Nowadays, losing important files is an unpleasant event, to say the least. But if you catch yourself in time, they may still be able to be saved. There are many programs for logical data recovery, and among them there are many free products that deserve attention. They will be discussed in this article.

The main reasons for data loss are:

• physical malfunction of the disk or flash drive (most often defective unreadable areas, colloquially “bad blocks”),
• accidental deletion of necessary files by the user himself,
• damage to the file system (due to power and hardware failures, exposure to a virus, or incorrect operation of regular software).

In flash drives and memory cards, the internal translation table often crashes, as a result of which all data becomes inaccessible at once (the flash drive is detected with zero capacity or simply freezes when accessed).

In the first and last cases, most likely, you will have to remove the problematic drive from the computer and transfer it to data recovery specialists who have the necessary set of equipment, knowledge and experience. The portal recently covered their activities.

In other cases (and these are the majority), files can be restored directly at the workplace using special programs. It's faster, cheaper, and you don't have to worry about privacy.

⇡ How programs recover files

In Windows OS, data about all files on the disk is stored in a special table (in the NTFS file system it is called MFT, Master File Table). It can be somewhat simplified to be represented as a library catalog, which indicates where the book with such and such a title is located. When a file is deleted, it is not physically erased from the disk (for reasons of economy and performance). First, its “card” is modified: a mark is placed on it indicating that the file has been deleted and the disk area previously occupied by it is free. In the future, this space is used to write new files.

If writing over the old file has not yet occurred, then restoring it is easy. The program looks through records of all files marked as deleted and prompts the user to restore them. It’s worse if new information has already been written over the file, then it most likely will not be possible to restore it. If only part of the file is overwritten, then you can restore the remaining “piece” (for example, part of an image or document).

The programs act differently if the file system is damaged (or completely destroyed when formatting the disk), and also if the required file was not found in the first way. Then they have to literally “probe” the disk in search of possible signs of files.

What are these signs? Various popular file formats (doc, jpg , avi and the like) there are headers characteristic of them - signatures. These are exactly what recovery programs look for, scanning the entire contents of the disk in a row. Each program supports its own set of signatures, which it “knows” and can search for and restore. The breadth and sophistication of this set is one of the indicators of software quality.

When restoring files in this way, information about their location (in which folders they were located), as well as the file name, is sometimes lost, so the file can only be identified by its contents. In this regard, the function of previewing a file directly in the program, even before saving it, is very useful. The more formats for which “preview” is supported, the better.

It should be noted that each software product has its own algorithms for searching for deleted files. Some heuristics work well in some cases, some in others. It is quite difficult to say in advance what kind of case is in front of you. Often, especially in cases of severe damage, the program that recovers the maximum amount of data is not the one that shows the best results in most “ordinary” cases.

this implies practical advice: If one (“favorite”) utility was not able to save all the files you need, try several others - perhaps they will be more successful. Combining the results obtained by different methods will ultimately give the best effect.

Important warning: if the files have already been deleted and need to be restored, but the necessary program is not at hand, then you should download and install it to the wrong partition from which you want to recover data, so as not to inadvertently write new files over deleted ones and thereby worsen the situation. Of course, you need to save the recovered files to another drive. It makes sense to keep a set of proven “repair” utilities on an external drive (hard drive or flash drive), since their volume is ridiculous by today’s standards.

⇡ What programs should you use?

Below we will look at the main programs that are used for “amateur” data recovery. All of them are absolutely free(freeware class - do not require the purchase of a license and do not contain functional or time restrictions) and support the most common Windows file systems: FAT16/32 and NTFS. A number of programs have additional functionality that is useful in certain cases.

Recuva 1.40.525

This program has gained significant popularity as it was one of the first free file recovery utilities. Recuva is the brainchild of the British company Piriform, also known for its other “repair” utility - CCleaner. In addition to hard drives, the program can work with flash drives and iPods, as well as securely delete files.

