Data Recovery Tools

Restoration is an easy to use and straight forward tool to undelete files that were removed from the recycle bin or directly deleted from within Windows, and we were also able to recover photos from a Flash card that had been formatted. Upon start, you can scan for all files that may be recovered and also limit the results by entering a search term or extension. In addition, it also provides the option to wipe the found files beyond simple recovery. The program is small and standalone, it does not require installation and can also run from a Floppy disk. Restoration works with FAT and NTFS as well as digital cameras cards.

PC Inspector File Recovery is a data recovery program with support for FAT 12/16/32 and NTFS file systems. It recovers files with the original time and date stamp, even when a header entry is no longer available. On FAT systems, the programs finds partitions automatically, even if the boot sector or FAT has been erased or damaged. PC Inspector File Recovery offers an easy to use interface that will scan your drive and automatically make files that can be recovered available from a "Deleted" folder in an Explorer Style navigation tree.

PC Inspector Smart Recovery is a data recovery program for Flash Card, Smart Media, SONY Memory Stick, IBM Micro Drive, Multimedia Card, Secure Digital Card(SD) or any other data device for digital cameras. It enables you to recover accidentally deleted or formatted pictures, videos or sound files from the selected media. The program also offers a mode that enables you to check the media for errors.

SoftPerfect File Recovery is a tool to recover accidentally deleted files from hard disks, USB flash drives, CF and SD cards and other storage media. We tested the program with images deleted from a USB stick and they were recovered without problems - however the program will not be able to recover any files if the media has been formatted (or files have been overwritten). SoftPerfect File Recovery supports popular file systems such as FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS and NTFS5 with compression and encryption.

Undelete Plus enables you to undelete files that have been emptied from the recycle bin. The program quickly scans a selected drive and presents you with a list of files that can be recovered, along with the status for each file (very good, good, bad etc.) indicating the likeliness of complete recovery. Undelete Plus automatically sorts the files based on file type and folder, making it easy to find specific files, and you can also apply a filter to search for a specific file.

MjM Free Photo Recovery Software will recover images that have been deleted from a memory card, or from memory cards that have been formatted. The easy-to-use interface will automatically detect the media card in the card reader and scan it, while displaying thumbnail images of the photos that are found during the scan. You can view each photos in full-size and recover them all or only save selected images. During our review, we first deleted all images from the card the via Windows - the program found and recovered all of them. We then formatted the card in the camera and restarted the search - and again it found them all (recovery results after formatting may vary depending on the formatting method used by the camera). Works with Compact Flash, SmartMedia, Memory Sticks and other media storage cards.

TOKIWA DataRecovery is a simple data recovery tool that enables you to undelete files, even if they have been removed from the recycle bin. It supports FAT12, FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS file systems. The interface is plain and simple, choose the drive to be scanned and then select the file(s) to be recovered, you can recover multiple files by using the Shift or Ctrl key. TOKIWA DataRecovery does not require an installation, and can be run from a USB drive or floppy disk.

CD Recovery Toolbox Free is a data recovery tool, designed to recover files from scratched or otherwise damaged or corrupt CD, DVD, HD DVD and Blu-Ray disks. Just select the drive that contains the media you want to recover from, check the files you want to restore and start the recovery process. Depending on the level of damage, the recovery process may take a long time, and may not recover all the files. It did recover a good portion of images for us from a badly scratched CD that Windows was not able to read properly.

EASEUS Deleted File Recovery enables you to recover files that have been accidentally deleted, even after they have been emptied from the recycle bin or were deleted directly from another program. An easy to use 3-step wizard interface guides you through the process of selecting the drive to be scanned and lets you preview and select the files to be recovered. The program supports thumbnail previews for common image formats and hex or text previews for other data types. EASEUS Deleted File Recovery works with FAT 12, FAT 16, FAT 32 and NTFS file systems on your local hard drives, portable devices and memory cards.

Zero Assumption Digital Image Recovery is an easy to use data recovery tool for the recovery of accidentally delete image files on removable media disks (Compact Flash, SmartMedia, Memory Sticks etc.). The interface is very easy to use, just select the device that contains the images that need to be recovered and specify the folder to save the images to. Zero Assumption Digital Image Recovery works with images that have been deleted or formatted by the camera. Supported formats are TIFF, Exif, JPEG and GIF. We tested it successfully with a freshly camera formatted 1GB Flash card and were able to recover all images.

Pandora Recovery enables you to recover accidentally deleted files from NTFS formatted drives, even if they have been emptied from the recycle bin. The program offers a quick scan for recently deleted files and a time consuming surface scan that attempts to find all deleted JPG, BMP, GIF and PNG files. Pandora Recovery does not work with media cards or any other drives that are not NTFS formatted.

Disk Investigator helps you to discover all that is hidden on your computer hard disk. The program can display the true drive contents by bypassing the operating system and directly reading the raw drive sectors. You can view and search raw directories, files, clusters, and system sectors and also verify the effectiveness of file and disk wiping programs. The directory mode allows you to browse the file system in a file structure, the raw mode displays a sector-by-sector view (for advanced users).

FreeUndelete is a data recovery tool that enables you torecover files that have been accidentally deleted and/or are removed from the recycle bin. It scans a selected drive for any files that can be recovered, and displays the results along with an estimated status, indicating chances of recovery. To limit the results, you can filter the found files by file type and folder.

ICE ECC is a file verification and repair tool that enables you to protect your important files against digital corruption using Reed-Solomon codes. The program is not intended as a main backup solution, but rather as a backup for your backup - it can be included on CDs or DVDs before you store your data, allowing you to recover data that has become corrupt due to age of the media or scratches. You can protect selected files or entire folders by simply selecting them and having the program generate an ECC file. If you ever need to verify whether the data has been modified or corrupted, just select the appropriate .ECC file and load it into ICE ECC, which will then analyze the files and can recover any corrupted data.

geProduct Key Finder enables you to recover your product CD-keys and serial numbers for most Microsoft products as well as several 3rd party products. If you need to reinstall or upgrade your PC and no longer have your original registration keys, this program can help you retrieve them.

NTFS Reader provides read access to NTFS drives from the MS DOS environment. It supports long filenames as well as compressed and fragmented files. NTFS Reader for DOS allows you to preview the files on NTFS and copy them from NTFS to FAT volumes or network drives. In order to use the software, you will need to copy the exe fie to a bootable floppy disk and boot from it.