Recently I comes across a situation in which I lost some crucial data stored in my pc due to some virus infection, and as there is no backup available with me so it is a reason of great concern for me. All of us sometimes comes across such situations which demands the recovery of crucial data but we are unaware of it. There are plenty of softwares available online for that but the problem with majority of them is that they are very slow and takes long time to recover, also there is no guarantee that they recover the data in the same tree structure or with the same names. Here I am providing details of the software i.e “Recuva”. I used for recovery data from my hard disk. The main benefit of “Recuva” is that it is very fast as compared to other counterparts.
I also want to mention about one more software that I regularly used for recovery i.e. “Diskdigger” it is also very good software and the best thing about that, it shows preview and there is no need of installation, just click the executable file and it runs smoothly. The main feature of this is that you can choose the type of documents you want to recover i.e. picture, word, ppt documents, music, videos etc. I suggest if the amount of data to be recovered is small use it…
Features
Undelete files on your computer
Recovery from damaged or formatted disks
Recover deleted emails
Recover deleted iPod music
Restore unsaved Word documents
Quick-Start Wizard
Deep Scan
Securely delete files you want to erase forever
Full Windows OS support and many languages
Undelete files on your computer
We've all deleted files by mistake, or without realizing we'd want them at some future point. Photographs, documents, music files, even emails - we've all had regrets. With Recuva, you can get them back quickly, safely, and easily. This compact Windows program does the work for you, scanning your drives for the files you need, then recovering them in a flash.
Recuva works on any rewriteable media you have. Whether you need to recover priceless photographs from your digital camera's memory card, files you backed up to an external hard drive, or the documents you carry around every day on your USB key, Recuva's got you covered. If you listen to music on an iPod, Recuva can recover files directly from the iPod's drive. Even though you can't access files on your iPod directly, Recuva can. You don't have to worry about losing music from iTunes or your iPod any more.
Recovery from damaged or formatted disks
The dreaded hard drive crash. The file you forgot to backup before you reformatted a drive. The camera memory card with your holiday snaps that no longer works. Recuva can handle them too.
Windows (and other operating systems) uses a hidden index on hard drives, USB drives, and memory cards. Instead of having to search through the entire drive for a file you request, all it has to do is look it up in the index -- a much faster process.
Unfortunately, if the index is damaged, Windows can no longer find your files, even if the files themselves haven't been corrupted. That's where Recuva comes in.
Unlike Windows, Recuva scans all parts of a drive, looking for the bits that make up your files. If a drive's index has been damaged, chances are other parts of the drive may have been damaged too. Recuva will show you a list of files it has found on the drive, and give you an estimate of the likelihood of success of recovering them.
Similarly, when you format a drive (especially if you use the Quick Format option), Windows erases the hidden index but does not overwrite the existing files until you start saving new data to it. Recuva can still scan the drive's contents to find your files.
Recover deleted emails
If you're using a desktop program like Outlook Express, Windows Live Mail, or Mozilla Thunderbird, you know that deleting emails from within the email program sends them to the program's internal trash or Recycle Bin. If you empty the trash or Recycle Bin, that's it -- the email's been deleted and there's no way to get it back.
The email program doesn't delete the email or emails to the Windows Recycle Bin, but rather empties its own internal trash or Recycle Bin. Fortunately, Recuva has the solution to this problem.
Email programs like Outlook Express, Windows Live Mail, or Mozilla Thunderbird don't store emails individually. Rather, they store each folder as a database file. For example, there might be a folder for the Inbox, another for Sent Mail, another for Drafts, one for the Trash and another for emails you've saved.
When you empty the email program's Trash, the email program empties that database file. Instead of restoring the database file, Recuva goes one step further and recovers emails individually.
When you recover emails with Recuva, they appear in a compressed .ZIP file (for example, Outlook Express.zip). You can use any standard ZIP file reader (including one built in to Windows) to open the .ZIP file up and see the emails inside.
Each email is stored in a standard .EML format, which means that you can import it to any email program -- not just the one it was sent or received from.
With Recuva, you never have to worry about losing that important email, even if the email program thinks it's finished with it forever.
Recover deleted iPod music
Deleted a track from your iPod or MP3 player? No problem, Recuva will get this back for you along with any additional info.
Restore unsaved Word documents
Did Microsoft Word crash or did you forget to save that important Word document. No problem with Recuva! As it can intelligently rebuild Word documents from their temporary files.
Quick-Start Wizard
For beginning and intermediate users, Recuva has a quick-start Wizard that guides you through the process of recovering your files. Let Recuva know what kind of files you're looking to recover, where they were located, and the program does the rest.
