PC INSPECTOR
http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm
File Recovery is a data recovery program that supports the FAT 12/16/32 and NTFS file systems. The current version 3.x replaces the previous version 2.x, which is now over 6 years old.

Restoration
http://hccweb1.bai.ne.jp/~hcj58401/REST2514.EXE
For 9x/NT/2K/XP. Restore deleted files that are no longer in the Recycle Bin!

Tool to check and undelete partition
Works with the following partitions:
- FAT12 FAT16 FAT32
- Linux
- Linux SWAP (version 1 and 2)
- NTFS (Windows NT)
- BeFS (BeOS)
- UFS (BSD)
- Netware
- RaiserFS
http://www.cgsecurity.org//testdisk.html
-------------------------------

NOT FREE

EasyRecovery DataRecovery is a simple, yet powerful tool that recovers data that is lost, inaccessible or deleted. It's the ultimate do-it-yourself solution for nearly all causes of data loss (except physical hardware or system problems) where your hard drive and system are fully functional.
http://www.ontrack.com/easyrecoverydatarecovery/

File Rescue 2.5
http://www.file-rescue.com/

GetDataBack for FAT
GetDataBack will help you retrieve your files if the hard drive's partition table, boot record, FAT, or root directory have been damaged by a virus, formatting, fdisk or power failure. GetDataBack can even recover your data when the drive is no longer recognized by Windows.

GetDataBack for NTFS
Recover your files when the data is no longer accessible due to formatting, fdisk, virus attack, power or software failure. Get everything back even when the drive's partition table, boot record, Master File Table or root directory is lost or corrupt.
Hard Drives
Partitions
Floppy Drives
Drive Images
Zip/Jaz Drives
http://www.runtime.org/

Norton Utilities/SystemWorks
The Norton Protected Recycle Bin helps you recover deleted and overwritten files.
The UnErase wizard helps you retrieve files you've accidentally deleted.
http://www.symantec.com/nu/nu_9x/features.html

For NTFS
http://www.restorer2000.com/r2k.htm

Data Recovery
http://www.dtidata.com/
Fast File Undelete
http://www.dtidata.com/products_ff_undelete.asp

Undelete
http://www.quantumsoft.co.uk/undelete.stm

File Recover 2000
http://www.filerecover.com/

R-Tools
http://www.r-tt.com/

File Restore
If you've deleted your data and you want to get it back, you need FileRestore.
FileRestore is a simple, easy-to-use tool for recovering files that have been lost or deleted from your Windows system. Designed for Windows XP, 2000, NT, Me, and 9x
http://www.winternals.com/products/repaira...filerestore.asp

Disk Commander
In virtually any situation where you need to recover lost data from a Windows system, Disk Commander is the solution. Disk Commander performs a wide range of data recovery operations.
http://www.winternals.com/products/repaira...skcommander.asp

DFSee
http://www.dfsee.com/
As a tool to 'UNDELETE' files that have been accidentaly deleted.
This feature is implemented for HPFS and NTFS only.

MRECOVER
http://kristenonline.com/lain/cih/mrecintro.htm

Emergency Undelete
I believe this is free
For Win2000 and NT may work on XP
http://www.c2000.com/software/#win2000

Back2Life
http://www.simtel.net/pub/pd/57588.html

Hard Drive Mechanic
http://www.highergroundsoftware.com/6.html
It's true. Even if you just re-formatted your entire hard drive, you can still get all of your data back because, unlike what most people believe, formatting does NOT erase your files! With Hard Drive Mechanic's Unformat Feature, you can restore all of your valuable data in about 10 minutes!
demo version:
http://www.highergroundsoftware.com/downloads2.htm

Filerecovery for Windows
http://www.lc-tech.com/filerecovery.asp
Filerecovery for Windows® is a safe and affordable do-it-yourself data recovery solution that is designed to recover deleted files from all types of media such as Hard Drives, Floppy Drives, SmartMedia, CompactFlash, Memory Sticks, and other types of removable media.

Undelete
http://www.executive.com/consumer/undelete/undelete.asp
You know how upsetting it is to accidentally delete a file that you need—it takes just a moment to lose hours of work. Undelete file-recovery utility captures ALL deleted files including those that typically bypass the Recycle Bin. You can even recover files you purged from our Recovery Bin. With our Emergency Undelete feature, you can recover files deleted prior to Undelete being installed on your system (provided they have not been written over). Buy Undelete and you'll never again be at the mercy of lost data.

