Download: http://www.glarysoft.com/download/gun.exe

Tool for data recovering from damaged CD/DVD/HD DVD/Blu-Ray disks

Recovery Toolbox for CD Free has been developed for recovering data from corrupted media of all types that are most common nowadays: CD, DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, etc. The program allows you to recover files of any types. The tool completely scans disks and saves as much information as possible. During the recovery process, Recovery Toolbox for CD Free uses a lot of different algorithms, which considerably increases the amount and quality of recovered data.

The user will get a complete and readable report about all details of the recovery process.

The program allows the user to control the recovery process in the most comfortable way: what files and from where to recover, where to save data and so on. It is also possible to view all necessary information both about the source of the data being recovered and about the location they will be saved to.

The tool will be indispensable in the following cases:

• media being physically damaged (scratches, exposure to liquids, etc.)
• the format of the media being corrupted by the software for writing disks
• OS failures while reading and accessing the media
• and so on and so forth

In all these unpleasant situations, the program will quickly and perfectly does everything necessary to recover as much information as possible.

The comfortable and intuitive interface makes working with the program effective and pleasant.

Brief list of Recovery Toolbox for CD Free features:

• Recovering corrupted data from all most common types of media for today
• Working with data that became corrupted both after a physical damage of the media and due to program errors
• Allowing the user to completely control the recovery process
• Giving the user as detailed report about the data recovery process as possible

But what is most important - all these brilliant features are absolutely free of charge! From now on you have an available, simple, but still powerful tool for data recovery that does not require any money!

If you take into account the number and quality of algorithms, the simplicity and availability of use, the range of features, Recovery Toolbox for CD Free is one of the best tools in its class and, once again, unlike most of its analogs it is absolutely free.

Authors’ website: http://www.recoverytoolbox.com/cd.html

Direct Download: http://www.recoverytoolbox.com/download/RecoveryToolboxForCDInstall.exe

Restore Lost Data on the Badly Damaged Disks

What is DiskDigger?

DiskDigger is a freeware small and portable utility, being able to recover files from any type of data storage or media. This includes USB flash drives, memory cards (SD, CompactFlash, Memory Stick, etc), and definitely hard drive. The types of files that it recovers include photos, videos, music, documents, and some other formats.

A big advantage of DiskDigger is in its ability to perform scanning of the reformatted or badly formatted disks (disks to which Windows can’t assign a drive letter), severely damaged volumes, and even hard disks with bad sectors. It bypasses the Windows file system drivers and scans your disk directly. It has its own built-in support for the following file systems: FAT12 (floppy disks), FAT16 (older memory cards), FAT32 (newer memory cards and hard disks), NTFS (newer hard disks), and exFAT (Microsoft’s new successor to FAT32).

DiskDigger is very compact and does not require installation on your system. The entire program is a single executable file that you can run from USB thumb drive or from network. The program does not leave any trace of having been run on the system (registry, log files, etc.).

If you try to recover image files, you can preview the deleted pictures before you select those you need to get back.

You may find DiskDigger useful if…

• you deleted one or more photos from a memory card by accident, and want them restored.
• you deleted one or more photos from a memory card on purpose, but now want them restored.
• you deleted some documents from your USB flash drive, and want to recover them.
• you came across an old hard drive of yours (or someone else’s) that’s been reformatted, and would like to see what its previous contents were.
• you’ve “securely wiped” your media, and want to make sure that your media has actually been wiped correctly.
• you’re just curious about what old deleted files are still present on your memory cards or hard drives.

How does it work?

DiskDigger has two modes of operation which you can select when scanning your media for deleted files:

• Scan the file system for deleted files (dig deep). This scans the file system that is present on your media, searching for deleted file entries. Supported file systems are FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, exFAT, and NTFS. The advantages of this are:
      - Very fast
      - Recovers all file types
      - Recovers file names
  And the disadvantages are:
      - Doesn’t support all possible file systems (see above for supported file systems)
      - Doesn’t scan entire disk (only scans what the file system is aware of)

• Scan the disk surface for traces of lost files (dig deeper). This thoroughly scans every sector of your media, searching for traces of known file types. The advantages of this are:
      - Scans entire disk
      - Goes underneath the file system, therefore independent of file system
  And the disadvantages are:
      - Slower (sometimes much slower) than the first method
      - Doesn’t recover file names or fragmented files
      - Only supports certain file types
      - Finds ‘existing’ files as well as deleted files

What isn’t DiskDigger?

