File and Disk Recover And Restore (Part 1) - Binarybiz VirtualLab, Brian Kato Restoration, CGsecurity TestDisk and PhotoRec, Genie9 Timeline Pro 2012, O&O DiskRecovery 7

File and disk recovery software can save the day when your data has been deleted or corrupted

Cold sweat beading on the brow. Panic rising from the stomach. The shaking hand that scrolls the mouse in a vain attempt to locate that incredibly important, but absent file. These symptoms will be all too familiar to anyone who has accidentally deleted a file, or found that a hard drive or USB stick they've been relying on has become corrupted. While the Recycle Bin sometimes catches accidentally deleted files, there's no guarantee of that, and Murphy's law dictates that you'll empty the Recycle Bin just before you notice your mistake.

Luckily, there's a range of software available that can trawl your hard drive and reconstruct lost data. While the programs themselves aren't glamorous, they possess fascinating capabilities that prove that very rarely is anything truly deleted or lost, unless you somehow drop the hard drive in to a vat of acid. While this fact has obvious security implications if you ever chuck out or give away an old PC or hard drive, the usefulness of recovery software cannot be denied.

Of course, it's incredibly import ant to make the right choice if you're going to trust a piece of software to recover your files. As you’ll see in this roundup, while a lot of the products offer similar features and produce similar results, there are big discrepancies in price. We put eight file recovery programs through their paces to find out which ones you should trust.

Binarybiz VirtualLab

Great recovery app, poor pricing

VirtualLab

VirtualLab is an impressive performer, with one unfortunate twist: its pricing model. You don't buy it as an individual program. Instead, you pay as you go, and $40 is only worth a pathetic 100MB of recovered files. And if that doesn't seem stingy, the next level up is $99 for 500GB. Putting a fixed limit on how much you can re­cover is odd, but to jump from effectively nothing to half a terabyte is just plain bizarre.

The tools themselves are excellent, though. While File Undelete is the obvious go-to utility, VirtualLab also handles standard parti­tion recovery, supports Mac partition types, and will even have a go at recovering a RAID system. As far as undeleting goes, its regu­lar scan is blisteringly fast and the tools it uses to search through what it finds are easily the best of all the programs here. You can browse the directory tree at will, search the recovered files for specific types, or look something up by name – and VirtualLab serves up results instantly.

Close investigation reveals that the rest of VirtualLab offers this kind of one-step-further care and attention. When recover­ing files, for example, you can save to a drive, but this is the only tool in this lineup that also lets you output files to an FTP server instead. On our test system, we had trouble with the applica­tion's photo tool – for some reason it turned up no images, despite having found plenty of both in a general File Undelete sweep. A shame, really.

But, ultimately, it's the pricing model that holds this tool back. You can try it out with a desultory 1MB of free recovery and see what it can save, but for practical use, you're looking at $100 for the 500GB version.

Details
Verdict	8/10
Price	$100 for 500GB
Website	www.binarybiz.com

Brian Kato Restoration

It says what it does, and does it

Restoration Verions 2.5.14

Restoration is a quick-and-dirty data-recovery tool. Options? Choices? Forget it. Everything the utility does is presented on a single screen, and it's not very much at all. Pick a disk. Enter a filename if you're looking for something specific. Decide whether or not you want to be bothered by files with a size of zero. Press the ‘Search deleted files’ button to scan your drive. Done.

In testing, Restoration turned up as many files as its competi­tors and offered a couple of advantages. It's only 400Kb in size, for example, and doesn't require installation. That makes it conve­nient if you only have one drive and don't want to risk overwriting the data you are trying to recover. It's also much easier to use than the Linux alternatives, and it's free.

The downsides are firmly interface related. There’s no indica­tion of how damaged files might be, no way to browse the tree of recovered files by directory, and searching is a slow process.

Most frustratingly, though, there's no way to restore multiple files at once. The list won't let you group-select or do a mass res­toration of everything that's uncovered. The cut-down approach also means that you can forget about restoring from devices like cameras. Even USB stick support is brushed off in the Read me file as, ‘a user reported that it worked correctly.’ Finally, you’re not likely to use the included shredder utility, as it zaps all the deleted files it finds, with no targeting whatsoever.

For a basic recovery tool it works well enough, but there's little reason to choose it over the more powerful utilities unless you’re looking for a tool to go on a system-restoring USB stick.