Fast File Recovery
http://savemyfiles.com/fastfile.htm
A definite must for the PC guru! It will allow the user to perform all data recovery tasks associated with disks which are not physically damaged.


File Scavenge
http://www.quetek.com/prod01.htm
File Scavenge is the most comprehensive, award-winning file undelete and data recovery for NTFS volumes on Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

Active UNERASER
http://www.uneraser.com/undelete.htm
Active UNERASER is a compact and powerful undelete utility that can recover deleted files and folders on FAT12, FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS systems. It can even restore files from deleted and re-formatted partitions.

Undelete 3.0
http://www.pcconnection.com/scripts/produc...oduct_id=309884
Undelete 3.0 restores accidentally deleted files within seconds from anywhere on your system. Version 3.0 includes new SecureDelete, full Windows XP support and expanded search options.

FinalData Data Recovery
http://www1.finaldata.com/
FinalData Data Recovery Solution will recover files that have been lost by quick formatting, FDISK, FAT damage, MBR damage or directory destruction. It recovers data from FAT12/16/32, NTFS, and EXT2, EXT3.

BadCopy Pro
http://www.jufsoft.com/badcopy/
BadCopy Pro is a leading data recovery tool for floppy disk, CD-ROM, CD-R/W and other storage media. It can effectively recover and rescue corrupted or lost data from damaged, unreadable or defective disks. Various damage situations and all file types are supported.

Directory Snoop
http://www.briggsoft.com/dsnoop.htm
Directory Snoop is a low-level forensic utility that can recover erased files in an emergency, wipe sensitive data, and search for hidden data at the cluster level. Step through your File Allocation Table (FAT) and map individual clusters back to the file that owns them. Purge orphaned (and possibly sensitive) file names right out of the directory structure. $29 shareware for Windows 95 through XP (NTFS drives not supported).

------------------------------------
Or Data Recovery Services

http://www.ontrack.com/datarecovery/
Ontrack offers a full range of data recovery solutions to address your data loss needs. Unlike other data recovery companies, Ontrack provides exclusive and patented solutions that do not require you to send in your media for recovery. In situations where the hardware is functioning normally, our patented Remote Data Recovery service and EasyRecovery software solutions can solve your data loss needs safely and effectively in a matter of hours. If another company claims that there is no alternative to shipping your drive, it's because they don't offer an alternative. For situations in which the hardware is physically failing, our In-Lab services will utilize our Class 100 clean-rooms to retrieve your mission critical data.

or

FLAT RATE DATA RECOVERY PRICING INCLUDES!
http://www.i-t-s.com/datarec/datarec_pricing.htm

or

Total Recall
http://www.recallusa.com/
Our recovery and forensic technology is used by support and call centers as well as data recovery providers world-wide.

ESS Data Recovery
http://www.savemyfiles.com/
ESS Data Recovery, Inc. has been removing barriers in the data recovery and computer forensics market ever since its inception

Original Source

Special Report - CRC/ECC Errors


People have asked "What does the message 'CRC Mismatch Error' mean?".
To answer that and related questions, this report will discuss CRC, ECC,
and tell you what you can do about them.

CRC

CRC means "Cyclic Redundancy Check". It is implemented in computer
logic by a shift register with outputs from various stages being fed through
an exclusive or-gate and merged with the data stream coming in. Software
can emulate the shift register. CRC is a method of calculating through
polynomial expansion a 99%+ reliably unique signature for a stream of
data. Signature analyzers popular in the 70's and 80's used this
technique for troubleshooting digital circuits. It is popularly used as a way
of determining whether the data on magnetic media such as floppy or hard
disks is reliable.

When an application program formats a track, the controller calculates
a CRC value for the track header and each sector header and puts that at
the end of the header. The track header contains the head number, track
number, and CRC; a sector header contains the head number, track
number, sector number, and CRC. On floppy drives and very old hard drives,
the sector contains data (usually 512 bytes), and CRC for the data.


CRC ERRORS

When a program commands the controller to read a sector, the
controller first finds the sector by reading sector headers in, and then when the
desired sector found, the controller reads the data from that sector
and stores it in a sector buffer. As it reads in the headers and data
areas, the controller calculates the CRC value for each as it arrives from
the disk. It then compares the CRC value it calculated with the CRC value
that came from the disk. If they are not the same, the controller notifies
BIOS, BIOS notifies DOS, DOS notifies the application program, and the
application program displays an error message.

