After using a lot of File Recovery Softwares, the only one that I found usefull
ID: 661863 • Letter: A
Question
After using a lot of File Recovery Softwares, the only one that I found usefull was TestDisk with PhotoRec. But it lacks a GUI and is not suitable for recomendation to 'not advanced users'.
Please suggest a good File Recovery Software which is user friendly.
Usage Senarios- Someone formatted a hard drive? Filesystem corruption? Undelete a file?
A software wich supports all these senarios is a IDEAL Software. And just like most Ideal things, is unlikely to exist. Support for widely used filesystems like - NTFS, FAT and EXT are expected.
I am looking for "Formated HardDisk/Deleted Partition" and "Undelete a File". testDisk and PhotoRec can handle these situations well. I am looking for a GUI based alternative.
Basic Requirments:
- Filesystem Support - FAT, FAT32, NTFS
- Recover Deleted files from MemoryCard or PenDrive.
- Recover Deleted files from HDD on DeletedPartition.
A wizard driven approach is appreciated. And It should actually work. I have used softwares that shows the file names but after recovery, all the files are corrupt. Those very files, although with names messed up, were recoverd by PhotoRec.
More features are appreciated but not necessary.
Explanation / Answer
The sort of tool you are looking for is unlikely to exist. Understanding why is a big part of the issue.
File recovery is a very wide field. It includes things like:
Undelete a file
Oops, I formatted the partition
Filesystem is corrupt or disk is damged. What can I get off?
This excludes the more interesting/specialized cases like forensic analysis and the like. Additionally every tool out there is going to be filesystem specific. It is unlikely that a tool used to recover data from an ISO9660 CDROM will work on an NTFS hard drive. So for the general case, you won't find it. Sorry.
In the general case, it is also extremely important that someone who knows what to look for and adapt is running the file recovery. So advanced cases like damaged disks (and hence probably filesystem corruption) will in not be helpful in most cases. (Such tools exist for CDROMs though).
The complexity of recovering files also varies considerably by filesystem.
For a simple undelete utility, I would probably recommend Recuva. It's well respected and easy to use. Unfortunately it doesn't go beyond undelete scenarios.