Need FREE Hard Drive recovery software?
I have a hard drive with a lot of data on it my windows xp comp can’t see.
I downloaded recovery software, thought it was free but has very limited capabilities unless it is upgraded. The software sees the hard drive, sees the files but it costs and arm and a leg to purchase the upgrade (really hate it when it says freeware but it ends up costing). I think this is a simple problem that the hard drive lost the hard drive map, or something like that and just needs it rebuilt.
Do you know of a recovery software that is free? I mean, really free.
Thanks for helping.
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Yeah, good luck with that. This stuff is expensive. That’s why people who recover data from bad drives charge an arm and a leg. If everyone had access to free software that did this, the data recovery people would be out of business.
PS - Are you willing to try "free" software that claims to do this? How do you know they’re not putting spyware on your computer?
Data Recovery
FREE
PCTools FileRecover http://www.pctools.com/file-recover
Recuva http://www.piriform.com/recuva/download/standard
Handy Recovery http://www.handyrecovery.com/download.shtml
O&O DiskRecovery v4.1 http://www.atkbilisim.com/yazilim-urunleri/oao-software-bakim-ve-onarim-yazilimlari/120-oao-diskrecovery-v41.html
Not so Free
DataRescue http://www.prosofteng.com/
FileSalvage (Mac) http://subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/index…
ActiveUndelete http://www.active-undelete.com/
Recover4all http://recover4all.com
If all else fails, you can send your drive to a data recovery service, it will cost hundreds or thousands of dollars depending on what the problem is.
If you are going to send it out for recovery, the less fooling around with software you do with the drive on your own, the better.
DriveSavers drivesavers.com/
ActionFront actionfront.com/
TotalRecall totalrecall.com/
if you lost the map, what you will get is a bunch of unrelated blocks that don’t have a file extension. So, it has been my experience(s), that .jpg, and the other, smaller pic files like .png will give results with those recovery softwares. But massive documents, such as powerpoint slideshows… no. Forget about getting any installed apps recovered as all the linkages are gone.
Also, every time you try to read that drive you are writing to it and thus making any potential recovery even more remote.
As a last ditch effort, try booting your machine with a linux distro LiveCD. You may see the files then. If that should happen, partition 20meg, install the Linux and share the other partition to start recovery.
Good luck, but I always ended up rebuilding back to a newer, better computer to keep on hacking.