Thus, the message "CRC Mismatch Error", or "CRC Error" means the
sector data is bad. But the message "Sector not found" means the sector header
is bad or the controller was commanded to find a non-existent sector.


ECC

ECC means "Error Correction Code". On all modern hard drives, an ECC
value is used rather than CRC, and the controller calculates that value and
puts the ECC at the end of the sector data.

ECC is different from CRC in three respects. First, it is produced with
a more complicated algorithm and so is more highly likely to be unique for
a specific data pattern. Second, ECC errors are not reported to the
user. Third, the controller can use the ECC value to correct up to 11
bits of error when reading the data from the sector. This of course takes
time, and it causes the read activity to be slower than normal. Systems
with lots of ECC errors become very sluggish, and no amount of defragmenting
a drive will help. If more than 11 bits of error occur, the failure will
be treated as though it were a CRC error.


MORE ON ERRORS

A CRC error found when the controller reads the header (in order to
identify what sector it is) will cause the controller to notify the
BIOS INT13 seek, read, or write routine that the sector could not be found.
You will see a message on the screen to that effect, because BIOS notifies
DOS of the error, and presumably your application program is using DOS INT21
to read the drive.

A CRC error from reading the sector data sector of a floppy (or more
than 11 bits of error reading data from a hard drive) will cause the
controller to notify BIOS and BIOS to notify DOS that a data CRC error has
occurred, and that will display a different error message to be displayed (Error
reading drive A: - Ignore, fail, retry). If you press I, the system
will continue to the next sector, and you will know that the file is corrupt
in some sector of the data read. If you press retry, the system will try
reading it again.

If you get some CRC errors, it normally means the media is
damaged. However, if you get a lot of them, it indicates a problem in
the drive electronics. That could be fixed by replacing the circuit board
on the bottom of the drive with an identical one from a good drive.

An ECC error from reading the data sector from the hard drive will
cause the controller to notify BIOS, and BIOS will notify DOS that such an
error occurred. However, DOS (or Windows) will NOT notify the application
program of the error, and you will see NO indication of an error on
the screen. Your only clue might be that the drive seems to be getting
sluggish, if there are a lot of ECC errors. When you get slammed with
a CRC error from a hard drive, it is normally after a sector's data has
degraded over a period of time.


DATA DOES DEGRADE OVER TIME

You see, over a period of time, the magnetic field of a stable (or
stagnant) data area can be weakened by data being changed in adjacent
tracks. Also, read/write electronics can become weaker over time. As
they weaken, errors begin to creep in to the data areas. Since DOS does
not tell you the data area is getting weaker, you get surprised with the
hard failure only after it is too late. If only you had known, you could
have done something about it.


PC CLINIC TO THE RESCUE

That is where PC Clinic (http://www.datadepo.com/clinic.htm) enters
the picture.

Non-destructive Testing - PC Clinic contains a very aggressive hard
drive data test that tests the write/read ability of the drive
NON-DESTRUCTIVELY. That is, it reads a track, saves it in memory, and
pounds the track with test patterns in an attempt to find weak areas.
When done, it writes the original data back to the track. This has the
effect of restrengthening the magnetic fields of the data areas. And it is a
good way to get rid of ECC errors and speed up the drive.

Refresh - PC Clinic also has a faster "refresh" feature that simply
reads and writes back all the data track by track. This refreshes (or
restrengthens) the data too, and it is faster than the full write/read
test.

Refurbish - Now, if receive a used drive that you want to put back
into service, PC Clinic provides a Refurbish feature that can refurbish the
drive. It formats each track and reads it back. If it gets an ECC
error, it reformats it with a variety of test patterns that are known to
provoke areas if the media or electronics are weak. And finally, it leaves
the track freshly formatted.

This process has a beneficial side effect on modern drives. Most
drives have a many unused spare sectors on each track. If sufficient efforts
are made in succession to write and read a sector, and that sector gives
ECC errors, the controller will automatically swap that sector with one of
the spares, renumber the spare sector header so it has the original
sectors number in it, and transfer the data from the bad sector to the new
spare. As a result, your drive is "refurbished". It might not be new,
but it will no longer be giving ECC Errors, and so it will give the
maximum performance of which it is capable.

Security Erase - PC Clinic gives you the ability to erase all the data
on the hard drive by formatting it with a succession of patterns designed
to switch all data values at least twice. This feature is compliant with
United States Department of Defense requirements for securely erasing
drive data so that not even a ghost of the original data remains.

