data recovery software

From HTYP, the free directory anyone can edit

Jump to: navigation, search

Contents

[edit] Navigation

computing: software: data recovery

[edit] Overview

When drives and storage media become unreadable by the usual methods, it is often possible to recover data using specialized software.

Damaged data generally falls into one of two categories, which we'll arbitrarily designate as "rescue" and "recovery":

  • rescue: the directory listing can be read, and filesystem-checking utilities (such as scandisk in Microsoft Windows and fsck in Linux) report no errors, but attempting to read files results in error messages, time-outs, or bad data
  • recovery: directory listings are unavailable or damaged

Different software is appropriate depending on which of the two situations is occurring.

[edit] rescue

(directories ok, files/data bad)

[edit] Linux

  • ddrescue: like dd, but handles read errors better

[edit] Windows

  • SpinRite is an excellent tool for recovering damaged data on otherwise apparently-healthy drives.

[edit] recovery

(directories bad, raw data readable)

[edit] Linux

  • dares: attempts to identify known file types; does not recover directory info
  • testdisk: looks for munged partitions, lets you adjust partition table

[edit] Windows

Retrieved from "http://htyp.org/data_recovery_software"
Personal tools