Details
Verdict	5/10
Price	Free
Website	bit.ly/katorestore

 

CGsecurity TestDisk and PhotoRec

A double-whammy of data recovery

We're putting these two open-source tools together because united they can take care of both data-recovery extremes. TestDisk is the broadsword. It works on whole partitions and non-booting disks – typically, in the aftermath of a virus attack or major human error. PhotoRec is the scalpel. It digs up individual files, from photos to videos, documents, and archives; it then re­assembles them as well as possible.

PhotoRec

Both come from the world of Linux, but PhotoRec, in particular, is easier to use than you might expect, with menus to flag the file types you want and a recovery process that spits everything onto a safe drive for you to sift through. It's as good at pulling informa­tion from memory cards as hard drives – an increasingly common feature in these tools.

TestDisk is a much more complicated beast, asking for details such as ‘disk geometry’ and throwing out a stream of jargon. It features analysis tools that will try to work out many of the details if you don't know them, but don't expect to just hit a button and bring back your disks after a crash.

Both tools are small, and neither requires any form of installa­tion. That makes them perfect for use on an emergency USB stick and custom recovery discs, and together they're not even a mega­byte. As a rule, they'll be the go-to tools on any Linux-based disc. They're not the ideal tools to learn while sweating at the thought of losing a vital file, but they'll help keep you cool if you've already learned the ropes before disaster strikes.

Details
Verdict	9/10
Price	Free
Website	www.cgsecurity.org

Genie9 Timeline Pro 2012

Help put problems back in the bottle

Genie Timeline Professional 2012 offers a different take on data recovery. It doesn't pick apart the detritus on your hard drive or try to salvage deleted files. Instead, it's a live backup tool. Install it, point it to another location (ideally a spacious second hard drive), and it keeps track of and copies anything that you add, de­lete, or change on your primary disk.

Genie9 Timeline Pro 2012

The main benefit of this is that you're not just protected against data loss, but far more common data accidents. Yes, Windows 7 boasts something similar, but it's not particularly useful on a minute-by-minute basis, especially if you accidentally overwrite something you've been working on all day.

Genie Timeline also provides a disaster recovery disc creator for pulling files from a broken system. It can scan everything on your system, limit its actions to specific folders, or look for file types such as pictures. It can also make a pseudo-backup of your iPod, for instance, though only by copying backups already made by tools like iTunes.

There are some oddities, however. Files aren't restored to their original location, but to a directory of your choice. This makes sense when working with undeletions – the more you mess with a drive, the more you risk damaging files – but here, a simple ‘put that back’ button would be more fitting. Backups also work on a long timer – a minimum of three minutes – whereas tools like Dropbox work live.

Provided you have a second drive, Genie Timeline Pro 2012 is a handy way to keep a copy of your most important files, with the advantage that you get something out of it even if disaster doesn't suddenly strike.

Details
Verdict	7/10
Price	$60
Website	www.genie9.com

O&O DiskRecovery 7

Bring your data back with ease

Costing more than twice as much as many of its paid-for competi­tors, O&O DiskRecovery 7 is on the defensive even before it's in­stalled. Its primary advantages are its ability to handle formatted and damaged partitions, and its very powerful engine that's used regardless of whether you do a quick or deep scan. It stumbles in some other functions, though, especially post-scanning.

This isn't to say it's complicated to use. In most cases, you just point it to the partition, pausing only to specify individual file types (if you don't want everything) and whether you want to save files automatically or be presented with a list.

O&O DiskReocvery 7

Unlike many tools, you're not allowed to restore to the disk you're recovering files from – but that's good sense. The catch comes if you're looking for specific files. You can't scan for them exclusively, or even target directories – only file types, with the option to add a couple of fitters, such as size and date of cre­ation. The finished report offers no search box to help drill into it either – an unfortunate omission. The result is that while O&O works superbly if you have a crash or drive-wide disaster to take care of, it's not so effective for day-to-day deletions and recover­ing from small-scale accidents.

If you do end up needing its heavy lifting, there's not much that escapes O&O's eagle eye. It handles hard drives, flash cards, USB sticks, and more. Its partitioning support is extremely useful, and the option for an ‘Instant’ installation if you're bringing it in to clean up is a handy touch. For the general home user, though, you can get similar results more cheaply elsewhere.

Details
Verdict	8/10
Price	$99
Website	www.oo-software.com