Data Recovery Tools

File Scavenger is a Windows file undelete and data recovery utility for NTFS and FAT/FAT32 volumes. It can recover files that were damaged by virus or accidentally deleted from Windows Explorer, the Recycled Bin, command line window, or a network share along with original folder names and file Create and Modified dates. It supports reformatted volumes or broken hardware/software RAID volumes as well as file compression, dynamic disks, alternate data streams, sparse files, Unicode filenames and more. With the trial version only 64KB or smaller files can be recovered. File Scavenger offers 3 different search modes, one for quick access to recently deleted files, one for exhaustive search and also a defunct volume search that can even recover files from compromised striped and RAID volumes. We tested the product on a machine that was reformatted a few days ago, and safely recovered some of the files, old desktop shortcuts and more.

DiskInternals Uneraser is an undelete tool to recover deleted files, including documents, photos, mp3 and zip files, or even folders and damaged disk. It supports local hard drives and removable storage media (music sticks, cameras, flash drives, USB drives, etc) and works with encrypted or compressed files. You can access partitions under any operating system, even NTFS from a Win9x machine. The program comes with a simple Windows Explorer interface that lets you select the drive or folder to scan, and then presents a list of files that were found. DiskInternals Uneraser also allows you to create disk images.

OutlookFIX enables you to recover and undelete Outlook email messages, Contacts, Tasks, Calendar entries and other Outlook items. A step-by-step wizard guides you through the process of selecting the .PST file and selecting the items to be recovered. In addition to data recovery, OutlookFIX can also be used to split your .PST file into several smaller .PST files to overcome the 2BG limit and associated problems. This file splitting feature also allows the user to burn one Outlook PST file onto several CDs. The program recovers files created in all versions of Outlook including 95, 97, 2000, 2002 (XP), 2003 and 2007.

R-Undelete is an easy-to-use yet powerful file undelete solution for FAT, NTFS, NTFS5, and Ext2FS file systems. R-Undelete can undelete files on any valid logical disks visible by the host OS. After the program scans the selected drive, you can select the files to be restored from an easy to understand tree view that marks deleted files in red. The program cannot undelete files on damaged or deleted volumes or in the case of hard drive repartitioning.

OfficeFIX is a Microsoft Office recovery suite, that restores damaged or corrupt Excel, Access and Word files. The package includes ExcelFIX, AccessFIX, and WordFIX, which can also be purchased separately. Each application provides a wizard-style step by step interface to restore single or multiple files.

Master Uneraser is a data recovery software that enables you to undelete accidentally deleted files, even if they have been emptied from the recycle bin. The program supports all modern FAT and NTFS file systems and performs a quick scan that attempts to find all recently deleted files. You can then choose the file to restore to a folder or drive of your choice.

OfficeRecovery combines data recovery programs for Microsoft Office applications into a single package. It includes data recover programs for Word, Access, Excel, Outlook, Outlook Express and PowerPoint. Word Recovery fixes corrupted Word documents, Outlook and Outlook Express Recovery fix corrupted mail folders, Access recovery can recover data from corrupted Access (.mdb databases). The components can also be purchased separately ($399 each).

CDRoller is an easy-to-use, well featured and low cost tool for CD and DVD data recovery. It acts as a fault-tolerant data CD contents reader with capabilities to search for lost data tracks, as well as a Session Selector to retrieve the data from all sessions on multi-session CD. CDRoller also offers extended UDF reading features with capability to search and recover lost files. The built-in CD Data Rescue tool, allows you to recover the files and folders from the damaged discs. On top of that, the program can also be used as a Audio CD digital extractor (CD ripper) and media analysis and testing tool and to catalog your media. The main problem with scratched CDs or DVDs is that they may no longer be readable by Windows. If this is the case, most recovery programs cannot access them either - since CDRoller uses a fault tolerant driver however, it is able to overcome this problem. We used a deeply scratched DVD during the review, that could not be read by Windows (inaccessible). CD Roller was able to read the DVD and browse the content.

Recover My Files is a utility to recover deleted files, including documents, graphics, digital camera photographs, Zip files, email, music, video and more. It can recover files emptied from the Recycle Bin, from a formatted disk or lost due to a system crash or virus infection. The user friendly interface provides a simple 4 step wizard that lets you select the file types to scan for and the drive. The program then searches every sector of your hard drive to recognize deleted files by their internal format. The results show you the status (chance of recovery) for each file and it also provides a viewer that allows you to view the content of the file (text, image etc.). The evaluation version only displays the files found and chance of recovery, but it does not allow to recover any files.

