Data Recovery Methods

[AaronV]

What is the best software/method for data recovery? I am thinking of adding this to my list of services as it seems to be potentially lucrative in my area.

I was looking into file recovery (for lost or deleted files) and also recovery even after a hard drive has died.

Any suggestions are most welcome :)

Thanks in advance,
Aaron

[oldmn]

As for data recovery from a dead drive. Setting up could get expencive. Most manufactures that offer recovery services remove the platters from the old drive and install them in a new one and recover the data that way. Cost somewhare around a 1K per drive.
As for software there a lot out there.
It's just finding one you like and gets the job done.

[AaronV]

Originally Posted by oldmn

...As for software there a lot out there.
It's just finding one you like and gets the job done.

Thanks for the reply. I have been looking on the net for some software and so far came up on pctools.com and also a product called Stellar Phoenix. Any thoughts or input on these?

As always - thanks in advance,
Aaron

[crazijoe]

I use GetDataBack.
http://www.runtime.org/
I had bought it for myself to recover files from a drive I had reformatted. Since then it has paid for itself ten fold recovering files off other peoples machines.

[Glaswegian]

Just curious here. I've heard folks say that putting a dead drive in a bag and then into the freezer for half an hour works enough to allow you to recover most files. Any truth in this?

[crazijoe]

Originally Posted by Glaswegian

Just curious here. I've heard folks say that putting a dead drive in a bag and then into the freezer for half an hour works enough to allow you to recover most files. Any truth in this?

Yes and no. I have done this a few times and got it to work once. You have to look at it this way. The drive is dead. What else have you got to loose.

[Chevy]

Well, I wouldn't look into stocking logic boards for various drives - but a purely software-based recovery service can work.

RecoverItAll is a nice app (I've had good success with it) see it here

[Skie]

This might be a bit off topic, but if you're unable to retrive the data using other means, this company might be able to help: http://www.gillware.com/. I haven't tried them myself and I'm not affiliated with them, but I know someone who has used them and they were fairly cheap. He's just happy to have recovered his vacation pics. :D He said that the price they charged was more then worth it considering the value he placed on those pics.

[Stuartli]

Try in google "DataRecoveryWizard" thats what I use for recovery

[[Mystic]]

I actually use a few depending on the job.

1) I try EasyRecovery Professional. This normally gets all data... but sometimes not.

2) If 1. does not work, I use Stellar Phoenix FAT & NTFS. This application is god, normally everything can be bought back with this, even if the sectors have been overwritten.

If these two apps don't find your data, I doubt others will.

Easy Recovery Professional is awesome in the fact that you can enter start strings of file formats it does not nativly support.

I have a win2k3 servers backup drive fail and lose a partition. Easy Pro does not support .bkf files so I manually entered the start code of the file format from www.filext.com which were: Hex: 54 41 50 45 00 00 03 00

Plug those in and away you go... 2 hours later I had the full 20gb bkf file back, restored and working.

[Skie]

Originally Posted by [Mystic]

I actually use a few depending on the job.

1) I try EasyRecovery Professional. This normally gets all data... but sometimes not.

2) If 1. does not work, I use Stellar Phoenix FAT & NTFS. This application is god, normally everything can be bought back with this, even if the sectors have been overwritten.

If these two apps don't find your data, I doubt others will.

Easy Recovery Professional is awesome in the fact that you can enter start strings of file formats it does not nativly support.

I have a win2k3 servers backup drive fail and lose a partition. Easy Pro does not support .bkf files so I manually entered the start code of the file format from www.filext.com which were: Hex: 54 41 50 45 00 00 03 00

Plug those in and away you go... 2 hours later I had the full 20gb bkf file back, restored and working.

Do you have the URL's for both of those apps?

[joceror]

I often use Partition Table Doctor to recover partition table and use DataRecoveryWizard to recover lost or deleted data.