• It’s not magic. It can’t recover any arbitrary file from any amount of time in the past. When trying to recover lost files, you should be realistic. In a real-world situation, you’ll have a good chance of recovering your files only if they were deleted very recently. The more you keep using your disk to work with new files, the slimmer your chance of recovering deleted files. Of course it’s always worth a try.
• It is not a “repair” utility. It cannot repair a broken memory card or disk. DiskDigger is a strictly “read-only” tool, and never changes the contents of the media you scan. It will, of course, scan unformatted (or badly formatted) media, but it won’t attempt to fix the formatting of the media.

Features:

• DiskDigger scans for many different types of files, including photos, videos, music files, and documents, and displays what it finds as it scans in real time.
• You can preview most of the files found by DiskDigger without having to save them to a different location first. More than that, you can preview files while DiskDigger continues scanning!
• DiskDigger scans any type of media that is readable by your computer, including USB flash drives, memory cards (SD, CompactFlash, Memory Stick, etc), and your hard drive(s).
• It can undelete files from all types of FAT partitions (including the new exFAT file system), as well as NTFS.
• It can go underneath the file system to scan for traces and remnants of lost files.
• DiskDigger does everything in memory, meaning that it never writes any temporary files to your disk or other media (unless you choose to save files that it recovers).
• Since DiskDigger is a completely self-contained program, it leaves no trace on the computer where it is run. It does not save any settings to the registry. There is nothing to “install,” and the entire program is a single executable file.
• For advanced users, DiskDigger allows scanning disk image files.

Website: http://dmitrybrant.com/diskdigger

Download: http://dmitrybrant.com/files/diskdigger.zip

Data Recovery Basics

File Storage: Sectors and Clusters: File Recovery

When you purchase a new hard drive and before it has any data on it, it is has usually already undergone a ’low level format’. The purpose of a low level format is to divide all the magnetic space on the hard drive into small storage areas. These storage areas are known as ’sectors’, however for efficiency purposes the Operating System (e.g. Windows XP) groups sectors together into ’clusters’.

A cluster is the smallest unit of storage space with which the Operating System (e.g. Windows XP) will deal. If you save a very small file to your computer it will all fit within 1 storage cluster on the hard drive. If you save a very large file it may fill up many clusters, that is, as many clusters as it takes to hold all the content of the file.

File Allocation Table (FAT) or Master File Table (MFT): NTFS recovery and FAT recovery

On older Operating Systems such as Windows 98 there is a storage area known as the ’Root Directory’. This is the place which stores the name of a file, the location of its starting cluster, and the size of the file. In order to find a file the Operating System uses this information to get to the first storage cluster of a file. It then uses a special table at the start of the disk know as the File Allocation Table or FAT to identify the remaining clusters that are used to store the file. It is important to realize that this information is stored completely separate from your file data and is why FAT data recovery is possible.

In newer Operating Systems the FAT and Directory Entry method has been merged and replaced by a single table known as the Master File Table or MFT. Whilst an MFT is more complex, the principal of locating the start of a file and its subsequent storage clusters is essentially the same.

What happens when I delete a file?

Lets look to see what happens when you intentionally delete a file and why it may be possible to bring that file back. When you select a file and press the delete key on a Windows computer the file is sent to the Recycle Bin. You may think of the Windows Recycle Bin as just another fancy storage folder on your hard drive. The ’real’ deletion (at least as far as this article is concerned) is what happens when the Recycle Bin is emptied or the deletion bypasses the Windows Recycle Bin altogether.

When a file is deleted the Operating System marks the file name in the MFT with a special character that signifies to the computer that the file has been deleted. The computer now looks at the clusters occupied by that file as being empty and therefore available space to store a new file. What the Windows Operating System does NOT do is go out to the clusters on the hard disk where the files data is actually stored and wipe the contents of these clusters. The deleted file data is still there, but the Computer Operating System no longer knows it exists.