By today's standards, Recuva is somewhat primitive and inferior in capabilities to more recent developments. But if you just need to “pull out” the file you just deleted, you can try it. At least it won’t take much time and you won’t have to rack your brains.

Recuva supports two file search modes: fast shallow and slow deep, which performs sector-by-sector analysis of the disk. The program interface is simple and clear. First, a wizard will launch, prompting you to select the type of files to be restored and the location in which they were located (you can also conduct a full search for all deleted files). The wizard can be disabled and operated from the main program window - for many users this is more convenient.

All found files will be shown in the form of a list, but in the context menu you can also choose to view them in the form of a directory tree, which is convenient if there are a lot of files.

Recuva shows found files, their parameters and chances of recovery (the latter is determined by the “traffic light” color of the circle next to the name)

After clicking the “Restore” button, the program will ask where to save the checked files. To be on the safe side, it is recommended to write them to another disk, but often the files are successfully restored to their original location.

Recuva also has a “manual” operating mode.

"Manual" operating mode of Recuva

After clicking the “Analyze” button, the program will begin searching for either all files that have ever been deleted, or those that match the specified mask and path. In order to select an analysis method (deep or superficial), you need to go to the settings and select the “Actions” tab.

If the files were not deleted, but were damaged due to a disk failure or the action of malware, then to “repair” them in the settings, on the “Actions” tab, you need to select “Search for undeleted files.”

In addition to recovering files, Recuva can also securely erase them. This is useful, for example, if important information is stored on the disk and you would not want it to get into the hands of criminals (or, say, the tax office). To do this, the program writes several times to the location on the disk where the file was located, so that it cannot be restored by any means. To select files for such deletion, you need to perform an analysis manually, select the files and select “Secure deletion” in the context menu. The deletion algorithm can be specified in the settings, on the “General” tab (the default is the simplest and fastest one).

Recuva also supports portable mode. To do this, copy the folder with the program to external media, and then create a file inside this folder named “portable.dat”.

PC Inspector File Recovery 4.0

This utility was created by the German offshoot of the British company CONVAR. Its authors know first-hand about data recovery, since this is one of the main areas of the company’s work. The quality of file recovery in PC Inspector is slightly higher than in Recuva. The program will also take on lost disk partitions that are not recognized by the operating system (which happens, for example, after hardware failures).

The disadvantages of PC Inspector include its not very obvious interface. Certain difficulties also arise with the recovery of highly fragmented (scattered across disk space) files, as well as disks with a damaged file system.

When you start the program, a window appears in which you can indicate what exactly happened to your files. On the right are possible options and a further action scenario. You need to select one of the three shortcuts on the left.

PC Inspector start window

After this, you should indicate which drive you want to recover data from. If it is not in the list, click the “Find logical drives” button. After selecting the drive, click on the green checkmark.

Disc selection window

After the scanning process is completed, you will see a window with the files found. If they were accidentally deleted, then you need to look for them in the “Deleted Items” folder. If the reason for their loss was problems with the disk or its formatting, then the found files will be located in the “Lost” folder. You can also use the file search option (shortcut with a magnifying glass on the left side of the window).

After the necessary files or folders are selected, they should be written to the hard drive (the “Save” item in the context menu). Let us remind you that it is highly advisable to do this on another section.

Window with found files. You can see their characteristics and recovery forecast

To recover files from memory cards of cameras and phones, CONVAR has developed a special (and also free) utility PC Inspector Smart Recovery 4.5.

It is tailored for various image formats (JPG, TIF, BMP, GIF, proprietary RAW files of major vendors), as well as audio and video recordings (WAV, AMR, AVI, MP4, MOV, 3GP). The utility's interface is extremely simple and will not cause any difficulties.

R.saver 1.0

This is a very remarkable freeware product. R.saver often copes with the most severe cases of data loss that other free utilities cannot handle (serious damage to the file system, the disk is not visible to the OS, etc.). In many cases, the program provides results on par with the best commercial products, so we recommend keeping it handy.

