Best Data Recovery Software – The Good top Ten

Edited By Daves Solomon

Imarce solutions, June 2011

Sometimes you can encounter difficult data recovery jobs where you need all the help you can get; this is the reason why I have decided to compile this list. As you can see, almost all of the utilities in this list are free and open source with only two exceptions Spinrite and Recover My Files. Not all software in this list is dedicated specifically to recover data but all of them are essential in the data recovery process. The list is done according to importance and usefulness. I must point out that most of the programs are free, however, that does not mean that they are lower quality; they are as good and some of them better than similar commercial products. These are the tools I use whenever I have to perform a data recovery job.

1 – Ddrescue:

Ddrecue is not at the top of my list for nothing. Ddrescue truly works magic when you have to recover data off a bad hard drive, and when I say bad I mean it literaly. Ddrescue works by extracting a raw image from a bad hard drive to a good one, what makes it good is that it tries to obtain that image in every which way it possibly can, even reading data backwards. This makes Ddrescue VERY effective even when trying to recover data off hard drives with mechanical malfunctions. Obviously Ddrescue cannot recover data in 100% of cases because there are factors outside it powers, like hard drives with bad logic boards, plates that do not spin, stuck heads, bad heads, etc. However, if it can be recovered, Ddrescue will do it. If you want to learn how to use it, read my article on how to recover data even when hard drive is damaged.[Free, Open source].
2 – Ubuntu Rescue Remix

Ubuntu Rescue Remix is a bootable LiveCD containing a collection of data recovery utilities, such as Ddrescue, TestDisk, Photorec, Foremost, etc. It is essential when doing data recovery due the amount and quality of the software contained in it. Read my article on how to use Ubuntu Rescue Remix and Ddrescue.  [Free, Open source].


3 – TestDisk

Testdisk is one of the best programs out there to recover lost partition tables and MBRs. Operating systems usually make backups of the MBR and write it somewhere in the disk. TesDisk finds these backups and restores them. It works better than the Microsoft utilities that come with the operating system disk, like fixboot and fixmbr. If you wish to learn how to use TestDisk, (free open source)

4 – PhotoRec

PhotoRec is a program designed to recover erased files, or files that are not readable due to corrupt partitions etc. Contrary to what its name implies, Photorec does not only recover photos, but a wide variety of files as well [Free, Open Source].
5 – SpinRite

I generaly prefer free and open source utilities, however, there is no program that does what Spinrite can do. Spinrite recovers data from bad sectors, and somehow it gets it right. The way Spinrite works is that it reads the same bad sector up to 2000 times, every time it might get a different reading, then, it chooses what it believes is the right bit based on the results of its readings. Then it takes this information and moves it to another good sector [Commercial].
6 – HDAT2

Some utilities like Windows ScanDisk claim to fix bad sectors, but all they do is relabel sectors as good again. This is useful when viruses mark sectors in the hard drive as bad, however, it does not really work when sectors are damaged for real.  HDAT2 does not recover data per se, but it fixes real bad sectors so they can be used again. It works by fixing or re-magnetizing the damaged area so it can be writable again [Freeware].
7 - Recuva

Recuva is a software everybody should have on their computers. It does the same as Photorec but with a nice GUI, making it more user friendly. It works well, however from experience, I prefer Photorec, since it tends to be more reliable [Free, Open source].


8 – Foremost

Foremost is a program designed to extract files out of raw images.  It works by using data carving on raw images to obtain actual files.  It is designed to work in conjunction with Ddrescue and other imaging software [Free, Open source].
9 – Parted Magic

Is a collection of data recovery tools in a LiveCD similar to Ubuntu Rescue Remix with the difference that it has a GUI and therefore it is more user friendly. The reason why it is not at the top of my list is because Ubuntu Rescue Remix has more tools for data recovery. Parted Magic does data recovery, but it is not its main focus; it is more of an “all-encompassing” hard drive tool. It is very handy when you have to move files among hard drives and convert or resize partitions [Free, Open source].


10 – Recover my Files

Recover my Files is software designed to recover lost or erased files. Out of all commercial packages, this is probably the one I like best for its purpose. I have been able to recover files with this software even when hard drives exhibit the famous “click noise of death” [Commercial].

How to Recover Erased Data Using Free Software

There are many programs in the web that will help you recover erased data. Some great ones and some mediocre ones; some very costly and some free. In the following tutorial I will describe what I believe to be the best solution for recovering erased files from your computer. A method which works on virtually any operating system; Windows, Mac or Linux. A method which is safe, reliable and free. Do not be scared of the size of this article, it is actually a walkthough and it is very easy to follow.

Something I must mention before starting this tutorial is that once you have deleted the file, you need to recover it as soon as you possibly can. Every minute that your computer is on, is a minute counting against you. Why? Let me explain. In order to save time your operating system does not really delete the file; it just marks the space the file occupies as available. As soon as the space becomes available, it can be overwritten at any time. Your operating system is constantly running tasks in the background, therefore, even if you do not save anything to the hard drive, your data can be overwritten just by having your computer on, specially if you do not have much free space available in your hard drive.
Something else worth mentioning is that, you cannot install the data recovery software in the same hard drive your data was deleted from, otherwise your data might get overwritten by the installation of the recovery software. So what do you do now? You could take the hard drive out of the computer and connect it to another computer as a slave, or make make it an external USB hard drive. However, these solutions could be time consuming, complicated,  and even dangerous for computer illiterates. There is a smarter solution which the majority of commercial data recovery programs do not offer: booting from a CD instead of from your local hard drive; this CD will run its own operating system and will have the data recovery software installed as well.
In this tutorial we will learn how to use two free, open source and extremely useful programs. One, a Linux live CD called “Parted Magic” and the other a data recovery program named “Photorec“.