This in fact is the underlying principal of data recovery. It is about finding data that still exists on the hard drive but which currently can’t be located by the Operating System. If the clusters containing the data have are, corrupted or physically damaged, then recovering the data they once contained is impossible.

Ok, so my data is still there, but for how long? The answer to this question is completely up to you. The only way that your deleted MFT record or your file data itself will permanently be destroyed is if it is overwritten by other data. This means that any computer activity after the deletion has the potential to permanently erase otherwise recoverable files.

If you are attempting data recovery from your hard drive, if possible connect it to another computer as the slave drive so that the operating system wont be doing a merry dance over you deleted files when you attempt the recovery process. If you use data recovery software, don’t install it on the drive on which the files were lost. Better yet, use a floppy disk or CD version if available. If you send your hard drive to a professional data recovery service they should not be working on the original hard drive. They should take a sector copy (an exact copy including all deleted information) of your hard drive and work on this. You may consider doing this yourself. There are a number of programs that will do this, the most common being Norton GHOST. But remember, you must make a complete sector copy of your hard drive to make sure the image includes all the deleted areas of the drive.

Data Recovery by Searching for Deleted MFT Records

Most data recovery programs search for deleted MFT entries to undelete files or unformat drives. These programs usually give a give a probability or hard drive data recovery rating of ’good’, ’medium’ or ’poor’. What they are actually doing is locating the MFT record for a deleted file and then checking the rest of the MFT records to determine if the clusters that the deleted file occupied are being used by any other file stored on the computer. As only one file can occupy any one cluster on a hard drive, if other files are using your deleted files storage space then it is likely that the original data has been overwritten and permanently destroyed. This recovery technique is usually relatively fast, as all the recovery program has to do is find the deleted file entries in the MFT and then go directly to that location of the hard disk to perform the data recovery. You will see an MFT search when you execute a "Fast Search" using Recover My Files Data Recovery Software.

However, if your MFT is corrupt, defective or has itself been overwritten, this method isn’t going to help you get data back even though the file data still remains out on the disk waiting to be found. What you need to do is search unallocated clusters.

Things get a bit more complicated by the fact that a single file does not have to reside within contiguous clusters. It may be that the Operating System stores a single file in clusters on different parts of the hard disk. This is called a ’fragmented’ file. The problem with a fragmented files is that it can slow your computer down as it needs to spend time and resources sending the actuator arm to different parts of the hard disk to read the complete file. This is why many people regularly use a defragmentation program. The amount of fragmentation in a file can also reduce your ability to recover deleted files as we will explain later in this article.

So we can now think of our hard drive as being broken down into many clusters which hold the contents of our files. A cluster that is being used to store a file is called an ’allocated cluster’, and if it is not being used to store a file an ’unallocated cluster’.

The next question is, ’how does the computer know where to look when it wants to find a specific file?’. Well, if you wanted to find a specific chapter in a book the best thing to do would be to go and look up the Table of Contents. A computer does much the same thing, which is also important if you want to recover data, recover a file, or undelete.

Data recovery software

Most data recovery program search for deleted MFT entries to undelete files. These programs usually give a give a probability of recovery rating of ’good’, ’medium’ or ’poor’. What they are actually doing is locating the MFT record for a deleted file and then checking the rest of the MFT records to determine if the clusters that the deleted file occupied are being used by any other file stored on the computer. As only one file can occupy any one cluster on a hard drive, if other files are using your deleted files storage space then it is likely that the original data has been overwritten and permanently destroyed.

This recovery technique is usually relatively fast way to get data back, as all the recovery program has to do is find the deleted file entries in the MFT and then go directly to that location of the hard disk to perform the data recovery. You will see an MFT search when you execute a "Fast Search" using Recover My Files Data Recovery Software.

However, if your MFT is corrupt, defective or has itself been overwritten, this method isn’t going to help you even though the file data still remains out on the disk waiting to be found. What you need to do is search unallocated clusters.