Smart Undelete is a file unerase and data recovery software that works with hard drives and removable disks, including USB sticks (but not with media cards). It is simple to operate, just select the drive and press the scan button, and view the list of files that can be recovered. The program can limit the search to specific file types or extensions, and also offers an option to save and restore to/from an image file. Smart Undelete only performs a quick surface scan, and does not have the recovery capabilities of more advanced tools.

Media Investigator File Recovery enables you to find lost, deleted and formatted files and photos on removable drives, memory cards and local hard drives. It supports most digital image formats as well as popular file formats and you can extend the list to support additional formats of your choice. The scan results include small image thumbnail previews and can be sorted by file size and type. The program offers a deep scan option that can help you find files that have been lost due to formatting. Media Investigator File Recovery requires you to be connected to the Internet so that it can transmit usage statistics to their server, it also includes a nag screen that solicits newsletter sign-up.

DeleteFIX Photo enables you to recover deleted images from digital cameras. The program supports all common image and video formats, as well as camera specific RAW formats. You can preview the images that were found on the camera and also restore them to your hard drive, however a watermark will be added during the trial. The current version does not fully support recovery from memory cards and other removable drives, so you are required to connect your camera directly to the PC.

Undelete Professional is a data recovery tool that replaces the standard Windows recycle bin with a Recovery Bin, which is more powerful and can undelete all types of files, even if they were deleted over the network or from a command (other programs etc.). It acts as a preemptive measure to avoid data loss, providing a safe way for easy recovery. Undelete Professional also includes SecureDelete to permanently wipe files from the disk as well as extended search functionality to find deleted files based on various criteria. Other features include support for files versioning, free space wiping, file and folder exclusions and more.

Backup Key Recovery enables you to recover software registration keys in case of a computer hard drive crash. The program extracts the information that is stored in the System32/config/software registry files. In order for the program to work, you must first recover this file from the hard drive of the crashed computer by connecting it as a secondary hard drive. Once the file is located Backup Key Recovery can extract all the keys that are found in it. The program currently supports more than 500 software packages.

Windows Mail Recovery enables you to recover accidentally deleted email messages even if they have been empties from `Deleted Items` folder. You can preview the subject lines and select which messages to recover (after registration).

Recover Disc is data recovery software that can help you extract data from scratched, damaged, defective or incorrectly burned CD and DVD discs, even if they cannot be read by Windows or other software. The program extracts the intact portions of the disk and also attempts to recover problem areas. If it encounters bad blocks you can choose to retry or skip the block and try recovery from a different disc reader later - partially extracted data of the same file can be automatically merged. You can choose to extract individual files or save the entire disc as .ISO image. Recover Disk supports all types of CD and DVD media with ISO or UDF file systems, including discs burned by video cameras and recorders.

GetDataBack for NTFS is a data recovery software for NTFS file systems, which will help you to get your data back, even if your drive`s partition table, boot record, NTFS, root directory is corrupt or lost or when a virus has hit the drive, files were deleted, the drive was formatted, fdisked or struck by a power failure etc. GetDataBack can even recover your data when the drive is no longer recognized by the operating system or all directory information is lost. It uses advanced algorithms to make sure that all directories and sub directories are put together as they were, and that long file names are reconstructed correctly. GetDataBack is safe to use, because it is read-only, which means the program will never attempt to write to the drive you are about to recover. Instead, it allows you to first create an image of the drive, and then recover the data from the image. The program can also recover data over a network or a serial cable. Easy to use and very effective product.

GetDataBack for FAT is a data recovery software for FAT file systems, which will help you to get your data back, even if your drive's partition table, boot record, FAT, root directory is corrupt or lost or when a virus has hit the drive, files were deleted, the drive was formatted, fdisked or struck by a power failure etc. GetDataBack can even recover your data when the drive is no longer recognized by the operating system or all directory information is lost. It uses advanced algorithms to make sure that all directories and sub directories are put together as they were, and that long file names are reconstructed correctly. GetDataBack is safe to use, because it is read-only, which means the program will never attempt to write to the drive you are about to recover. Instead, it allows you to first create an image of the drive, and then recover the data from the image. The program can also recover data over a network or a serial cable. Easy to use and very effective product.