Deep Scan
Recuva comes with many settings that you can use to tweak it to work just the way you want. It works wonderfully in its default installation. But sometimes you may want to give it a nudge in a particular direction.
Recuva's dual scan levels is a great example of this. When you're searching for a deleted or lost file, you may have all the time in the world. Or, you may have your boss, teacher, or family member breathing down your neck, asking you again and again what's happened to that file, report, or recipe.
Recuva gives you the best of both worlds: the default quick scan, or a Deep Scan for more results.
Recuva's default scan will run through a large hard drive for deleted files in seconds. If you're looking for a file you recently deleted, or a file that's not on a damaged or corrupted drive, you should try the default scan first. It's fast and will find your file 90% of the time. If time is critical, this is the choice for you.
On the other hand, not every deleted or damaged file is easy to find. Some of them take a bit more digging. Recuva's Deep Scan option helps you find even more files buried on your hard drive or removable drives. It takes longer but it's worth it.
How much longer? It depends on the size of your drive. You may want to get a coffee or tea and do something else while you're waiting. The upside is that Recuva's Deep Scan will dig through the bits and bytes of your drive and find absolutely everything that can be recovered.
No matter what size of hard drive or media you're using, Recuva gets to work fast so you can find what you're looking for sooner.
Securely delete files you want to erase forever
If you can recover your files with Recuva, then a hacker can too. Anyone with access to your drives can run Recuva or a similar program to retrieve old files that may contain financial records, passwords, confidential documents, or other information you simply want to keep private.
Although our program is called Recuva (for "recover"), we understand the potential for abuse that recovery software has. That's why we've built in a way to erase traces of your files. It's an added safeguard that only Recuva has.
Here's an example of how Recuva can protect your privacy:
After completing your budget for 2009, you delete the old budget file and start a new one for 2010. Most likely, the 2009 budget file will remain recoverable on your Windows PC for a good while, especially with a strong recovery program.
To make sure the 2009 budget is gone for good, run Recuva and search for documents on that drive. When Recuva finds the 2009BUDGET.xls file, right-click it and select Secure Overwrite.
Recuva overwrites the portion of the hard drive where the ghost of 2009BUDGET.xls lives repeatedly until no recovery software (Recuva included) can ever get the file back.
If you're looking for more advanced privacy and cleaning features, you'll want to check out our acclaimed CCleaner software. You can use CCleaner to erase cookies, passwords, browsing histories, names of recently-used documents and more.
Source:-www.piriform.com
DiskDigger — Undelete and recover photos, documents, music, videos, and more!
Recover photos from a memory card
This short tutorial will show you how to recover accidentally deleted photos from your camera's memory card using DiskDigger. Whether you deleted one or more photos from your card, or accidentally reformatted the card, DiskDigger can help you recover most, if not all, photos that you lost.
Remove the memory card from the camera, and insert it into your computer's memory card slot. If your computer doesn't have a slot for the memory card, you can plug the card into a USB card reader, and plug the card reader into a USB port on your computer.
Some cameras can be hooked up directly to your computer with a cable; however, that may not make the contents of the card visible to DiskDigger. This is why it's recommended to take the memory card out and plug it directly into your computer.
Once the memory card is plugged in, you can launch DiskDigger, and you should see the card in the list of drives available for scanning. Select the card and click "Next."
DiskDigger will let you choose between the "dig deep" and "dig deeper" modes. It depends on each individual situation which mode will produce better results. In the case of recovering photos, it's a good bet that dig deeper will produce the best possible results, so let's go with that.
The program will now let you select the types of files you want to recover. By default, all file types are selected, including photos, so we'll just click "Next."
DiskDigger will now start scanning the memory card. As it starts finding photos, you'll see them showing up in the list on the left. By clicking on one of the photos it found, you can see a preview of the file on the right. Also, you can switch the list to show thumbnails, so you can see previews of each photo as it's found. You can do all of this while the program continues to scan the card.
After a little while, the scan will be complete. At this point, you can select which photos you'd like to recover, and save them from the memory card to a different location.
You can select which files you'd like to recover in the same way you would select multiple files in Windows Explorer: you can click and drag a rectangle around the files you want to save; you can also hold down the Ctrl key and click on individual files to include them in the selection. If you just want to select all the files, you can right-click within the list, and choose "Select All."
When the files are selected, click the "Save Selected Files" button at the top. This will let you select the new location where the recovered files will be saved. In this example, I'll create a new folder on my desktop and call it "Recovered," and select that folder as the new destination.
DiskDigger will proceed to save the files from the memory card to the new location:
When it finishes saving, you can close the program, navigate to the folder where you saved the photos, and see that they're back to being regular files again!
Just try these……& recover your peace of mind too !!!
Regards
Rishi Kumar
Source :- www.diskdigger.org
