Best data recovery software for MS Windows systems

[Bellzemos]

Hi,

I'm looking for the best data/HDD recovery software that works on MS Windows systems and can restore recenly deleted files as well as files from thoroughly formatted drives, lost partitions and such. I know that's not always possible, but what software would be the best pick in your opinion?

What would be your opinion on those:
UFS Explorer VS Stellar Phoenix VS Recuva

A little off-topic: how is with data recovery from the SSD? Is it possible, can the same software be used?

Thank you for sharing your wisdom in advance!

[HaQue]

I would say in order, and only ordering like this because r-studio seems to be developing more in tune with us (I think a rep from there is also on the forum updating us and asking what we want):

1. R-Studio
2. GetDataBack from runtime software

SSD is a different beast. answer is it all depends. sometimes I have got back a lot, other times it was like the drive was wiped by the NSA

[Bellzemos]

Thank you, I will check out those two.

[Dmitri]

I'm looking for the best data/HDD recovery software that works on MS Windows systems and can restore recenly deleted files as well as files from thoroughly formatted drives, lost partitions and such.

I suppose you ask to use that software for your work, right?
If so, then according to my experience, it's UFS Explorer Professional Recovery

[fzabkar]

ISTM that DMDE is very powerful, but it's user interface isn't the easiest to understand. One good thing about it is that, when you perform an NTFS search, you can stop at any point, test the recovered file/directory tree, and then continue the search if you don't see your files. This minimises the stress on the drive, which is particularly important when the drive has bad sectors.

[data-medics]

ISTM that DMDE is very powerful, but it's user interface isn't the easiest to understand. One good thing about it is that, when you perform an NTFS search, you can stop at any point, test the recovered file/directory tree, and then continue the search if you don't see your files. This minimises the stress on the drive, which is particularly important when the drive has bad sectors.

If the drive has bad sectors it should be cloned first using ddrescue. Actually it should always be cloned first before scanning IMHO.

+1 for R-studio and GDB. UFSExploder is good for some of the odd filesystem's like HFS, but is annoying and crashes all the time. Not much use for just NTFS and FAT filesystems.

[Bellzemos]

Hm, so UFS Exploder is not good then? I was leaning towards it. I will mostly be rescuing NTFS data.

Is there a difference in restoring data from MBR VS GPT partitions?

[HaQue]

When it comes down to it, if the DATA is actually rescuable, any of them would do.

[Bellzemos]

Good point, thank you.

[pclab]

I have found that different softwares can give different results on the same case.
Sometimes I try R-Studio, GDB, DMDE, UFS to see which one provides the best result.

[fzabkar]

If the drive has bad sectors it should be cloned first using ddrescue. Actually it should always be cloned first before scanning IMHO.

There was a recent thread at Tom's Hardware where a user wished to recover a single 2.5GB file from a drive with serious physical problems. I gave him the choice of ddrescue-ing the entire drive, or using DMDE to scan the first 3 or 4GB to recover his directory tree. He chose the first option, but it appears that the alternative may have been better. BTW, DMDE allows the user to specify the number of sectors to skip after a error, and to set the number of retries.

[Bellzemos]

Hi,

I had data on an older healthy HDD and then I formated it using the LLF tool. After that I tried scanning for data with the UFS Exploder, R-Studio and GetDataBack and none was able to find or recover anything.

Is that normal or does that mean that those recovery tools aren't too powerful?

Thank you.

[data-medics]

If you low level formatted it the data does not exist anymore and can't be recovered by any software or any other method for that matter. Sorry, but it's gone forever. Low level format writes zeros over the data area. Overwritten data can't be recovered.

[fzabkar]

I had data on an older healthy HDD and then I formated it using the LLF tool. After that I tried scanning for data with the UFS Exploder, R-Studio and GetDataBack and none was able to find or recover anything.

To be very pedantic, there may be a way to recover data from those "bad" sectors which have been reallocated, but that might only amount to a few KB or MB and would require commercial tools. An ATA Enhanced Secure Erase should erase these defective sectors.

[eazycut]

I use UFS and R-studio as number one tool.
For me UFS never crasches, only when working with big raids with the XFS file system it can crasch sometime, regulary it crasches when it scans for big anmount of data like XFS filesystem Raid. But these cases are not everyday and UFS supports more filesystems, works very good. Otherwise never crasches!