Instructions
Connect an external hard drive or USB flash drive to your computer; this is the drive we are going to use to extract the data to. If the drive is not empty it is wise to create a folder to dump the recovered data in. For our example I have created a folder named “Recovered Data”.

Boot your computer from the CD-Rom drive. Newer computers have a boot menu which will let you select which device you want to boot from. It is usually one of the F keys on top of the keyboard (Usually F10 or F12). You must press this key quickly, right after turning your computer on (you have a very brief amount of time for this). If yours does not have a “boot menu” you are going to have to change the boot order in your computer’s BIOS, and set the CD-ROM as your first boot device. To access the BIOS you also need to press a key on your keyboard immediately after turning your computer on. Right when you turn the computer on, it will tell you which key to press (it’s usually F1, F2 or DEL).
When Parted Magic is up and running, the first thing you are going to do is mount your external hard drive. To do this, click on “Mount Devices” on Parted Magic’s desktop.

Look for your external drive and click on the “Mount” button to mount it (if it’s marked green it is unmounted, if it’s marked red it is mounted). Parted Magic is a Linux liveCD and Linux does not use drive letters like Windows does, it uses paths.  Write down the path assigned to your external drive.

Click on the Parted Magic start menu, then click on “System Tools” and finally click on “Photorec“.

Photorec will then open in a terminal window; select the drive you wish to recover data from using the UP and DOWN arrow keys on your keyboard. Then, on the bottom of the screen, using the RIGHT and LEFT keys, make sure “Proceed” is selected and click “Enter” to continue.

Select the partition table type and click “Enter” to continue. If it is a Windows or Linux partition, leave it on “Intel”. For Macs choose “Mac” or “EFI GPT”.

Select your partition. Be sure to select the right one; you can usually tell by the “Size in sectors“. As you can see in the picture down below, our hard drive has two partitions; the one with the highest size in sectors is the one we are looking for. The other tiny partition was created for the use of the operating system and is irrelevant to us.
Then, if you want to search for specific types of files, rather than for every single deleted file on the hard drive, select “File Opt“.

Contrary to what its name leads to believe, Photorec not only recovers photos, but a vast list of files as well. All files are selected by default; if you want to remove some of them and leave only the ones you wish to recover, go through the list using the UP and DOWN arrow keys and uncheck any files you do not want by pressing the space bar on your keyboard. Press the “b” key on your keyboard to save your preferences and select “Quit” to go back to the previous menu. Once on the previous menu, select “Search” and click enter.

Next, select the filesystem type. Photorec usually detects this automatically. Press “Enter” to continue.

If you just want to recover files that have been deleted select “Free“. However, if you want to recover files from a hard drive that has a bad or unreadable partition, select “Whole“. For example, a hard drive which displays the error “missing operating system” when you try to boot from it, or an external hard drive which displays the error “This hard drive needs to be formated” when connected in Windows.

Now, remember the path I told you to write down at the beginning of the article? the path assigned to your destination drive? We are going to need it now. The path our drive has in this example is “\media\sdd2” (yours will probably be different), so first select “media” and click “Enter” to continue.

Then, select “sdd2” (yours will probably be different) and click on “Enter” to continue.

Next, select the directory you created for data recovery. For this example ours was named “Recovered Data“. Select it and click “Enter” to continue.

Now that you are finally inside the destination directory, click “Y” on your keyboard to begin recovering your data.

Photorec will take a few minutes to scan the drive and recover the files.

You can see files even as they are being recovered by clicking on the “My Documents” icon and selecting the destination drive and path. Go into the folder you created for data recovery; you will see that Photorec has created a bunch of directories, inside you will find your recovered files.

How to Repair a Damaged Partition Table or MBR

If all of a sudden your computer does not boot and you see messages like “operating system not found”, “missing operating system” or “invalid partition table”, you know there is something really wrong with the Master Boot Record (MBR). In this article I will describe how to fix it with a free and open source utility called TestDisk.
TestDisk is a powerful  data recovery utility, mainly designed to recover lost partition tables. It can run in various operating systems, including Windows, Linux, Apple, etc. and recover partitions from their filesystems as well. I have tried many other programs in the past with mixed results, however, none come close, not even the utilities that come with the Microsoft CD, like fixmbr or fixboot. If any program can find your lost partition, it will be TestDisk.

Finding your lost partition table
To find you lost partition table, do the following:
1) Download TestDisk and install it *** Don’t get scared because it is text based; it runs from inside Windows just like any other program. Same goes for all other operating systems; it is very easy to use.***
2) Start scan disk (if you are using Ubuntu Linux, make sure you start testdisk with the sudo command in front, otherwise it will not find your disks).
3) In the initial screen it will ask you whether you would like to create a log or not. This is useful when you want to send information to a data recovery specialist, otherwise it is unimportant; choose whatever you prefer. If you are using a Live CD like Ubuntu Rescue Remix, choose “No” since you can’t write to a CD anyways.

4) Choose the partition type. TestDisk usually autodetects what you have; then click [Proceed].

5) Next click on [Analize] to start looking for your partition table.

6) Next, TestDisk will give you a preliminary list of all the partitions it found on the drive; click [Quick Search].

7) Next TestDisk will let you choose what partition you want to explore, and at the bottom of the screen it displays the condition of its structure. This screen also has some tools. Press P to list your files and make sure TestDisk can list them correctly. If it does, this is s good sign they can be recovered as well. Click q (quit) go back to the previous screen and click enter to continue.

8 ) Once it finds  click on [Write] and you are done, you can exit the program.

You should be able to access your files now. If your partition is Windows based and you are unable to boot the computer you might need to set your partition as “active”. For this you have to use a Windows computer.