R.saver appeared in 2011 as a simplified version of the professional software UFS Explorer, as a result of cooperation between the Moscow data recovery company R.LAB and the Ukrainian company from Donetsk SysDev Laboratories, the developer of UFS Explorer. Only non-commercial use is allowed in the territory of the former USSR.

The program interface is simple, informative and does not contain anything superfluous. In addition, all tips and detailed instructions are originally written in Russian. R.saver can find lost disk partitions that are not recognized by the operating system and automatically determine their native file system. So if your disk has failed and the OS no longer sees it, you should not start formatting - the program will find the partition anyway, and there will be a greater chance of data recovery.

When running, R.saver searches for both traces (headers and tails) of various file formats, as well as all available information in the remnants of the file system. In fact, we have a hybrid of the methods described at the beginning of the article, which determines the higher efficiency of the program - its ability to find and restore files.

In addition to recovering data from the FAT and NTFS file systems familiar to Windows (including those saved as a disk image), R.saver allows you to read files from many file systems from other OS families (Mac OS, Linux, Unix, BSD, Novell, CD/DVD). Here is their complete list, taken from the documentation: HFS, HFS+/HFSX, Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, ReiserFS, JFS, XFS, UFS, UFS2, NWFS, ISO9660, UDF. Impressive, isn't it?

When you launch the program, you will see a window with all detected disk partitions. If the partition you need is lost and is not displayed (you can navigate by the label indicated in the properties window on the right and the size), then select the physical disk on which it was located and click the “Find Partition” button.

R.saver start window

Having selected the desired section, click the “Scan” button (appears in the upper right corner). Once the scanning process is complete, you will see the reconstructed file system (what it would have looked like if no data loss had occurred). Deleted and supposedly damaged files are also listed separately in the appropriate sections.

R.saver window with detected files

Using the context menu, you can copy the desired file or folder to another drive. By double-clicking on the file, you can view its contents (the file itself is copied to a temporary directory). There is also a file search function (the “Quick Search” window in the upper right corner).

R.saver does not require installation as such - just download and unpack a small archive, and then run the executable file. This also sets the program apart from its competitors.

Pandora Recovery 2.1.1

This is another well-proven data recovery program (especially when it comes to lost images). It finds accidentally deleted files and can also recover data after formatting. The situation is more complicated with destroyed file systems - here the program will be of little use. When installing Pandora Recovery, do not forget to uncheck the additional (and unnecessary) utilities offered as a bonus.

When you start it, the first thing that will open is a very detailed and easy-to-understand wizard that will ask questions about what exactly happened to your files and suggest a suitable operating mode for the program.

If your files were accidentally deleted, you will see a window in which you can set the desired file attributes (mask name, date, size, etc.) and start searching.

Search window for deleted files

In case of more serious problems when scanning the disk is required, you will see a window with information about the files found, their characteristics and chances of recovery.

Scan mode in Pandora Recovery

File names in this mode are poorly restored, but for the most popular graphic and office formats it is possible to preview the contents, which allows you to correctly name files manually.

MjM Free Photo Recovery 1.0 RC

This small utility is designed exclusively for recovering JPG files from memory cards; It doesn't work with hard drives.

In recent years, such specialized software has begun to appear en masse to help photographers. As you know, pictures from cards quite often disappear as a result of incorrect removal of the card, power failures (the camera battery ran out at the wrong time), accidental deletion or formatting. During shooting, files of the same type are usually recorded sequentially without fragmentation, so a simple search for signatures when scanning the drive allows you to determine the boundaries of frames.

The program in question is quite old (the last update was released in 2008), but in some cases it copes with the task better than its more modern counterparts. The interface is extremely simple and contains only two settings: the maximum file size (Maximum File Size, you need to select it large enough) and the checkbox switch for the Deep Scan mode. To start the scanning process, you need to click the “Search” button.

MjM Photo Recovery start window. This is real asceticism

Once the search process is complete, you will see a set of photos as icons. The original file names and their relative locations (folder nesting) are not restored, but for cameras this does not matter much.