RecoverPlus Pro allows you to recover delete images from your hard drives or any type of removable storage media including CF cards, SD cards, Memory Sticks, SmartMedia, CD/DVD, digital cameras, cell phones and more. It supports more than 40 file types by default, including several RAW formats, and new formats can be automatically added using a unique TransPict Adaptive engine. The simple, bare-bone interface offers a preview of the images that are found and can be recovered, as well as options to save the files, explore the folder, test the media speed and more. RecoverPlus Pro includes a quick search feature that recover images that were simply deleted, and two additional scan options for media that has been formatted. The trial version of RecoverPlus Pro allows to to recover up to 64mb of images.

DBF Recovery is a tool to recover data from damaged or corrupted DBF files. It can fix the headers of the file, and also analyze the data structure in an attempt to fix it as well. The program automatically recognizes all popular DBF formats, including Dbase III/IV, Foxpro, Visual Foxpro and others.

Pc Tools File Recover enables you to recover and restore deleted files from hard drives, floppy drives and other types of fixed media. It offers a Quick Scan and a Deep Scan option and displays an estimated recovery chance along with each file that was found during the scan. You can further limit the scan to certain file types as well as file size, and also search for files that contain a keyword in the their name. The trial version does not allow you to recover any files.

Advanced Access Repair scans corrupted Microsoft Access databases (.mdb files) and attempts to recover as much data as possible. It supports recovery of MEMO and OLE fields, as well as deleted records, tables indexes and more. The recovered data can be saved to a new .mdb file in Office 95/97/2000 format. Other features include support for password protected databases and command-line options.

IsoBuster is a CD/DVD and (Disk)Image File data recovery tool, that can read and extract files, tracks and sessions from CD-i, VCD, SVCD, CD-ROM, CD-ROM XA, DVD, DVCD BD and HD DVD and others. It also supports the following image file formats: *.DAO (Duplicator), *.TAO (Duplicator), *.ISO (Nero, BlindRead, Creator), *.BIN (CDRWin), *.IMG (CloneCD), *.CIF (Creator), *.FCD (Uncompressed), *.NRG (Nero), *.GCD (Prassi), *.P01 (Toast), *.C2D (WinOnCD), *.CUE (CDRWin), *.CIF (DiscJuggler), *.CD (CD-i OptImage) and *.GI (Prassi PrimoDVD). The program uses several retry-mechanisms to aid you in getting the data, even if Windows is not able to do so. Additional features include Mpg (*.dat) Extraction, support for file system properties, CDText support and much more.

DiskInternals Flash Recovery allows you to recover deleted, lost or formatted photos images from hard-drives, external drives, cameras and flash memory devices including Smart Media, Compact Flash, Memory Stick, MicroDrive, xD Picture Card, Flash Card, PC Card, Multimedia Card, Secure Digital Card, and others. The program is very easy to use, just select the drive to scan, and it will present you with thumbnails of the images that can be recovered. In order to actually recover the files, you need to purchase the product first. The program appears to support several RAW formats as well, we tested it with Canon CR2 files, which is a fairly new format and it worked fine.

Active@ UNDELETE is a data recovery software that helps to recover lost, deleted and formatted data on local and network drives, as well as removable drives and digital media like Secure Digital, CompactFlash, SmartMedia, MemoryStick etc. The program supports FAT12, FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS files on any Windows systems including servers versions. In addition, the program supports EFS (Encrypting File System) file recovery, damaged RAID reconstruction and also allows you to create a disk image to further protect your data.

SoftAmbulance Photo Undelete enables you to recover accidentally deleted photos from your digital camera storage media including Compact Flash, Secure Digital, SmartMedia and other storage cards. It scans the content of the media and provides you with a real-time preview of the files that can be recovered. You can then browse the thumbnails, view enlarged previews and select the images to be recovered. Furthermore, you can filter the results by image type and extension. In addition to common image formats, the program also supports popular RAW formats like Canon .CR2 and others. The trial version allows you to preview images, but not to recover them.

Recover4all Professional allows you to recover deleted files, even after they have been removed from the recycle bin. The software provides a simple interface that lets you view a list of deleted files (no search option), as well as their chances of recovery. It supports NTFS and FAT files systems, as well as compressed drives, RAID levels, third party encrypted drives, long filenames in all languages and removable drives including Compact Flash, Smart Media, Secure Digital and Memory Stick. The program does not require installation and can be installed on a floppy (by default). The trial version can only recover files up to 10kb in size.

