Data Recovery | DataRecoveryUnion.com

EaseUS, a leading provider of data backup and disaster recovery and storage management solutions, today announces the general availability of EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard 5.6.1 and EaseUS Mac Data Recovery Wizard 5.6.1 for a better user experience.

1. EaseUS® Data Recovery Wizard: 5.6.1 brings a new interface that makes the data recovery process easy even for a beginner. It ensures a safe and precise data recovery against numerous threats like: formatted or corrupted drives, missing critical file system structures, file deletion, application crash and computer viruses.

Another benefit for this update is that EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard is totally compatible with the up-coming Windows 8. Besides, this new version is designed to activate with the license number, in this way, you do not have to download and search a second time.

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Key Features:

English & German language support.
New! Windows 8 compatible – recover any data under Win 8.
New! Brand-new user interface for more intuitive data recovery process.
New! Faster scan lost files by skipping bad sectors automatically.
New! Once you have purchased you do not have to download and search a second time.
Recover deleted or lost files emptied from the Recycle Bin.
File recovery after accidental format, even Windows reinstallation.
Disk recovery after a hard disk crash.
Get back files after a partitioning error.
Get data back from RAW hard drives.
Specify file types before file recovery to find lost files quickly.
Recover office document, photo, image, video, music, email, etc.
Recover from hard drive, USB drive, memory card, memory stick, camera card, Zip, floppy disk or other storage media.
Support FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS/NTFS5 file systems.
Windows 2012/2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008/Windows 7/Windows 8.
Free file repair service.

2. EaseUS Mac Data Recovery Wizard: which can restore files from formatted disk, deleted or lost partition with original file names and storage paths, now supports to recover lost data from Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion). Having this tool in hand, you won’t be bothered by data loss any more.

EaseUS Mac Data Recovery Wizard Key Features

Hot! Fast and safely recover unlimited types of data from deleted/lost/formatted/corrupted/damaged Mac hard drives and any other media storages devices, for example, supporting USB recovery, CF card recovery, SD card recovery and so on.
Show preview of your recovered photo, audios and videos to specify what you want to recover to save time.
An interactive and user friendly interface for better user experience.
Hot! Support Mac data recovery from NTFS, HFS, HFS+, HFSX, HFS Wrapper and FAT file system volumes.
Fast and accurately performs the complete recovery of data from Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) & Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) & 10.6 (Snow Leopard) & 10.5 (Leopard).

Data Recovery

24 Hour Data Saves the Night with Recent RAID Recovery

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM12 years ago4 years ago05 mins

Business owners who provide important services can’t accept downtime, even if it means working through the night to re-build a RAID array after a hard drive failure. Encartele, a Dallas-based Voice Over IP provider for correctional and confinement facilities, relies on rock-solid technology to process hundreds of thousands of phone calls, keeping loved ones in touch across the miles.

When a RAID-5 array recently went bad, Encartele owner Scott Moreland faced a data recovery emergency at 10:30 at night. The company was performing system upgrades, so back-ups weren’t accessible.

“I couldn’t get the RAID re-built. I couldn’t access my critical data. I admit, I was freaking out a little bit,” Moreland said.

He searched the Yellow Pages for Dallas data recovery specialists. But nearly every data recovery company he called didn’t answer the phone.

“The few who answered quoted me astronomical rates for emergency data recovery at thattime of night,” Moreland says.

Emergency RAID Recovery: 24 Hour Data Saves the Night

Finally, Moreland says, he dialed the right number: 1-866-598-DATA. The round-the-clock data recovery specialists at 24 Hour Data answered the phone and suggested Moreland drop off the drive.

“My immediate reaction was, ‘I like this guy!’” Moreland recalls.

Moreland liked the 24 Hour Data experts even better when they called him five hours later to report they recovered all the mission critical data.

“I came back in the morning to pick up the re-built RAID array with all my data recovered and in place. It was that easy. Life was good,” Moreland says.

Living the Good Life with 24 Hour Data

Since then, Moreland says, his days of shopping for a data recovery service he can trust are over. “They have the most reasonable pricing I could find, and the service is top notch.”
He continues, “Data recovery is a highly specialized field, and we associate that with extremely high prices. But that doesn’t have to be the case.”