Preview of found files in MjM Photo Recovery

AnyFound Photo Recovery 5.0

This utility also specializes in recovering image files. It understands many popular image storage formats (including Photoshop source files), as well as Flash animation. The program can work with both hard drives and external drives, and its capabilities include restoring damaged file systems that are not recognized by the operating system. The result is obtained quite quickly and with good quality.

AnyFound Photo Recovery does not support the Russian language, there is no help (the developers stopped developing the project in 2009, so its website is closed), but the interface is quite simple and there should not be any particular difficulties with it. First, you should select the appropriate mode: recovering accidentally deleted files (Deleted File Recovery), working with a damaged file system (PC Partition Recovery), or resuming previous work sessions (PC Resume Recovery).

AnyFound Photo Recovery start window

The “PC Partition Recovery” mode should be launched in the case when the disk partition is not visible by the operating system, or after the “Deleted File Recovery” mode did not work. By selecting any of the modes, you will see a list of physical or logical drives (they differ by icon - logical drives are marked with a Windows checkbox). In the list, you need to select the drive from which the data was lost. After that, in the lower left corner, click the “Recovery” button.

The scanning process will begin, upon completion of which you will see a window with all deleted files (for the “Deleted File Recovery” mode) or a list of all detected partitions indicating their sizes (for the “PC Partition Recovery” mode). In the latter case, select the required section and click the “Show Files” button. As a result, a window will appear with all the found files.

Program window with found files

Having marked the files you are interested in in a particular window (the images are automatically previewed), click the “Save File” button in the upper right corner to copy them to another disk.

⇡ Conclusion

We reviewed several free and easy-to-use utilities for logical data recovery. All of them have gained well-deserved popularity, allowing thousands of non-professional users to recover their lost files with minimal time and effort. Of course, this is only the first step in the thorny field of Data Recovery. You will have to pay for further advancement - both money and time to master.

If the disk is physically faulty - it has multiple surface defects, periodically “falls off” or is not detected at all, knocks, creaks or is completely silent - heavy artillery comes into play in the form of a hardware and software complex specifically designed for reading data from such “half-corpses”. The APK works with problematic drives in an undocumented technological mode, which provides access to data in the most difficult situations.

Needless to say, such equipment is found only in specialized organizations professionally involved in data recovery. Giving the complex into the hands of an amateur is pointless and even dangerous - a powerful tool will most likely simply ruin the disk. And its price does not at all correspond to one-time use...

Therefore, all that can be advised to the owner of a faulty drive is to contact one of these organizations, where his data is read as completely and quickly as possible. And we wish him not to get into such situations at all, using the great paradigm called BACKUP. A well-organized backup of working and archive files protects against almost all problems with them.

Storing information in digital form has many advantages, among which the most significant is the amount of data that can be recorded in the minimum unit of memory of a digital device. But this storage method also has its drawbacks. If the storage device fails, the operating system crashes, or user errors occur, data may be lost. Fortunately, in most cases, unintentional file deletion is not permanent and with the right and timely approach, they can be recovered.

Recovering deleted files is possible thanks to the very algorithm for recording information on the hard drive. New files are not written to empty sectors or cells, but over previously deleted ones, physically stored on the disk until they are completely overwritten. That is, when deleting, files are not destroyed immediately. Instead, the system erases the first character of the file name and marks the space it occupies as free, while the file itself remains on the disk. The exception is SSD drives with the TRIM function enabled; the cells of such media are completely erased, so restoring accidentally deleted files becomes an almost impossible task.

So, is it possible to recover files deleted from your computer? Yes, quite, unless they were overwritten by other data. For these purposes, it is best to use special programs, since Windows itself does not have any intelligible tools. You can restore files using standard tools only if they have been moved to the Recycle Bin, and also if the system has the shadow copy function and/or file history enabled. First, let's look at an example of recovering files deleted from a hard drive without using third-party programs.

