-Does your computer fail to bootup?
-Does your computer freeze and reboot?
-Cannot access your data due to the lost password?
-Does your computer contain critical data?
-Don't have a recent backup?
-Reformatted your harddrive?
-Accidentally deleted files?
Our blog will provide the relevant information on free tools, techniques, and approaches to recover your computer and get your valuable data back.
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.
Avira UnErase Personal free uneraser helps computer users to prevent the danger of loosing forever important information, images, videos, and other files.
Avira UnErase Personal was built as a free data recovery instrument practical to recover deleted data on the PC hard-drive in situations like hard-drive accidents, files erased by mistake or as a result of a virus infection, a tool uninstaller that deleted necessary files or defective tool that erased files on your PC.
Applicability
- Restore accidentally, carelessly or intentionally deleted files on PCs. With Avira UnErase you can restore deleted files which were removed from the system’s Recycle Bin or which where directly deleted.
- You can also replicate files that were deleted by viruses, uninstallers or by DOS programs.
- Compressed and encrypted files are also supported.
Recovery probability
- All files detected for recovery are marked with a level of recovery probability. Usually, even files marked as "poor" can be easily recovered.
Sorting possibilities
- With Avira UnErase it is possible to sort detected files by various criteria: name, size, type, probability of recovery, date and time of creation and last access.
Taylor-made solution
- Avira UnErase is available to home users as a workstation application and to business users as a network version.
Main Features
- Versatile, simple, and fast data recovery solution in case of emergency.
- Extremely high success rate.
- Pre-installation not required.
- Smooth integration with Windows Explorer, intuitive operation.
- Supported file systems: FAT16, FAT32, NTFS4, NTFS5.
- Recovery of compressed files (NTFS, NTFS5).
- Recovery of encrypted files (NTFS5).
- Recovery of streams (NTFS, NTFS5).
- Recovery of more than one file with the same name.
- Recovery of local files.
Website: http://www.free-av.com/en/tools/10/avira_unerase_personal.html
FindNTFS is a small effective free program to locate and recover NTFS (NT File System, The default method of storing files on Windows 2k/XP) files. It is available in several versions, including one that will run from a DOS boot, and thus can be used when the Windows OS is not bootable.
To
use FINDNTFS, boot your system into DOS using a boot disk with the findntfs.exe file on it.
To obtain a list of NTFS files and directories on the drive you are attempting to recover from, type 'FINDNTFS # 1 1 1 c:\recoverlog.txt files' at the command prompt. The "#" should be replaced with the number of the hard drive you are reading from. If you have only one drive, it will be '1', if there is more than one drive in the system the physical hard drive with the 'c:' logical drive on it will be '1'.
This command tells The FindNTFS program to search the entire specified disk for NTFS files, and output the file list to a text file on the C: drive. Note that you can save the text file under any name on any drive, as long as it has the '.txt' extension. Do not save the log file onto a drive you are trying to recover data from however. If everything went well, you should have a reassuring, if somewhat jumbled list of the available NTFS files on the drive you selected. Search the document for the filenames that are most essential, and then scroll up until you see the directory that they are in.
You will need to do this, since the directory order that FindNTFS sees will not necessarily be the same as you had before the data was lost. Note down the number of the directory before proceeding on with the next step.
To
recover files using FindNTFS, you need to use the 'copy' command. A limitation of the program is that it will only save recovered files into the directory where the FindNTFS executable is located, so make sure you have enough space available to hold your restored files.
Type 'FINDNTFS # (replace "#" with the drive you are recovering from, as before) 1 1 1 copy #'. This is the directory number holding the files you wish to restore. You may enter up to 10 directory numbers. If you do not enter a number, the program will attempt to restore and copy all NTFS files on the selected disk.
FindNTFS will copy the selected directories and files to the directory containing the FindNTFS.exe file. Check the recovered files to make sure they are not corrupted.
Sadly, FindNTFS has one major limitation. It cannot copy NTFS files onto DOS readable (FAT) partitions, and therefore is not able to recover files without an NTFS supporting operating system running (Windows NT/2K/XP). Thus it is not possible to recover files directly with this program using a DOS boot disk.
Recuva is one of the most popular on the market freeware portable undelete utilities. It was developed by Piriform LTD, London-based private software development company, famous also by the most popular utilities as CCleaner and Defraggler.
Recuva (pronounced "recover") is a freeware Windows utility to restore files that have been accidentally deleted from your computer. This includes files emptied from the Recycle bin as well as images and other files that have been deleted by user error from digital camera memory cards or MP3 players. It will even bring back files that have been deleted by bugs, crashes and viruses!
Main Features:
- Simple to use interface - just click ’Scan’ and choose the files you want to recover
- Easy to use filter for results based on file name/type
- Simple Windows like interface with List and Tree view
- Can be run from a USB thumb drive
- Restores all types of files, office documents, images, video, music, email, anything.
- Supports FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, NTFS5 , NTFS + EFS file systems
- Restores files from removable media (SmartMedia, Secure Digital, MemoryStick, Digital cameras, Floppy disks, Jaz Disks, Sony Memory Sticks, Compact Flash cards, Smart Media Cards, Secure Digital Cards, etc.)
- Restores files from external ZIP drives , Firewire and USB Hard drives
- It’s fast, tiny and takes seconds to run!
Developers Website:
http://www.recuva.com/
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