Describing 24 Hour Data’s RAID recovery rates as “fair” and “reasonable,” Moreland says he uses 24 Hour Data, and its partner firm, 24 Hour Computer, for all his high-level IT service. “I feel greater peace-of-mind knowing 24 Hour Data and 24 Hour Computer are there as a resource for my business. If anyone is looking for amazingly good service at a very fair price, I feel there’s no one better.”

24 Hour Data President Sean Wade says helping Dallas business owners like Moreland gives his job greater meaning. “Encartele provides an important communication service for correctional and confinement facilities. Inmates view Encartele’s phone and video calling services as their lifeline to loved ones. We’re proud to assist Encartele with RAID data recovery and repair services to help keep those communication lines open.”

About 24 Hour Data

With more than 15 years experience in the data recovery industry, 24 Hour Data has unmatched success rates in data recovery for all forms of storage media, including flash data recovery, SSD data recovery(solid-state drive data recovery), hard drive data recovery, Mac recovery and more. Looking for a data recovery service you can trust to recover your lost data? Call the data recovery experts at 24 Hour Data.

Data Recovery

5 Guidelines for Hospital Data Recovery Plans

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM12 years ago4 years ago07 mins

Toward the end of July, dozens of hospitals across the country lost access to crucial electronic medical records for close to five hours during a major computer outage. Human error caused the computer outage, which is just one of many potential disasters that can affect hospital data. Although no hospital or physician reported any harm to patients, the length of the outage and the delay of the backup system were alarming to those involved.

This incident makes recent findings from the Acronis Global Disaster Recovery Index 2012 particularly concerning. The survey was conducted by the Ponemon Institute in September and October 2011. Over 6,000 information technology practitioners were surveyed. Here are a few key findings of the survey.

• Fifty-five percent of respondents from the healthcare sector reported low confidence in their ability to recover data following a disaster.
• One third of healthcare sector respondents (33 percent) confessed they could not recover quickly following a disaster.
• Forty-two percent of healthcare sector respondents said they would suffer substantial downtime following a disaster.
• More than 34 percent of respondents admitted to spending nothing at all on backup and disaster recovery in 2011.

It is clear from the findings that healthcare organizations are not adequately preparing for data recovery and backup. According to Blaine Raddon, general manager for Acronis Americas, a software company that develops backup and disaster recovery products, instances like the recent computer outage usually push healthcare organizations to discuss their data storage and recovery plans. However, organizations should not be waiting until another hospital has a disaster to assess their data backup plan.

Here Mr. Raddon offers five guidelines healthcare organizations should follow to develop comprehensive data recovery and disaster plans. These plans should encompass any potential data loss issue, such as an administrator accidently deleting a critical file or a natural disaster.

1. Develop individual plans for departments. A hospital’s data recovery plan needs to be tailored to each department because the critical requirements of each department will vary. The data recovery plan cannot rest solely on the shoulders of the IT department. If each department includes business and patient data needs, the plan will be more comprehensive and effective.

“Think through the plan for each department level — what data is needed and what is the importance level? Some departments cannot have any downtime. They may need instant recovery because more than a couple minutes of downtime could mean life or death,” says Mr. Raddon.

2. Prepare for the best and the worst. Start with the worst case scenario to make sure the plan can handle a disaster situation, and work backward to develop a plan that covers the hospital for everyday user-driven problems.

“At the end of the day, the cases that are most often seen are human error and machine failure — things that are more predictable and user driven. Having the backup and recovery plan for when an administrator accidently deletes a file is just as important as a plan for when the hospital’s power supply is cut. Those may not be what people think of as a disaster that threatens patient data, but that is what occurs most often,” says Mr. Raddon.

3. Include personnel in the plan. According to Mr. Raddon, it is critical that personnel are included in the data recovery plan. This includes what everyone’s role in a data loss situation would be as well as backup for experts and administrators.

“If you have one IT person and he’s the only one who knows how to repair the hospital’s dataservers, what would happen if he was not available during a disaster? You have to include the people component in the plan to guarantee there are enough employees with the right training,” says Mr. Raddon.

4. Factor in downtime. A timeframe for downtime needs to be considered in the data recovery planning process so each department knows what it can live with.

“Some departments are dealing with life and death situations. Executives need to consider whether the hospital’s plan allows departments to return in a reasonable time frame. A two-hour recovery time frame for the intensive care unit may not cut it,” says Mr. Raddon.