Searching Unallocated Clusters for Deleted Files

A good data recovery program will have the option to ignore the MFT (or lack there of) and to search all the unallocated clusters to try and find and recover files. This means we need to know what a deleted file looks like. Luckily most file types have a unique file header and footer. This means that if you look inside a Microsoft Word document for example, the first characters and the last characters of the file are always the same. So therefore a data recover program can search the entire hard drive and identify files by their unique header and footers. You will see this technique used in Recover My Files Data Recovery Software when you select a ’Complete Search’. Recover My Files recognizes more than 160 different file types using this technique.

Why are Some Files Partially Corrupt after a software File Recovery?

Remember that a computer will only use as many clusters as it needs to store a complete file. This means that your original data may only have been partially overwritten. You may still be able to retrieve some of the clusters containing the file. Unfortunately, in most cases that won’t be helpful, as most programs need a file to be complete before they will process it. Rebuilding partially damaged files is a another area of data recovery. It requires specialized knowledge about the particular file types one is dealing with. Some links to software for repairing specific file types are provided above.

Data Recovery from a Formatted Hard Drive

When you run the format command you are simply erasing the Root Directory Entries and FAT, or MFT. It is possible to run the format command and wipe the entire hard drive but format must be executed with special options. There are a number of tricks that data recovery programs use to recover from format commands. This includes searching for deleted Directory Entries which are in fact stored as files on the computer. If a directory entry is located, then we now know the name, starting cluster location, and size of the files. Of course you can also search the data area of a formatted drive for file header and footers and locate individual file types by this method.

What is the problem with File Fragmentation?

The problem of file fragmentation is that most of the data recovery techniques available must work on the assumption that all files are contiguous, that is, that they are stored in consecutive sectors one after the other from the beginning to the end of the file. The information to track fragmentation of a file is overwritten when the FAT or the MFT records are destroyed.

Source: http://www.recovermyfiles.com/data-recovery-software.php

Advanced Video Tutorials for the HDD functionality and recovery

If you are quite serious to try repairing your Hard Drive by yourselves, you need to understand exactly, how HDD is design, how it operates, what are the possible problems, and what particular problem source you have with your unit, based on the appearance.

Video presentation by hard drives expert Scott Moulton of Forensic Strategy Services, LLC will help you understand what is going on inside the HDD, and what can go wrong there. Presentation has been prepared for TorCon conference and provides very detailed information on rebuilding hard drives and recovery of your own data.

Part 1

Hard Drive Data Recovery - 1

Part 2

Hard Drive Data Recovery - 2

Part 3

Hard Drive Data Recovery - 3

Part 4

Hard Drive Data Recovery - 4

Part 5

Hard Drive Data Recovery - 5

Part 6

Hard Drive Data Recovery - 6

Part 7

Hard Drive Data Recovery - 7

Each part is less than 10 minutes clip, and keep in mind that to review this excellent video course in full, you will have to spend about an hour of your valuable time.

ADRC Data Recovery Software Tools

ADRC Data Recovery Software Tools contains a software suite of data various recovery tools that supports a wide variety of drives and file systems.

The software incorporates extremely simple GUI with novice users in mind. The software zooms in to do only critical recovery functions with minimum complexity so one could recover the data easily. It gives you full control to undelete files, disk image back up, restore a backup image, copy files from hard disk with bad sectors, disk cloning, backup, edit and restore your boot parameters.

Features:

1. ADRC Data Recovery Tools - Undelete

When a file is deleted from the data media, the space that the file used to reside is marked as available or the file in question is marked "deleted". For as long as the space has not been overwritten, the data can be retrieved.

ADRC Data Recovery Tools - Undelete helps you to recover lost and deleted data from hard drives, floppy disks, basic or dynamic volumes, compressed or fragmented files. Besides hard disk drives, it also supports removable devices such as compact flash, Smart Media, Iomega Zip drives, USB drives etc…

The file recovery tool allows recovery of accidental deletion of files. It works on drives formatted in FAT12, FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS file-systems. It works under all windows family operating systems such as Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows 2003 Server and Windows XP.

