Currently bunch of tools are available in data recovery software category, mostly they are categorized under “File and disk management”, they still not have been able to achieve special appreciation in software industry as distinctive product category. The most popular desktop utilities have been Anti-Viruses, System optimization applications which are destined for safeguarding computer system from threats of viruses, Trojans and Malwares or by improving system performance by using bunch of optimization tool. However I still feel either data recovery services or software hasn’t got the recognition which it requires.

Lately, lots of data recovery service companies have started their operations around the globe, but if I recall the start of the millennium we had very few companies such as Kroll Ontrack, DriveSavers, Actionfront (Seagate Services now) etc providing data recovery services from physically or logically crashed drives. The type of data loss was limited to viruses and human errors, but the scenario has changed with invent of complex storage solutions designed by companies like EMC, Hitachi or NetApps etc.

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Contd…

Deleted file recovery, formatted drive recovery, lost partition recovery are some of the options offered by this software to recover data from both FAT and NTFS drives. In some of the tests performed software was able to recover deleted files from both FAT and NTFS drives. It is not so important to mention that overwritten files and fragmented files were not recovered as recovering them using any recovery software is not possible.

However, I expected much from the hex viewer of this software but finally was disappointed as it came out as a mini version of WinHex in a read-only mode. I felt it was wastage of serious programming hours unless they are planning a better release of this component. The hex editor would not be that helpful even for a professional.

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When I was planning to review Active @ Undelete I always had an impression about them as good NTFS recovery software. I suddenly realized I have seen something similar to Active @ undelete than I explored my collection of shareware and found Arax Disk Doctors which was quite similar to Active @ undelete.

Looking at the two applications the same old question arises “The chicken or the egg? ” There is so much similarity in both these applications that the lost partition search mode takes exactly the same time in both the applications. The user interface of both the applications seems to be from a common UI factory.

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Disk Defragmenter is a system utility provided by Windows for analyzing local logical drives, further locating and combining fragmented files and folders within blocks (clusters) of hard drive. You also can defrag logical drives from a command line using defrag command.

When we save a file it is divided in small stripes and saved on clusters, concerning the size of a cluster the number of fragments are created, for example to save a file of 16KB we need 4 clusters if the size of cluster to hold data is 4KB. Now it is not fixed that all these stripes would be saved in a contiguous fashion.

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When a partition table gets deleted, corrupted or lost in general, only its entry is removed from first sector of the hard drive; and although the data is no longer available, it still remains on the disk pending to get overwritten. Expert recovery tools can locate lost file systems even if partition table information is missing. Irrespective of the file system and operating system, partition table is always the first physical sector of a hard drive which starts from 0, 0 and 1 which means the 0th cylinder, a 0th head and the 1st sector.

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In my opinion free software should allow that it can be used, studied, and modified without any restriction, and it can be copied and farther distributed in modified or unmodified form. To make this possible the program (called the source code) must be made available. Even though when this application cannot be tagged as an open source it still is available free of cost of recovery.

This application unlike others does not provide the setup using famous “Inno” but uses Install Shield which looks impressive and does the installation quite simply. The application is a multilingual application supporting English, German, French, Italian and Spanish.

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Fault tolerance, using replication and redundancy to maintain data integrity, has evolved considerably since its inception and promises to continuously develop at an even clip. With data having taken over from hardware components as the backbone of the IT industry, data reliability is a key issue in today’s systems.

The concept of Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) aimed at ensuring data integrity has been around for some time now but, with rapid advancements being made in technology everyday, assumes greater significance today than at any other time. Progressive development in disk technologies coupled with reducing costs of hard disks has made RAID even more useful and prevalent in today’s IT scenario.

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Similar to human, files do have ghost , when you delete a file considering it to be a god like behavior. Now, what happens if you empty the Recycle Bin? Surely that’s the end of the file’s life? We feel that file is gone but with an undelete utility there’s a good chance you can bring back the file to life like a ghost – so once file is back the only thing which comes to mind is Murphy’s law “The probability of a hard-disk crash increases with the number of days since the drive was last backed up”. So we start thinking of putting up a serious backup mechanism in place and think that we would follow our backup procedures religiously but again Murphy has a saying for this “You can’t prevent disasters, but you can diminish their frequency and severity”.

Ok, so now the real stuff is you’ve deleted a file or files, and sent them to the Recycle Bin. Then, being careful, you emptied the Recycle Bin to free up the disk space.

Oops! Your wedding pictures were in that folder! Or the pictures of your Hawaii trip.

And those pictures are gone!

Google “undelete” and try third party undelete applications.

Of course the most important precaution, the less work you do with your computer, in the meantime, the better your chances of recovering your deleted files/folders intact. Saving more files on the same partition would cause permanent data loss as new files might overwrite orphaned deleted data.