5. Test the plan. Many hospitals believe their plan works but it’s never tested. That is a recipe for disaster, according to Mr. Raddon.

“A plan isn’t a plan if it isn’t tested, Hospitals should document their plan, frequently test it and run unannounced spot checks, which will show how the recovery may run in a true emergency,” says Mr. Raddon.

Written by Kathleen Roney

Data Recovery

General Data-Loss Prevention Tips

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM12 years ago10 months ago014 mins

The cost of a data loss event is directly related to the value of the data and the length of time that it is needed, but unavailable. Consider:

The cost of continuing without the data
The cost of recreating the data
The cost of notifying users in the event of a compromise

General Data-Loss Prevention Tips

Software and Hardware

Document your systems and archive original copies of your software in a safe place.
Backup your files on a regular basis, then test and verify that your backup is a complete copy of the original. External drives are an excellent choice for this task.
Never upgrade software or hardware without a complete, verified backup available in case you need to restore data.
If you are using Microsoft Windows XP, establish System Restore Points before making any significant changes to your system.
Write a contingency plan and practice restoring your data in case of problems. Your contingency plan should require, as a minimum:
- Locating all available backups, including dates and types of backup.
- Listing and locating all original software packages, detailing updates since the original installation.
- Locating and making ready an alternate computer.
Deploy firewalls and virus protection.
Delete unused files and applications. Use a disc defragmenter, which is a program that is usually part of the operating system utilities.

Environment

Ensure proper environmental conditions (stable temperature, humidity and cleanliness) and proper handling to avoid static discharge and accidental dropping.
Physically secure systems from intruders.
Prepare for physical disasters, including use of off-site storage for backup.

The following sections describe types of data recovery and supported formats and manufacturers. RAID data recovery, digital photo recovery, and VMWare workstation data loss are covered in separate articles under “Related Links.”

Laptop Data Recovery

As they are often carried about and exposed to different environmental factors such as heat, water and dust, laptop and notebook computers are far more likely to experience data loss than their office desktop counterparts. Their portability makes these sophisticated and essential in-the-field devices prime candidates for data loss.

Mechanical and electrical failure, software corruption and human error all play a role in data loss. Here are some of the most often noted data loss symptoms and data accessibility problems:

Dropped notebook – no longer turns on
Inaccessible drives and partitions
Applications that are unable to run or load data
Corrupted data
Virus attacks
Hard disk component failure
Hard disk crashes
Damage due to fire or liquids
Media surface contamination and damage
Accidental reformatting of partitions
Accidental deletion of data

Laptop Disk Drives Supported
You may not know this, but the hard disk drive embedded in your laptop is not necessarily by the same manufacturer as the laptop. Seagate Recovery Services recovers data from all notebook and laptop brands, models and interfaces – that is, from all types of hard disk drives from all manufacturers including Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Hitachi and Samsung.

Database Recovery

Mission-critical data is often stored in SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase, Exchange Server, Access and other databases that are maintained on networked fileservers. Relational and object-oriented database management technologies are fundamental to modern IT systems, often underpinning the lifeblood applications run by the entire corporation.

Individual media in database servers suffer from the same failure points as disk drives in personal computers and workstations. Experienced system administrators and database administrators know that a relational or object-oriented database environment is fragile unless supported by a comprehensive and well-tested backup plan.

Unfortunately, it is all too common for devices to become corrupt beyond the scope of routine recovery methods:

Backup files not recognizable by database engine
Database locked as ‘suspect’ preventing access
Deleted or dropped tables
Accidentally deleted records
Corrupted database files and devices
Damaged individual data pages
Accidentally overwritten database files and devices

Seagate Recovery Services specializes in making inaccessible data accessible again, recovering data from the most complex database configurations.

Database Types Supported

Microsoft SQL Server 6.5, 7.0, 2000, 2005, 2008
Oracle Lite, 8.x & 9.x, 10x, 11x
Sybase SQL Server
Sybase SQL Anywhere
Interbase
MySQL
PostgreSQL Standard Databases
Microsoft Access

SRS can also make inaccessible data accessible again for all xbase products such as dBase, FoxPro Productivity Applications Microsoft Office (including all versions of Word, Excel and Powerpoint Mail Server and Client Applications), Microsoft Exchange and Outlook Applications, and email systems conforming to the UNIX mbox format, such as Eudora and Netscape.