Recovering deleted files using Windows

In Windows 7 and 10, if you open the properties of any folder or file, you can see the “Previous Versions” tab, and in it - a list of backup copies of objects. Even if the files were deleted past the Recycle Bin, just select the desired backup version and click the “Restore” or “Open” button.

But it's not that simple. The fact is that your “Previous Versions” tab will most likely be empty, at least in the properties of directories on the user disk. In order for copies to be created, protection must be enabled in the system properties for the corresponding partition, that is.

Note: You can return deleted files using the “Previous Versions” function only if they were located in folders and not in the root of the disk.

It is highly desirable that the system also enable the “File History” function, which provides periodic backup of the contents of user libraries and the desktop.

This primarily applies to Windows 8 and 8.1 systems, in which there is no “Previous Versions” tab in object properties. It is difficult to say for sure what prompted Microsoft developers to remove it from the eighth version and then return it in the tenth, however, the shadow copy technology itself was untouched.

How to recover files deleted from a computer by gaining direct access to shadow copies will be discussed below, but for now let’s say a few words about “File History”. This option appeared in Windows 8 as an alternative to the “Previous Versions” function, which were tied to the creation of system restore points. The “File History” function is independent, but in order to use it, an additional physical disk or flash drive must be connected to the computer, or, alternatively, a network drive.

Recovering deleted data with its help is very simple. To do this, click on the “Recover personal files” link, select a folder or a file located in it in the window that opens, and click the button with a rounded arrow.

Now regarding the recovery of files from shadow copies in Windows 8 and 8.1. As already mentioned, the “Previous Versions” tab is missing in these versions of the system. So what if you need to restore a specific file, do you really need to roll back to the previous restore point? Not at all necessary.

Open a command prompt as administrator and run the command vssadmin list shadows.

As a result, you will receive a list of all restore points. Pay attention to the “Source volume” parameter; it will indicate the drive letter from which you are going to recover data. Then, having determined the backup copy number (it is indicated at the end of the Shadow Copy Volume parameter value), run the following command:

mklink /d %SystemDrive%/shadow //?/GLOBALROOT/Device/HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy7/

In this example, the recovery point is number 7, your value will be different. As a result of executing the command, a symbolic link will appear in the root of drive C shadow.

By following it, you will find yourself exactly in the shadow copy!

This method works equally well in Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10, but again you need to remember that it makes sense to resort to it only if the system has the function of creating system restore points enabled.

Recovering files using special programs

Above, we discussed in detail how to restore files deleted from the Recycle Bin when emptying it or lost for other reasons, using the system itself. As shown above, all these methods have significant limitations. To be able to recover data directly from a disk, and not from backup copies, you should use special programs, including both paid and free ones.

R-Studio

R-Studio is a powerful professional program for recovering deleted files from a wide variety of digital devices, from hard drives to CD/DVDs and memory cards. The application supports working with all popular file systems, RAID arrays, and can create images of physical disks and individual volumes. Despite the fact that R-Studio is aimed at experienced users, the data recovery procedure in it is not complicated.

After launching the program, select the target disk or partition in the left column and click the “Show disk contents” icon on the toolbar.

In this case, a list of deleted directories will be displayed on the left, and their contents, marked with red crosses, will be displayed on the right.

Check the boxes for the objects you would like to restore and select the “Restore marked” option in the main menu. Next, in the window that opens, you will need to specify the folder to save the files, set additional recovery options if necessary, and click “OK.”

If files were lost due to file system damage or formatting, it is advisable to scan the disk by selecting the appropriate option in the main menu.

Preliminary scanning of the media allows you to perform a more holistic and in-depth analysis, which means increasing the chance of recovering lost data.

Upon completion of the procedure, a new item “Found by signatures” will appear in the list of disks.

Select it with the mouse, click in the right column on the link “Files found by information about the typical features of their data structure”, mark the necessary elements in the next window and restore them.

Ontrack EasyRecovery

Another professional commercial product that allows you to quickly and effectively recover deleted files. Ontrack EasyRecovery has a convenient interface in the form of a step-by-step wizard, which greatly facilitates working with the program. The application supports data recovery from hard drives, ZIP and CD/DVD drives, flash drives, memory cards, RAID arrays, as well as various devices with flash memory.

