Data Recovery

From this Sunday we’re starting a new season of reviews for some very helpful tools. We’ll aim to present accurate and unbiased review so that our readers can be sure to use or not to use software. Initially these reviews will be focused on utility tools that help boosting system performance and later on we will increase our focus.

To start with this Sunday, we will be looking at Wise Disk Cleaner.

Wise Disk Cleaner is a simple to use and fast application developed to free up disk space by removing files that are no longer used by any software on your system. Such files are usually not required and they just occupy space. So you have the option to remove all such junk. There are two versions available for Wise Disk Cleaner, one is free and another is pro that costs $19.95.

Installation: installation is quite simple and similar to other standard softwares. It integrates Ask.com toolbar so don’t forget to UN-CHECK it. After setup is complete, it prompts to download and install Wise Registry Cleaner which cleans windows registry and deletes entries that are not required any more.

Post Installation: After successful setup, the application launches the clean up wizard which helps you to find files to be removed. You can escape the wizard and come straight to application to view what is available. Wise disk Cleaner has an easy to use main interface where you have the option to start scans and select/unselect the files to delete permanently.

There are many options that you can customize to have WDC according to your needs. For example auto run, exclusion list and schedules determine when to run scheduled job and can skip the folder that you don’t want it to look into. You can run the scan either through cleaner wizard or manually. After the scan is complete, you can uncheck certain files you don’t want to remove. Rest you can delete permanently or send just to recycle bin so that if you’re not comfortable and feel that some program is unstable, you can restore it. To add some style, free version also comes with some cool skins.

What’s the difference between pro and free version: Pro version comes with Deleted File Recovery and Disk Scrubber. Rest of the features are same. Data File Recovery Tool recovers recovers deleted files and supports NTFS file system where as Scrubber helps deleting files permanently.

Conclusion: All in all, Wise Disk Cleaner performs effectively but you should always be careful when choosing to delete the “junk files” as some programs may become unstable. Another thing is that it does not give any prompt before deleting so if you accidently delete any file go and search in recycle bin but you wont find it if you permanently deleted it.

Now the Screenshot tour:

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If you have accidentally deleted your data or your disks crashed, did you ever thought you can recover the data on it again? I am not and you are not alone out there as majority of the people think that data can not be recovered again once lost. For all such people out there, we decided to do a research and collect all free data recovery tools on the internet in this blog post. However, there are few rules for data recovery and you should keep them stored in your brain. (don’t lose this data else nothing will be restored).

Rules for Data Recovery:
1. Do NOT use the hard drive that you want to recover as your main disk.
2. Do NOT install anything including the Data Recovery Tools and Softwares on the disk that you want to recover
3. Do NOT copy any software or data on the disk that you are recovering in this process.

Now here is the most awaited list of top Seven Best Free Data Recovery Softwares to help you. In case you know about any other such tools, please let us know and we will update our list with credits to you.

1) Recuva:
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! Recuva runs on Microsoft Windows Vista, XP, 2003, 2000 and 98. Click here to Download the Recuva File Recovery
Below are the screen shots of the software while scanning and recovering the data, click to enlarge them.

2) Disk Digger:
DiskDigger can recover files from any type of media that your computer can read. This includes USB flash drives, memory cards (SD, CompactFlash, Memory Stick), and of course your hard drive. The types of files that it recovers includes photos, videos, music, documents, and other formats. DiskDigger works by thoroughly scanning each sector of your media for traces of files.

DiskDigger can even scan reformatted or badly formatted disks (disks to which Windows can’t assign a drive letter), and even 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)
Version 0.8.1 improves detection of disk drives, and also adds logical disk drives for scanning and ability to select a disk image file for scanning.
Click here to Download DiskDigger Version 0.8.1

3) Glary Undelete:

Glary Undelete is a free and easy-to-use yet powerful file undelete solution for FAT and NTFS file systems. It will bring back files emptied from the Recycle Bin, in a DOS window, from Windows Explorer with the SHIFT key held down. It will even recover files that have been deleted by bugs, crashes and viruses!
Supports FAT, NTFS, NTFS + EFS file systems. It supports recover compressed, fragmented and encrypted files on NTFS. It can undelete files on removable devices. Glary can also filter by file name, file date, size, recovery state. Lastly it has a simple and User friendly interface.
Glary Undelete works under Win 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista operating systems. The program supports all Windows file systems for hard and floppy drives including FAT12/16/32,NTFS/NTFS5 and image recovery from CompactFlash, SmartMedia, MultiMedia and Secure Digital cards.

Click here to Download Glary Undelete.

4) TestDisk & PhotoRec:

TestDisk is a powerful data recovery utility. It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally erasing your Partition Table). PhotoRec is file data recovery software designed to recover lost pictures or lost files from digital camera memory (CompactFlash, Memory Stick, SecureDigital, SmartMedia, Microdrive, MMC, USB Memory Drives), even Hard Disks and CDRom. PhotoRec is safe to use, it will never attempt to write to the drive or memory support you are about to recover from. Recovered files are instead written in the directory from where you are running the PhotoRec program.

TestDisk can run under DOS (either real or in a Windows 9x DOS-box),Windows (NT4, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista), Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, SunOS and MacOS.

Click here to Download version 6.10 of TestDisk and PhotoRec

5) PC Inspector Data Recovery:
PC Inspector File Recovery is a data recovery program for program for Flash Card, Smart Media, Sony Memory Stick, IBM Micro Drive, Multimedia Card, and Secure Digital Card 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.
Click here to Download PC Inspector Data Recovery Version 4.43

7) Pandora File Recovery:
Pandora Recovery is a powerful free tool that provides its users an effective way to attempt recovery of permanently deleted files. And that does not mean restoration of a file from Recycle Bin. Pandora Recovery actually recovers files permanently removed from Recycle Bin, files originally deleted using Shift + Delete keys bypassing Recycle Bin and files deleted from DOS prompt.

Pandora Recovery is not a backup tool – it can recover files that have been deleted months before Pandora Recovery was installed. And while the likelihood of successful recovery is negatively affected by the time passed since the deletion of files Pandora Recovery users were able to recover files eleven years after deletion and more than five years after re-formatting a hard drive!
Pandora Recovery allows you to preview deleted files of certain type (images and text files) without performing recovery. This feature becomes really important if you are forced to recover deleted files to the same drive. Currently you can preview files having several image file types (BMP, GIF, JPG, PNG, ICO,TIF, TGA, PCX, WBMP, WMF, JP2, J2K, JBG, JPC, PGX, PNM, RAS, CUR) and several text file types (TXT, LOG, INI, BAT, RTF, XML, CSS). Quick Viewer allows you preview file contents as text if it cannot find appropriate viewer for it. To use quick viewer you can select deleted file and or click the Quick Viewer icon or right click on deleted file and select ‘Quick View’. Quick View will then display a preview of deleted file.

Pandora file recovery is compatible with OS: Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003 Server or Windows Vista andFile system: NTFS, NTFS5, NTFS+EFS, FAT16, FAT32. The software is not compatible with any version of Mac OS.

Click here to Download Pandora File Recovery Version 2.1.1