Data Recovery Wizard Professional is a data recovery software that supports various file systems including FAT, FAT16, VFAT, FAT32, NTFS, and NTFS5. It can restore data that has been deleted by the user or applications, viruses, power failures etc., as well as data from drives that have been formatted or overwritten. It attempts to locate, recover and restore lost data even if your computer has severe file system corruption. In addition, Data Recovery Wizard Professional supports recovery of compressed and encrypted files on NTFS, missing folders, lost partitions and more. It works with most storage media, such as IDE/ATA, SATA, SCSI, USB, Fire wire (IEEE1394) hard drive as well as Floppy disks, Compact Discs, USB flash drives, digital cameras, portable audio player and others. The trial version does not allow you to recover any files.

CardRecovery enables you to recover deleted or formatted images from digital camera memory cards, including SD, CF, xD, Memory Sticks and various other card types. The program provides a 3-step interface that allows you to select the type of files to scan for, a list of the recoverable files and a thumbnail preview. CardRecovery supports all common image files as well as audio and video formats and several popular RAW formats.

Photo Recovery Genius enables can recover deleted and formatted photos from various media storage devices, including digital cameras, local and removable hard drives, CD/DVD disks, iPods, mobile phones and all types of Flash cards (CF, SD, MMC etc.). The program offers a step-by-step wizard that lets you select the drive to scan, the file types to search for, and then presents you with a thumbnail list of all recovered files. Photo Recovery Genius also includes a full-size preview, an advanced filtering option to filter files by size, date and name, and support for popular RAW formats. The trial version only lets recover small images (up to 640kb) but allows for full preview of all found files.

BadCopy Pro is a data recovery tool for CDs, DVDs, floppy disks and other removable media. If you have a damaged disk, Windows usually won`t even read from it, making it impossible to access. This program uses advanced disk reading to get to the data. In many cases BadCopy Pro can recover the corrupted files perfectly or partially, then copy them to a specified folder, in order to recover the data. Using BadCopy is safe, since it does not perform any modify/overwrite operation on your original disk or files- all data is rescued to a user-defined, secondary location.

DocRepair is a fully automatic data recovery tool for corrupt MS Word documents. It supports all versions of Microsoft Word and various damage situations. The program uses a simple 3-step interface, that allows you to select the document and then start the recovery process. Evaluation version allows you to preview the recovered document, but you cannot save it.

CD Data Rescue recovers files from damaged or defective CD's. Any time you get an error reading a file, CD Data Rescue can help you to recover it. You can easily recover files, folders, and even deleted files from CD-Rs and CD-RWs. The program can also recover files from quick formated CD-RWs. It offers an easy to use interface, with all options accessible by pushing buttons. CD Data Rescue is designed to operate with either IDE or SCSI drives and CD recorders.

Handy Recovery is data recovery software that enables you to restore accidentally deleted files and files from formatted or deleted partitions. You can recover your data immediately or save it as disk image to recover them later and/or to prevent further damage to the file(s). Handy Recovery can restore entire folder structures or individual files and supports FAT12/16/32, NTFS and NTFS 5 file systems as well as CompactFlash, SmartMedia and Secure Digital cards. The trial version allows you to recover one file per day.

Actual Address Book Recovery enables you to restore contact information from damaged Windows Address Book (WAB) files and undelete accidentally deleted contacts. The program allows you to load the WAB file, select the contact you want to restore and then save them in vCard format. You can then import the vCard files back into your address book.

Outlook Recovery ToolBox enables you to restore content from damaged Microsoft Outlook PST files. The program reads the damaged PST file, and attempts to identify and restore the information, and then saves it to a new PST file.

Zero Assumption Recovery (ZAR) is a read-only data recovery solution, that extracts data from the damaged HDD to another medium (typically an additional HDD), leaving the original disk intact. ZAR can recover FAT16/32 and NTFS (including NTFS5) volumes and supports long file names, national language and NTFS compression. The program can typically recover volumes accidentally formatted or corrupted by a virus, power strike etc. The main interface operates under Windows, however it also provides an optional DOS mode in which it can also scan for and retrieve partitioning information from the damaged disk. ZAR can automatically save the recovered disk to a new disk image, so you can simple load the image and recover additional files at a later time.

PSD Repair Tool is a tool for recovering damaged Photoshop (PSD and PDD) files, allowing you to restore images and their layers. It works with all version of Photoshop and supports files of various color modes, color depth and with RLE compression. A Custom Parameters mode that can help you restore even badly damaged files with corrupt headers.