The recovery procedure in Ontrack EasyRecovery consists of several stages. At the first stage you will be asked to select the media type, at the second you need to specify a specific disk or partition, at the third you will need to select an operation (in this example it is recovery).

To do this, select the directory with the deleted files in the tree list (it will be marked in green), right-click on it and select the “Save as” option from the menu.

You can also restore individual files by doing the same in the right column of the program window. If you switch to the “Previews” tab, you can view thumbnails of the files being restored, although such viewing is only available for images.

Recuva

Among the free programs for recovering deleted files, we can recommend Recuva. This simple yet effective tool allows you to recover any type of data from various digital media, supports viewing previews of images and hexadecimal code of files of different formats.

Recuva is very easy to use. After starting the program, you need to select a volume in the drop-down list and click the “Analyze” button. The program will scan the media and display a list of deleted files.

Check the boxes for the items you need, click the “Recover” button and specify the directory to save them.

You can also use the context menu by selecting the “Restore selected” option.

The program has a simple search by file name and format, and you can view basic information - status, date of creation and modification, size and full path.

You need to know about this

So, we looked in detail at what to do if you deleted the file you needed. Using third-party programs in this case has its advantages, as it allows you to recover files even if the partition is deleted and the file system is damaged, but there are some things to keep in mind. If you accidentally delete or lose files, never write any data to the partition in which they were located, as there is a risk of overwriting the sectors containing them.

For this reason, the recovery program should be installed on a “free” partition, different from the one from which you are going to restore. Ideally, you need to remove the hard drive, connect it to another computer and start scanning from it. You also cannot save recovered files to the same partition; in this case, you risk losing them completely. That is, if you are restoring files from drive D, you should save them to drive C or a flash drive.

Programs for recovering deleted or lost files are quite popular. With their help, you can return lost important files or folders.

To restore, you do not have to seek the services of professionals in this field. Using these programs, you can carry out recovery operations yourself.

Our selection of programs in Russian will allow you to restore this data without any problems.

Elcomsoft Phone Breaker is a multifunctional and very powerful application that will definitely be useful to all users who own Apple products. Thanks to this utility, you can quickly extract all the necessary information from the device and save it in an easy-to-read format. Analyzing the device's memory takes a matter of seconds, and copying even the most voluminous files with information does not take more than 3 minutes. In addition, you can save the data in a convenient rar archive or ISO...

Description of top programs for recovering deleted computer data: Recuva, Hetman Partition Recovery, EaseUS Data Recovery, UndeletePlus, R-Studio, Ontrack EasyRecovery. Overview of features and video. Personal computers and laptops, smartphones and tablets, and other digital devices today are used by users to store important and personal data. And although the reliability of each of these devices today does not raise any doubts, the issue of data safety and security is still very important for the user.

Digital or storage devices can fail or become damaged for many reasons beyond the control of the user or manufacturer, resulting in data loss. There are no devices that would 100% guarantee the safety of data to the user. But, in case of loss of important information as a result of system damage or accidental deletion, there is a chance to recover lost files.

If a file is deleted, regardless of the reasons and method of deletion, the information is not permanently deleted from the storage medium. It is simply marked as one that has been deleted and is considered by the system as such (for the system, this option is much less resource-intensive than complete deletion), until the information is overwritten by other files. This means that a deleted file can be recovered as long as a certain amount of information has not been saved to the disk, which could overwrite the necessary files.

You can recover a deleted or lost file using data recovery programs:

Hetman Partition Recovery

R-Studio

Pros and Cons of R-Studio

• The program has a fairly wide range of functions for data recovery
• Can create a disk image for later data recovery
• High percentage of recoverable files
• Availability of a built-in HEX editor

• Quite simple and not very intuitive interface
• The process of scanning storage media, recovering data, creating an image, etc. takes a long time - the program cannot be called fast
• Lack of ability to preview documents, video files and listen to audio files

Features of the program

The program itself is unlike all other data recovery tools. If you understand its interface, you will eventually realize that it is very simple, but for an inexperienced user it will not be easy to intuitively understand the sequence of actions to restore your data.

