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Data Recovery Resource

Data Recovery Tools

There is a wide range of software available for the field of data recovery, although mostly commercial. The freeware and inexpensive shareware programs available are limited, but there are a few good options. Many of the modern recovery tools are made to be installed on floppies or bootable CD-ROMs, so that the user need only boot up with the disk and begin the recovery procedure. Of course it is advisable to arrange a separate drive to write any recovered data to.

Some recommended freeware tools are:

FindPart
Finds and restores FAT, NTFS, HPFS, BeOS and Linux partitions, and locates and recovers NTFS files. FindPart runs on all Windows versions and DOS, which can be used on a boot disk when Windows is not bootable. However, the DOS version does not allow writing of NTFS files to FAT partitions, and therefore cannot be used to recover NTFS files; for this the Windows version must be used, which therefore requires a working Windows installation. http://www.partitionsupport.com

NTFS Reader
NTFS Reader for DOS copies NTFS files onto FAT partitions. Therefore, if an NTFS disk is unbootable, NTFS For DOS can be run from a boot floppy and files can be copied from the hard disk onto another accessible drive. This program requires the boot sector and partition table of the drive to be undamaged; the problem therefore has to be with the operating system. NTFS Reader will also run on Windows 9x/ME, but not on Windows 2000 or XP. http://www.ntfs.com

TestDisk
TestDisk is a useful DOS-only tool which can be used to locate and recover lost FAT and NTFS partitions by repairing the partition table or replacing it with a backup copy. http://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk.html

Some examples of well-known commercial software are:

• R-Tools Technology's R-Studio http://r-tt.com
• Winternals' Recovery Manager http://www.winternals.com
• Gibson Research Corporation's SpinRite http://grc.com