If you want to take control of correctable errors, PC Clinic is a
handy tool to have around. Order yours at http://order.datadepo.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert Hurt has been a writer, developer, marketer, and manager in
computer-related companies all his adult life. Mr. Hurt developed and
acquired the original diagnostic technology for Landmark Research in
1990, founded Data Depot Inc in 1991, and is now the president of pcwiz inc.

Copyright 1998-2001 by Robert Hurt. All rights reserved.

Visit http://www.pcwiz.org for PC diagnostic and data recovery tools,
on-line training, and FREE downloads.

or visit http://www.datadepo.com/

Original Source

Edit : 20th September 2004

Forget to add this in.

200 ways to revive a hard drive

Direct Download PDF version

This post has been edited by waifaq: Sep 20 2004, 11:28 PM

Active@ file recovery

Active@ File Recovery is a powerful software utility, designed to restore accidentally deleted files and directories. It allows you to recover files that have been deleted from the Recycle Bin, as well as those deleted after avoiding the Recycle Bin (e.g. Shift-Delete).

Active@ File Recovery can be installed on and run from a floppy disk, so that the risk of overwriting your data is minimized.

Active@ File Recovery will help you to restore data residing on hard drives or floppy drives formatted in any of the following file systems:

. FAT12
. FAT16
. FAT32
. NTFS
. NTFS5

It works under all Windows family operating systems:

. Windows 95
. Windows 98
. Windows ME
. Windows NT
. Windows 2000
. Windows XP
. Windows Server 2003

Active@ File Recovery supports:

. IDE, ATA, SCSI hard drives and floppy disks
. Large sized drives (more than 8 GB)
. Long file names and local language (non-English) file names
. Recovery of compressed and fragmented files on NTFS
. Detection and recovery from deleted or damaged file partitions
. Exact file name or partial file name search
. Disk Image creation and restoring (restores from a backup file that represents a drive)

The free evaluation version has full functionality of all features with a limitation only on maximum size of the file being restored.

This post has been edited by ayiesz: Jun 22 2004, 05:53 AM

EasyRecovery DataRecovery success rate are quite high

i tried many programs also but none work for me
cos i using it to recover a deleted rm drama (big size file)
i dono whether it can retrive small jpeg file not

got one from gibson research .... xpert programmer
http://grc.com/spinrite.htm
i think this will work ..... he is a super keng chau ppl
according to the website and his works

if we deleted the internet explorer properties in the
Tools-->Internet Options

for example the history and cookies, is there any way we can retrieve the info back again?

on track ez recovery pro recovers my 30GB of data

I find that untime Software's GetDATABack for both FAT32 and NTFS to be very good.

Experienced user here, as in already used the mentioned softwares.
It's a bit expensive though, at $29 each software (FAT32 and NTFS different software). Lucky my citibank had protion back then to exclude surcharges for online transitions. =D

yea getdataback is good too..at first im using it
...too bad i dont hav creditcard..cant purchase online...resorted me to ontrack easy recovery pro which cant recovers the files with chinese name...i lost 3albums and one movie :s

Try use R-Undelete Professsional for retrieving partition & transfer selectable files into secondary (without writing on damage disc)

Er... question from me...

I just "accidently" formatted my 200gb HD and i want to retrieve back my files inside that HD. The problem is...

1. Im not sure which data recovery program to use. What i want to retrieve is .avi, . mpg, .ogg, .mkv , mostly multimedia files ( if u anime fan than u would know how to feel downloading back that almost 200gb anime... if the torrent tracker still exist... )

2. If i know which data recovery program to use, and if i use data recovery program, i cannot set the recover path at the same HD right? For example :

In HD A i have Files X and Y

I formatted HD A and i lose files X and Y.

The i use data recovery program and try to recover files X and Y.

What happen if i recover files X on HD A and put it on other HD ( HD B ), after that i transter back files X from HD B to HD A(Copy/cut and paste). After that i want to recover back file Y.
Can i retrieve file Y or it will gone forever after i transfer files X to HD A from HD B(recovery folder's path)?

Lol my other HD only hav no more than 20gb left and i don't hav money to buy new 200gb hd to recover back from my formatted 200gb hd. Really appreciate any advise. Thx

And sorry if im post at wrong thread...

I'm using R Undelete to recover my video & docs files on my 60GB HDD. However, it only recover 40GB even the partition was deleted !

I'm sure that program can achieve more files if the formatted disk are good intact,

how if my laptop cannot detect that spoil hdd? meaning cannot recover anymore right?

if i format my hard disc twice and i want to get back those data can it still recover
which one is recomended