Our opinion

R-Studio gives the impression of being a quality data recovery tool that has had a lot of time and effort put into it. But looking at the interface, one gets the impression that, in pursuit of implementing as many functions of their program as possible, the developers forgot about its users, or the program was actually intended for advanced users or IT specialists who should not have many questions.

But no matter what, I was very pleased with the ability to create a disk image, as well as restore data from it, and, in addition, the ability to recover deleted or lost disk partitions and data from them.

On the Internet, including on our portal, the topic has been raised more than once
file recovery. In fact, there is a whole class of universal and perfectly working programs, differing from each other only in the class of application - whether you need to restore worn-out ASI correspondence or a hard drive polished with a power cable. In this race, all participants reached the finish line - rest assured, each of these programs will cope with what they are supposed to cope with. I do not provide links and prices, because armed with Google (and I am not promoting Google) you will quickly discover both these very popular programs and medications for them. At the end, I will share with you my subjective impressions and comments for those who, one way or another, want to choose “the very best of the very best.”

Search and Recover

Let's start with the standard list of features inherent in most programs of this class: support for most file systems; search for lost files on any device equipped with permanent
memory; working on portable media (you can run a program from a CD-DVD and go through the damaged hard drive); recovery of files after emptying the Recycle Bin, from formatted drives, after reinstalling Windows, immediate recovery of messages in Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Netscape Mail, and QUALCOMM Eudora. Recover contacts, calendars, tasks, etc. in M.S.
Outlook. There is a preview function, with which you can view a worn-out file without restoring it (both in its natural form and, for special aesthetes, in hexadecimal encoding).

Search and Recover allows you to work in two modes: “master” and user. I note that in this context, the “master” is the program settings for “artificial intelligence”, where, in theory, it should do everything for you. In the "master" mode, all the most necessary tools are easily accessible.
The “Custom” mode has a number of differences. You yourself specify the file types and their location, and specify the disk drives.
It is worth noting the usability interface of the program: different files are highlighted in different colors (that is, all text files, for example, you can see by a given color). It is also possible to view all files that are in good, fair or poor condition.

As a bonus, I would like to note the function of completely erasing files (using the method of repeated overwriting) and the high, even very, speed of operation.

EasyRecovery

[All standard features]

Using EasyRecovery Professional, it is possible to recover more than 300 files of various types on disk, including MIDI music files, sound files, movies and much more that a modern user may encounter. Essentially, EasyRecovery consists of a DataRecovery data recovery module, a FileRecovery file recovery module, a disk diagnostic module, and a user trying to figure it all out.

The diagnostic part of the program provides: testing of disks and their partitions; detailed information about disk space usage; information about the positions of disk DIP switches (via the Internet); creating a diagnostic floppy that loads the Caldera version
DR-DOS.

Scanning a disk, especially a large one, unlike the previous participant in our race, requires a lot of time. Not surprisingly, it is possible to stop this process and remember its state in order to resume scanning later. Testing can be of varying depths and take different times, but a short test provides, according to the company itself, a diagnostic reliability of 90%. The program provides for reading parameters (thresholds) corresponding to SMART technology from the disk controller and warning about possible problems with it (only for modern disks).

Data recovery possible at different levels, up to serious damage to the file system. To summarize, we can conclude that a program with such rich functionality can be useful to those users who have severely abused their hard drive (pardon the pun) and were unable to recover lost information using other, faster means.

