Best data recovery software?

soundb0y · 2 Sep 2019 at 23:42

Evening all.

Wondering if anyone can help.

A few nights ago I deleted a user profile from my pc thinking it had nothing important on. I chose not to save files. Turns out it did actually have a load of important documents in a folder on the desktop.

I've tried easus and recuva to recover the files but I don't really know what I'm doing and not having much luck.

I've been scanning the users folder with the deleted profiles name (the folder still exists but with just a random Microsoft folder in app data) and have found a few files but they are all coming back corrupted.

Does this mean I am out of luck? Is there another location I should be scanning or any settings I need to change? Is there better software? Can professional recovery have better results?

As the files were on my main c drive which has been in use I guess they may have been overwritren?

It's an ssd if that makes any difference.

Many thanks

Cooler running · 2 Sep 2019 at 23:55

You could see if you've historically used the in build Microsoft File History stuff.

Otherwise the professional recovery is usually better, they just use off the shelf software too, but it's usually the £1K+ licence stuff. They make their money by effectively sharing the usage of the licences out over many clients.

As for your C drive overwriting them, it depends on how long you've been using the system for. It might not help for me to say now, but he best advice for this sort of thing is to usually just stop using the disk as soon as you lose data.
File systems and disks are two different things, the disks don't really ever erase data during normal use, the sectors can get overwritten when the OS instructs the disk to write new data on-top of where the old data is stored; that only happens when though day to day use the file system decides it needs to write something to some "empty" space and happens to chose the place on the disk where your old data happens to be.

jsmoke · 3 Sep 2019 at 00:12

Save the corrupted files anyway, maybe they are repairable.

soundb0y · 3 Sep 2019 at 00:21

I can see the downloads folder and everything in there (corrupted) and some other folders but why cant I see the desktop folders? Should show up under user/username/ no?

I will save them if I can get them and try some repair programs but everything I need was in a folder on the desktop that I cant find.

Turns out its mostly some excel sheets that are important and a few word docs.

Werewolf · 3 Sep 2019 at 00:32

Erm are you still using the machine/drive in question?

The longer/more you use a drive that's had stuff deleted, the less likely you are to be able to recover it.

Delvis · 3 Sep 2019 at 07:16

Werewolf said:
Erm are you still using the machine/drive in question?

The longer/more you use a drive that's had stuff deleted, the less likely you are to be able to recover it.

This

Unplug the drive in the forest instance and use another machine.

I've had the best results with a piece of software called testdisk, completely free. It runs in a form of a DOS window, can be slightly confusing but just let it do its thing.

Basically don't worry about a log file, select 'windows' for the drive type and do a search, then do a deep search, then it's something like press 'p' to lost files and copy them if it finds anything

Recovered a whole for attend hard drive before

Pawnless Endgame · 4 Sep 2019 at 00:06

soundb0y said:
I've tried easus and recuva to recover the files but I don't really know what I'm doing and not having much luck.

Delvis said:
I've had the best results with a piece of software called testdisk, completely free. It runs in a form of a DOS window, can be slightly confusing but just let it do its thing.

Just poking my head in this thread as I was trying to recover some files that I deleted from an SD card that was inside a Canon digicam. Recuva was the most user friendly, but I didn't know about Testdisk as mentioned here, so I gave it a go and that did the trick for me. Yes it is DOS-based, but the prompts are fairly self-explanitary and it gives intelligent hints on which options you need to pick. If you're partially sighted like I am, you can go into the DOS box properties and change the font size to 24 etc.

Quartz · 4 Sep 2019 at 00:40

soundb0y said:
It's an ssd if that makes any difference.

Yes, that makes a big difference thanks to wear levelling.

FoxEye · 4 Sep 2019 at 01:41

Delvis said:
Recovered a whole formatted hard drive before

Not actually all that difficult.

Delvis · 4 Sep 2019 at 08:01

FoxEye said:
Not actually all that difficult.

Correct.

However the OP is asking how to recover files, so clearly either is unaware it's doable or that recovering files can be easy

Delvis · 4 Sep 2019 at 08:03

Pawnless Endgame said:
Just poking my head in this thread as I was trying to recover some files that I deleted from an SD card that was inside a Canon digicam. Recuva was the most user friendly, but I didn't know about Testdisk as mentioned here, so I gave it a go and that did the trick for me. Yes it is DOS-based, but the prompts are fairly self-explanitary and it gives intelligent hints on which options you need to pick. If you're partially sighted like I am, you can go into the DOS box properties and change the font size to 24 etc.

Awesome job

Energize · 6 Sep 2019 at 20:30

The problem with SSD's is wear levelling as mentioned, even if you mount the drive as read only the internal firmware will overwrite sectors of its own accord, this has frustrated police forensics who are used to being able to just connect a HDD to a device that makes it unwriteable.

So basically you need to have all the software ready before you power on the drive and just grab everything as fast as possible.