You could undelete the files even after you have cleared the recycle bin.

2. ADRC Data Recovery Tools - Copy Files

This is not a normal kind of copy function. The Copy Files tool actually recovers files from disks with physical damage such propagation of bad sectors on disk. Normal windows copy will result in system being "halt" or "hang" (the infamous CRC IO errors). In this situation, Copy Files tool could come to your rescue handy.

The program will attempt to recover every readable bits of a file and put the bits together to salvage your data. It is hopeful that in the worst case scenario, most parts of files can still be extracted even some parts are gone.

To reduce the number of tedious retries, whenever a bad sector is encountered, the program will intelligently search the neighboring sectors to determine the extent of bad blocks and mathematically calculate the number of retires needed.

It also features the "Copy Sub Folders" option which scans through the entire directory and attempts to copy everything you need.

3. ADRC Data Recovery Tools - Raw Copy

Raw Copy transfers the binary raw image from one drive directly to another. It is rather similar to the infamous "Ghost" function. You could perform a disk clone backup (or if your disk is slightly faulty) and do not want perform a file by file copy. This is really ideal if you do not want to re-install the operating system. As the transfer is done in true low level binary, you could do this for drives with an unknown file system to be cloned such as game machines, Mac disk etc. With some built in recovery features, the program will try to recover data even if it is on bad sectors to ensure all or maximum data is restored from the drive.

This is a very powerful function and must be used with care. As it is a binary dump, the original data on the target drive is no longer recoverable upon completion of process.

4. ADRC Data Recovery Tools - Image Backup / Restore

Image Backup / Restore create and write disk image files to and from hard drives and any removable media. In just one click, it performs wholesome backup and restoration of the entire drive. A common application is to create a floppy image for transfer across internet and then downloaded the image to be written back to floppy again. One can also backup a disk image for safe keeping. It is an ideal way to backup all your operating system, data and program files.

5. ADRC Data Recovery Tools - Boot Builder

The primary function of Boot builder is to allow you to import or export the boot sector of a drive (either FAT or NTFS boot sector type). In case the boot sector is damaged due to virus or system corruption, one can easily import it back. You can even custom make your own boot sector from scratch (if you know the standard parameters) to rescue a corrupted disk.

Software is absolutely free and does not require installation.

Developer’s Website: http://www.adrc.com/software/data_recovery_tools/

Hard Drive Troubleshooting

Hard drives are complex, as you may already notice through the Hard Drives basics reviews. They have a circuit board and a number of precise mechanical moving parts. In terms of hard drive data recovery, the first thing that you must evaluate is whether it is a hardware problem that is stopping you from accessing your data. Common hardware problems include a faulty circuit board or problems with the actuator arm.

A faulty circuit board is characterize by a drive that does not ’spin up’, meaning that platters are not turning underneath the copper wire. A faulty actuator arm or more serious mechanical error is characterized by an abnormal clicking noise or a grinding noise. The best advice in determining whether you have a hardware problem is to listen to the sound of your hard drive. If you cannot hear the platters spinning (i.e. it is quiet when it is turned on) or you hear more serious noises then you should stop using the drive immediately and you will need to send your drive to a hardware data recovery service.

Note that the hardware data recovery can be expensive because technicians most likely will need to disassemble your hard drive to fix the problem. Hard drive data recovery is usually done in a ’clean room’ as hard drives are sealed to avoid errors caused by dust or other particles. Also hard drives are finely tuned machinery and it takes specialist equipment to read the platters from a physically damaged drive.

If you are sending your hard drive to a data recovery specialist then you should attempt to obtain an upfront estimate of fees (although you will rarely get one), ask that if you send your hard drive for quotation purposes will they send it back to you in the same condition if you choose not to use the service, and make sure you send it to a reputable company as you may only get one chance at hard drive data recovery.

In most cases, the hard drives do not die suddenly, but the performance degrades with time. Since the data recovery might be a complicated and expensive procedure, it is recommended to prevent the damaging results of the failure by taking prompt backups of the important data, while the drive is still accessible.

Source: http://www.recovermyfiles.com/data-recovery-software.php