DiskInternals Uneraser

[All standard features] +
[Recovery of compressed (under NTFS) and encrypted (under NTFS5) files, support for long names, recovery of partitions with subpartitions]

The authors of the program claim that they have a unique technology for recovering deleted FAT32 partitions in Windows 2000/XP along with their contents. Another difference between the program and other similar utilities is that when restoring files in Windows 2000/XP and FAT32 operating systems, it is not always possible to restore them completely. Therefore, the program we are considering restores them in several versions, most suitable in terms of their content, so that the user can then determine which of them is more suitable, and by other means can select the necessary information from them if the file is not completely restored. (But they didn’t want to restore the archived files. The program didn’t show them among the files in the deleted partitions.)
The specific features of the NTFS file system do not allow individual files to determine the partition in which they were previously located. Such files are placed in the common Lost files folder.

A special feature of the program is also the ability to save and then work with a disk image. The authors suggest creating such an image before you start restoring files (especially if the number of files being restored is large), and also to prevent the disk content from being destroyed due to incorrect user actions. It is recommended to create a disk image (file) on other logical drives or on network drives. After its creation, such an image can be connected to the program in the simplest way, and it can be worked with as with a real logical disk.

The program behaves very well in the case
file recovery from broken disks. Having detected an unreadable cluster, it will not try to extract information from it, but will write zeros instead and move on to the next cluster.

FinalData

[Short list of functionality]

Already a bit old (there have been no official updates for more than a year), but still quite a convenient set of programs that can automatically find drives, even if the Boot Sector or file allocation table has been deleted or damaged, and also restore files that are not referenced from the directory. Even after partitioning your hard drive and converting one file system to another, you can recover information and save it to network drives.

The function of monitoring and protecting files from accidental destruction looks very useful and necessary (unfortunately, this function was not available in the demo and I was not able to test it in practice).
FinalData will also help you recover information from damaged CDs, permanently delete unnecessary information, clean your donkey, cache and history, restore MS Office files and email messages, etc. etc. etc. and h.z.ch.

Memory Stick Data Rescue Service

But this is no longer quite ordinary software. It allows you to recover photos and data files that were written to a Memory Stick and subsequently lost or deleted. File Rescue software is free and can be downloaded from Sony's customer support site. Before downloading the file recovery software, the program will require the user to register the Memory Stick model name and serial number. Simple and user-friendly MSFR is capable of recovering jpg (DCF format), MPEG1 and mp4 (MS Video file format) files and, in addition, is also capable of
recover most office files, including documents prepared using PowerPoint and Word. Once a Memory Stick is inserted into the slot, MSFR guides the user through seven simple steps that scan, repair, and rewrite files.

Memory Stick File Rescue is compatible with all types of Sony Memory Stick media sold since 1998. The success of file recovery depends on the state of the data and whether any data was written “over” the file being recovered.

Dead Disk Doctor

[All standard features]

The program is distinguished by an original algorithm for searching and correcting errors on partially unreadable media. It allows you to minimize the loss of “live” data when trying to restore information in “dead” areas during block reading. The file is read in blocks of 10 KB, and when the device (CD-ROM, for example) generates an error, the block size is reduced by 10 times, the attempt is repeated, and so on until the data block is read without errors. If the block size reaches the minimum, the program skips one byte and starts reading from the next. After successful reading, the block size increases 10 times, etc., until it reaches a maximum of 10 KB.
Thanks to this non-standard solution, in many cases it is possible to recover even information that was not susceptible to other anti-deleteers.

GetDataBack

[All standard features]

A fairly powerful and interesting means of information recovery, worthy of participating in our race. Regardless of what happened to the information, whether it was deleted, whether there was physical damage to the hard drive or a crash of a running program, or even low-level formatting of the HDD, GetDataBack will most likely be able to return all the information written to the disk. GetDataBack allows data recovery both on the computer on which the program is installed and on a remote one, for example, on any computer on a local network; Another good feature is fast operation.

Finish

Search and Recover, in my opinion, has left everyone behind in terms of speed of scanning and recovering information, but in terms of capabilities and richness of functionality (I don’t know of files that the program could not recover), EasyRecovery has taken the lead. The rest of the programs turned out to be too specific and of them I would like to highlight Dead Disk Doctor, which can help in almost hopeless situations.