Server Data Recovery

Fileservers, application servers, mail servers, web servers, NAS devices and custom-built servers form the backbone of corporations’ business records storage systems. Windows servers–the most popular operating systems for servers today–along with Apple OSX, Solaris, HPUX, IAX, and Linux servers, form a significant portion of servers in businesses.

Naturally, the individual media in servers suffer from the same failure points as do drives in personal computers and workstations. However, the increased complexity of many server operating systems results in additional data loss situations:

Server registry configuration lost
Intermittent drive failure resulting in configuration corruption
Multiple drive failure
Accidental replacement of media components

Because servers are often utilized for mission-critical operations, customers need to get their data back quickly and securely. SRS services includes options for on-site data recovery, critical 24/7 options, as well as remote data recovery and special options.

Operating Systems and Platforms Supported
SRS technicians are trained on platform-specific configurations, enabling us to recover data from server hardware spanning the most popular brands, such as IBM, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Sun and others, including:

Intel-based platforms for UNIX Operating systems including
- Solaris, Linux with ext 2,3,4, xfs, reiserfs & jfs filesystems on standalone & RAID volumes in LVM (Logic Volume Management) configuration or without it
- BSD-based systems such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD, BSDI
- Apple Mac OSX
- Legacy OS like QNX, SCO OpenServer, Xenix, UnixWare, LynxOS and so on

Intel-based platforms for Non-Unix Operating systems including:
- Windows NT, 2000, 2003, 2008 servers

UNIX and non-UNIX Platforms such as
- Solaris on Sun/SPARC equipment, with ufs and Veritas VxFS .zfs filesystems
- HPUX on Hewlett-Packard workstations with hfs and Veritas
- VxFS file systems on standalone
- IRIX on SGI workstations with efs and xfs filesystems
- Legacy VMS & OpenVMS running on Compaq & DEC equipment using ODS file systems
- AIX on IBM RS/6000 with jfs file systems on LVM volumes

Tape Data Recovery

Server and personal-computer tape backup systems utilizing mm DAT, Travan, Exabyte 8mm, LTO and the various QIC formats are popular and necessary to safeguard your data. However, when these tapes fail, the situation is normally catastrophic, as these tapes were often the only remaining repository of the data. Quite often customers may no longer posses original tape hardware or software to restore from legacy environments.

Fire, smoke, water and even dropping the tape cartridge may damage the media, resulting in data loss. Internal mechanism failure and exposure to extreme temperatures, as well as logical read/write errors on a tape’s file may also result in data loss. Due to the nature of the tape solution, they are designed to withstand time to store archives. Some media if stored incorrectly or stored longer than the life span of the media may degrade causing data loss.

Here are some typical causes of tape failure:

Tape drive failure has corrupted tape headers
Tape media stretched or snapped
Fire & water damage Media surface contamination and damage
Accidental reformatting or erasure of tape
Accidental overwriting of headers
Tape backup software corruption
Media degradation due to the age or improper storage
Legacy tapes where tape drive or software no longer available

Formats and Manufacturers Supported
Popular backup software–such as EMC, Networker, CA BrightStore (ArcServe) plus the UNIX tar and cpio utilities (and many more)–all use different internal formats. SRS programmers are expertly trained to understand and extract data any type of tape media, regardless of format. SRS recovers data from these tape media formats and manufacturers, among others:

DLT III, DLT IV, DLT-1, VS80, VS160 and Super DLT tape
LTO 1, 2 , 3, 4, 5
4mm DAT format DDS, DDS-2, DDS-3 and DDS- DAT-72, DAT-160, DAT-320
Exabyte 8mm 112m and 160m tapes & Mammoth 1 (Exabyte 8900), Mammoth 2
Sony IT and AIT-2, AIT-3 AIT-4, AIT-5 and SAIT
Travan TR-1, TR-3, TR-4 and TR-5 tapes
QIC tapes
QIC Mini-Cartridges
Tandberg SLR tapes
ADR and ADR2 tapes
9 track 800/1600/6250 bpi
Next track
IBM 3480/3490/3592 tapes