Easy Undelete is an easy-to-use undelete program for FAT and NTFS file systems. It can recover deleted files, even if they have been emptied from the Recycle Bin or erased by other programs. Easy Undelete supports all types of media such as hard disks, floppy, Zip and Jaz drives, Flash and Smart card readers and more. This allows you to not only recover deleted files from your PC, but also from your digital camera card or similar devices. Trial version is limited to files smaller than 32kb.

Active@ File Recovery will recover data after formatting or loss of partitions and recover files that have been lost by formatting, damage, virus, or directory destruction. It supports FAT12, FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS disk volumes and can run from a floppy disk, to prevent that the installation overwrites any data. Active@ File Recovery is easy to use and offers an Explorer-like interface. It scans your drives and marks all deleted files in a different color and allows you to recover them. In addition, you can use the program to create a disk image of any selected drive.

Rar Repair Tool enables you to repair corrupt RAR and SFX archives and recover the archive content. It supports rar files of any size and version. The simple interface lets you open the file and reports which parts of the archive can be recovered. The trial version allows repairing of files up to 5mb in size.

FinalRecovery is a file undelete, data recovery solution to undelete files and folders from Hard Disks and Floppy Disks. It supports FAT12, FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS file systems. It can also undelete files from digital camera cartridges, CF and memory stick. In addition to the undelete functionality, the program also provides the ability to clear any recoverable files (for privacy reasons). Evaluation limit can recover files up to 64kb in size.

Zip Repair Tool is a tool that can help you fix damaged zip archives, so they can be extracted and any undamaged files salvaged. If the smallest portion of a zip archive becomes corrupted, you normally will not be able to open the archive at all, even though most of the files contained in it may be completely intact. Zip Repair Tool enables you to overcome this problem and extract the files whenever possible. The program cannot fix what is missing or broken, but it enables you to salvage the files that were not damaged. Zip Repair Tool also supports batch processing of multiple archives. The program works with .ZIP files and self-extracting zip files. It supports 64 bit files as well as large archives (more than 4 gb).

MSSQLRecovery is a data recovery program for Microsoft SQL Server databases. It offers a powerful recovery engine designed to retrieve data from most damaged databases and a simple user interface allows to recover your data by simply selecting the .mdf or .dat file. The recovered data is output as SQL scripts. The program can recover tables, stored procedures and views as well as default values, primary keys and more.

WinUndelete is an easy to use undelete utility to recover previously deleted files from your hard drives, floppy disks, ZIP drives, USB external flash drives, digital camera cards and others. The program performs very fast, but only supericial scans that will find recently deleted files. However, we also tested it on a freshly formatted FlashCard, and WinUndelete failed to recover a single image, while other programs (freeware even) were able to find and recover all formatted files. The program is easy to use, but has limited recovery capabilities.

MediaRECOVER is a digital image/data recovery program for recovery of removable media used in digital cameras, PDA s, etc. Common media types supported by the program are: Flash Card, SmartMedia , CompactFlash, Memory Stick, Micro Drive, Multimedia Card, Secure Digital Card, Zip Disks, and also hard drives. If you have accidentally deleted or formatted your media, this program can recover that data, even if the media has become corrupted. The program does not write to the media, but stores the recovered files in a user defined location. Additional features include a media wipe option that erases the content beyond recovery. This free trial demo will only recover the first found image. It works well, we have tested if with a formatted SmartMedia card and were able to recover all images.

SUPERFileRecover enables you to search for deleted files, and recover them, even if they have been emptied from the recycle bin. It supports any type of document, including images, music files, documents, spreadsheets and others. You can also limit the search to a specific type of document, and preview text documents and pictures to locate a deleted file easier. SUPERFileRecover performs a quick disk scan, that usually takes less than a minute. It is able to recover many files that have been recently deleted, but does not support data recovery from formatted disks, lost partitions and other advanced recovery methods. The trial allows the first 64K of the file to be recovered.

Address Book Recovery is a utility to restore contact information from Windows Address Book (WAB) files, which store the contacts from Outlook and Outlook Express. With the help of the program you can restore accidentally deleted contacts, view archived changes and restore the contacts from the Windows Address Book if it has been corrupted. You can also export the information to vCard format. Address Book Recovery does not modify the original .WAB file, but only reads the data from it.