Data Recovery Freeware – Things To Check For
Using any kind of freeware tools always comes with an acceptance that it may not behave as effectively as their commercial versions. Using data recovery freeware does however introduce some additional dangers to be aware of. This article looks at some of the attributes to watch out for before using free data recovery tools.
Most data recovery freeware is written by programmers in their spare time to resolve a need that they have for recovering data. This can often be reflected in the data storage formats that these free tools support. You have to check whether the tools are intended for FAT or NTFS formatted drives for starters. Other tools specialize in more exotic disc/storage types.
Next you need to establish what type recovery process is used by the tool. Is it ‘cut and paste’ or ‘copy and paste’? To give this some perspective, data recovery services scan the hard drives for data clusters that represent regular file types. The tool presents these back to you the user. If the file is ‘recovered’ to a new folder, then you really want the data clusters to be copied over, rather than cut, as any refactoring/manipulation of the data clusters could harm OS data in error.
Finally, data recovery freeware normally supports recovering deleted files as its primary use. This means that the tool uses the file allocation table (FAT) to identify data clusters on the drives and scans for recognizable files. Some freeware (e.g. CGSecurity’s TestDisk) can also support retrieving files from a formatted drive. In this scenario, there may have to be additional logic in the software to scan the hard drive data clusters that can be assembled into files as the formatting may clear the FAT. If your drive is corrupted and you don’t intend making the required PC repairs to reestablish the operating system then you could consider using DOS based tools to scan the drives for files to recover.
One option to consider is to run one of the free scans from a commercial data recovery service to get your file list, then run a freeware tool to establish how well it can identify lost files.
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