Tape Backup and File Formats

Microsoft Tape Format (MTF) applications such as NT Backup and Symantec (Seagate/Veritas), BackupExec for Window, Backup Exec for NetWare
System Independent Data Format (SIDF) applications such as Novell’s Sbackup and Palindrome’s Backup Director
IBM Tivoli TSM
Computer Associates, Brightstore (Arcserve)
Previos/Stac Replica Backup for NT, NetWare
EMC (Legato) NetWorker (all platforms)
Symantec (Veritas) NetBackup, unix tar, cpio, fbackup, fsdump and ufsdump archives
Compaq/DEC VMS Backup
Commvault Galaxy/Simpana

For more information, please go to Seagate Recovery Services

Data Recovery

What Is Data Loss?

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM12 years ago12 years ago01 mins

Data loss is generally characterized by one or more of the following:

The inability to access any data from a previously functioning computer system or backup
The accidental deletion of files or the overwriting of data control structures
Corrupted or inaccessible files due to abnormal device operation or damage

Among other causes, data loss can be attributed to system or human error, adverse environmental conditions and device failure:

Human causes of data loss include intentional or accidental deletion or overwriting of files.
Virus damage, operating system or application software bugs, or failed upgrades may also cause data loss.
Common physical causes of data loss include power loss or power surge, overheating, electrostatic (“static”) discharge and any kind of physical damage to the storage device or medium.

Data Recovery

Hard Drive Data Recovery

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM12 years ago12 years ago04 mins

If you use a HDD with a decent amount of time, there is a good chance someone has told you that data stored on the HDD is not exactly safe. It is definitely true.

The fact that unlike tapes or CDs or other methods of storage, hard drives are mechanical, active devices and are thus subject to comparatively rapid breakdown.

The real threats to hard drives are the people who use them. Working as a computer tech during the glory days of Windows XP, you get rather used to using FDISK and other hard drive utilities to prepare and repair customer’s drives, which leads to certain over confidence.

Picture this if you will; there are two or three sentences and a screen shot away from finishing a 5000+ word article on computer upgrades. All we should do was fire up FDISK on a dual boot Windows PC system and grab a few screen shots. Write a little blurb on how to partition a drive, making sure to tell the readers not to mess with FDISK if they were not sure what they were doing…

Anyway, wanted to get some more screen shots of the actual partitioning screen, but you did not have a blank hard drive handy. You can use my NTFS formatted XP drive (which FDISK perceived as a blank drive) to start the “process,” grab the screen shots and then cancel the partitioning.

Except for one little thing
FDISK, in the process of checking the disk before it prompts you for the size of the partition, writes information to certain areas of the hard drive. This data writes over whatever might have been there before. Meanwhile, there I was, watching the ‘%complete’ counter and wondering why a little red warning flag kept going off in brain? Restarted WinXP and waited for it to boot, and waited… and waited…

The hard drive that suffered the data loss was a 1TB Hitachi drive with two 5Gb XP NTFS partitions (Home and Professional) and 6Gb of unused space. Both XP partition were unbootable after the incident.

After transferring the drive to a Windows 2000 computer, then use disk manager, (to load disk manager on XP or 2000, right click ‘my computer’ select ‘manage’ then ‘disk manager’) this is what I saw.

The Primary partition where my 5000+ word article was saved, is seen as unformatted and cannot be read by the OS. The second XP partition could not be booted, but was seen as formatted and I could transfer files easily from it using explorer.

Data Recovery

Kroll Ontrack launches Ontrack Data Recovery Portal

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM12 years ago4 years ago04 mins

Data recovery vendor, Kroll Ontrack, recently launched its free Ontrack data recovery portal, which offers a paperless service for partners.

“We were developing it for the US market but the shortage of education on this matter led us to roll it out here in Australia. It gives the ability for the partner to log jobs through the online portal and they can open up a job, send in a device for recovery, and watch its progress,” Kroll Ontrack Asia-Pacific general manager, Adrian Briscoe said.

Briscoe mentioned that introducing the portal has made its partners more self-serving, eliminating the need to call in and speak to its consultant. Onsite computer service provider and Kroll Ontrack Australian partner, Geeks2U managing director, David Hancock, said that the portal has enabled its business to manage its customers’ data recovery needs independently.

