Good, Cheap (free) Data Recovery

I've had a disaster with a repartioning operation and the disk is now unreadble.

I've tried a couple of trial programs which indicate a lot of the data is recoverable but they're a bit pricey for me.

Any suggestions for good cheap programs would be appreciated.

Jamie

"Recuva" is one programme which is often recommended.

Have a look for "Paragon Partition Manager" bootable media. There was a free version available.

What programs have you tried? Do you just need to rebuild the partition tables or are the file systems corrupt?

...also, I would suggest that you try a bootable Linux distribution such as Knoppix. These distributions usually have system recovery tools that will work with Windows partitions. Some distributions are specifically designed for system repair and recovery.

In reply to a post by JamieP:

I've had a disaster with a repartioning operation and the disk is now unreadble.

I used to be a data recovery engineer and I also wrote our data recovery software tools. In my time I've probably performed thousands of recoveries.

I've tried a couple of trial programs which indicate a lot of the data is recoverable but they're a bit pricey for me.

Oh God.

Let me put it like this:If you needed brain surgery would you opt for the cheapest, automated solution you can find or would you prefer to pay extra for an expert to look at it?

More specifically a partitioning incident is exactly the kind of thing that needs common sense and an intuitive approach. A human DR engineer could probably tweak the partitions and get everything back with minimal damage. A software package on the other hand could do anything.

The basic problem with automated tools is that they have to start with an assumption and that assumption is written into them by someone that knows nothing about your computer or the particular fault it has suffered. They usually read the standard structures from the expected places and assume that they just need to be fixed up. We saw the effects of such tools many times. Tools that thought nothing amiss about a partition table pointing half way up a disk while claiming a size that was twice that of the media itself. They just followed the structure and attempted to repair a volume that didn't exist.

What we did was realise the original table was wrong and went and found the volumes ourselves and rebuilt the table. Couldn't do much for the data that got mangled by the recovery utility but most of it survived.

If you really value your data I suggest you send it to a data recovery company. I still work for one although no-longer in that side of the business. To be honest I'm not so keen on their techniques (they took my original employer over and shunted us across without much interest in our tools) but they seem to do a pretty good job.

The company is Kroll Ontrack but to avoid being accused of spam I'll leave it up to you to do the web search

Edited by Andrue (Thu 08-Dec-11 14:42:41)

Have used Ontrack products and can vouch that they are worth every penny

In reply to a post by Andrue:

..... They just followed the structure and attempted to repair a volume that didn't exist.....

Decent recovery software will allow the user to take an image of the affected drive and operate on that, leaving the original as is.

The cost of professional data recovery is usually prohibitive to the home user and in most cases, it is simply not necessary as the available software recovery options are good enough - If the correct precautions are taken.

Acronis or similar is an even better solution - it will fix the problem before it occurs!

Andrue and others,

Recuva just tells me it can't read the drove.

The partitions that appear to be on the disk just now are not the size that they should be so I guess the partition table is corrupt.

I think that working on the partition table is possibly the way to go but I have no real knowledge of this. I fully appreciated that a profeesional will probably be able to fix the issue because I've done nothing to the drive at all since the incident but I just can't afford to send it to a data recovery company.

Thhe program that I used a trial version was called "Recover Data." It was $49 and for me that is a lot of money to spend right now without knowing how well it will actually work.

Also, none of the files I want to recover are really that important that it would be a disaster to lose, a major inconvience, yes, but not life-threatiening. They are mostly video files from "the box" so if I'm going to gp for spending money I think the cost effective option would be to donate there and download again.

JamieP,

This might help http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm to sort out the drive partitions but possibly not to recover any data...

In reply to a post by Deadbeat:

Acronis or similar is an even better solution - it will fix the problem before it occurs!

Yeah, or another of its ilk. If a DR utility will allow you to take an image (or even better to work on the image and keep the original) then it's a lot better.

The full version Paragon software is very good. I don't know how this compares but it has to be worth a shot.

When I lost data due to partitioning errors from my system, I have used suitable windows data recovery tool. When you download demo version of the tool, you are able to preview recovered data prior to restoration and estimate recovery chances of the tool.

Edited by deleted (Mon 12-Dec-11 11:56:15)

I Totally agree with Andrue excellent advice, the decision now is the data worth it? if it is not then you could risk using patent software to try to recover data it will be a slow process but some data may be recoverable. but free recovery software is a gamble and a chance., but if you have nothing to lose its worth a go even if its just for the experience.....just don't expect too much..
It takes time to recover data especially if the majority of it is video idata, and the risk of corruption of the data is high, but the best of luck.

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