This portal is an added service to its data recovery certified partner program, launched in May 2011, that offers partners with training and informational materials and access to its data recovery methodology.

Through the certified partner program, the company has already registered more than 245 certified partners across A/NZ, and intends to grow that base to 270 partners, Briscoe claimed.

In further educating the market, Kroll Ontrack launched a data recovery awareness campaign to dispel data recovery myths.

He said that the campaign aims to help consumers and organisations with selecting a data recovery service that is right for their needs and helps protect their data from future loss.

“Data recovery myths can be disproved with the right technology, technical know-how and approach to service,” Briscoe said.

The top five data recovery myths include:

The most inexpensive data recovery quote will result in the same outcome as the other quotes
Not experiencing a significant data loss means a business does not require a data recovery plan
In the event of a data loss situation, a company’s IT department can handle it
Data recovery is not possible in some situations and for some technologies
Due to the nature of their business, all data recovery companies know how to keep a company’s data safe

More information on these myths can be accessed from www.krollontrack.com/data-recovery/myths/

Data Recovery

Stunning Features of Stellar Phoenix File Undelete Software

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM13 years ago12 years ago04 mins

Have you recently deleted any important files or folders from hard drive but wants to get it back? Don’t get panic because there is a simple solution to all your file data loss problems which becomes life savior for your deleted files and can bring it back to life.

Whatever the data loss situations and type of deleted files, Stellar Phoenix provides a series of data recovery software to efficiently recover them all from almost any platform like Windows, MAC, Linux, Unix. Most of the software’s from stellar are certified and tested by software giants like CNET, laptop mag, top ten reviews etc.

Below are some interesting features of Stellar Phoenix undelete software which is hard to met in any recovery software:

Multiple OS Support: Software can successfully perform data recovery from Windows, MAC and Linux.
Multiple File System Support: Easy data recovery from Ext1, Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, HFS, HFS+, NTFS, NTFS5 and many more.
Free Evaluation: You can download any of the undelete software for free and scan the media for recovery. However, full recovery is not possible in the free version.
Supported Media File Types: Software will provide the standard scan on the media and enables you to recover almost any type of Emails, Photos, Videos, Text, Office documents etc.
Worldwide Presence: Stellar Data Recovery products have huge presence worldwide and its products are already listed on top software reviewing firm like CNET, Laptop mag, Top Ten Reviews etc.
Microsoft Gold Certified Partner: Stellar is Microsoft gold certified partner which makes it a leading competitor in the field of data recovery software and services.
30 Days Money Back Guarantee: In any case, the software can’t able to perform its intended purpose, you can place money back request any time.
Large Customer Base: Stellar undelete software’s are used worldwide and widely accepted. So as, Stellar recently touched a great milestone of having more than 1 million of satisfied customer worldwide. Moreover, Stellar runs affiliates and partner program to deliver products to its needy customer in more than 137 countries.
Excellent Support: You will get 24*5 support of product sales related queries, software troubleshooting or anything you want to get helped.

That’s all about Stellar undelete software killing features. From time to time, Stellar runs great offers for their worldwide selling products and surveys to meet the exact needs of its customers.

About the Author

Abhayjeet is a data recovery expert and part time technical writer. He would love to write article on the topic that he had discovered or found useful from the user perspectives. Oliver has recommendation about undelete software to easily recover data that got deleted or formatted accidentally.

Data Recovery

6 Data Recovery Tools for SD Cards, USB Drives

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM13 years ago4 years ago04 mins

As USB drives and memory cards get larger and cheaper, it’s getting easier to trust much more of your data to them. It’s also much easier to mistakenly erase data or have them hiccup on you. And if you’re in the habit of holding on to that data for too long — for example, not transferring photos from your camera’s memory card — disaster is almost guaranteed to strike at some point. What happens then?

While there’s no end of data recovery tool packages out there, most of them are primarily designed to reclaim data from system drives. In this roundup, I look at the following six packages in terms of how well they recover data from mobile storage such as flash drives and memory cards: CardRecovery, PhotoRec, Recover My Files, Recuva, Remo Recover and Undelete 360.

CardRecovery
WinRecovery Software
Price: $39.95
OS: Windows 98 and later. (CardRescue available for Mac OS X)
PhotoRec
Christophe Grenier
Price: Free
OS: DOS, Windows 98 and later, Mac OS X, Linux (2.4 /2.6 kernel)
Recover My Files
GetData
Price: $69.95 (Standard); $99.95 (Pro); $299 (Technician). Free trial available (only previews files)
OS: Windows 98 and later
Recuva
Piriform
Price: Free; home ($24.95) and business ($34.95) support available
OS: Windows XP and later
Remo Recover (Windows)
Remo Software
Price: $39 (Basic); $49 (Media); $99 (Pro). Free trial available (only previews files)
OS: Windows 98 and later. Versions available for Mac OS X.
Undelete 360
File Recovery
Price: Free
OS: Windows 2000 and later

Undelete 360 worked best when dealing with recently deleted files, but anything more ambitious than that (e.g., quick-formatted media) was beyond it. CardRecovery’s biggest limitation was the limited range of file types it handles: It’s designed mainly to recover files created by cameras and almost nothing else.

Recover My Files may be costly, but I liked its tunable scan function; its professional-level support for devices like RAID drives may come in handy. Remo Recover is functionally similar to Recover My Files, but it turned up a high number of false positives during testing.

The biggest surprise was how two of the best programs cost nothing to use. While PhotoRec was the least novice-friendly — its text-only interface could scare off the uninitiated and its documentation is spotty — it was also one of the most powerful. Recuva was likewise quite strong and wasn’t lacking any functionality in its free version.

Serdar Yegulalp has been writing about computers and information technology for a variety of publications for more than 15 years.

Data Recovery

Fan’s Data Recovery Tools

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM13 years ago4 years ago05 mins

CTO of SalvationDATA, studied Computer Science in University of Electronic Science and Technology in China for four years before starting a career in hard disk repair and data recovery in 1998 for SalvationDATA.

He has certification with national data recovery engineer certification as well as being a member of the High Tech Crime Investigation Association in China. As a friend of Mr. Liang, he is also a Certified Protection Professional and a Certified Computer Examiner and an associate Professor at Sichuan University, and has been responsible for the creation and instruction of a Computer Forensics and Data Mining course at Sichuan University. He is a member of the High Tech Crime Investigation Association in China as well as association of Certified Fraud Examiners, and many other professional associations.

Fan’s Data Recovery Tools:

1. HD HPE PRO
Hard Drive repair Tool by SalvationDATA built to handle Head Stack and DSM issues. You can easily use this hard drive repair tool for disk platter exchange.

2. HD Doctor Suite
HD Doctor Suite is an integrated hardware-software combined system that fixes hdd firmware issues for drives of all major manufacturers and popular drive families. Including:

HD Doctor for WD
HD Doctor for Seagate
HD Doctor for Maxtor
HD Doctor for Samsung
HD Doctor for Fujitsu & Toshiba
HD Doctor for IBM/Hitachi

3. SD Flash Doctor

SalvationDATA Flash Doctor is a professional data reovery tool which enables you to recover data from damaged flash media. The hardware helps to access the flash chip contains user data despite of damaged controller or any other front ends (PCB, etc.) using non-standard interface and command, and then extract all the data as an image; the software works on this image and helps to rebuild the data which is doomed to be corrupted because of the “Data Mix” technology used by the manufacturers, Flash Data Recovery Doctor uses unique algorithm which removes the data mix with no need to know/use/emulate/analyze the controller.

4. Data Copy King

SalvationDATA new disk image tool with features of forensic data capture, data wiping, SATA/IDE and USB universal data copy, copy data from drives with a lot of bad sectors.

Data Copy King is the only hard drive duplicator with ‘UNIC’ disk imaging solutions which is able to copy data from good drives or drives with severe bad sectors or drives with unstable heads but still detected in the bios.

5. Data Compass

SalvationDATA’s Data Compass is the 2011 advanced leading data recovery equipment built to image and recover files from failed hard drives. Data recovery from physically damaged HDDs is what Data Compass designed for.

The disk probing equipment included in the Data Compass suite bypassing the disk-level problems such as multiple bad sectors, damaged surfaces, malfunctioning head assembly, or corrupted servo info, besides, you can use the default data recovery software or any other defined data recovery software you have been familiar with (R-studio, Winhex, any) to perform file recovery. Through the Data Compass, patient drives will become intact hard drives and ready for file recovery attempts..