data recovery software

[perkster]

What is the best data recovery software you can use?

I do some IT work on the side of my real day job, and one service id like to offer my clients that I at the moment don't is data recovery, bringing back deleted files or from other problems.

Now from looking at other Tech sites's info on their services it seems most IT people only do data recovery when the drive is in working order, or can run when put into another computer, anything worse they refer to specialists.

I assume lots of you run your own IT repair businesses and offer these services, what software do you use and what circumstances do clients come to you needing this service? when do you refer it to specialists? how much do people charge for this service?

i found these: http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/system/fwdatarecovery.html

which all seem easy enough and freeware, not sure if they are powerful enough to help in all cases or if there are better ones being used in the industry.

thanks in advance

[glc]

The industry standard is Ontrack Easy Recovery Professional. A technician's license costs $1500.

I would not charge less than $300 to do a software recovery. If the drive is unrecoverable with software, it goes off to Ontrack's labs, where the prices start at about $1000.

[perkster]

bit more than i wanted to spend to offer the service. what does that software do that the free ones dont? is there any other commercial products with cheaper licences?

I would think mostly people need this when their hard drive becomes corrupted software wise, or files lost to viruses or accidently deleting and no recycle bin etc. what other circumstances usually end up with the need for this software?

Thanks

[EzyStvy]

Free and popular:

PC INSPECTOR™ File Recovery 4.x is a data recovery program that supports the FAT 12/16/32 and NTFS file systems.
http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file_recovery/info.htm?language=1

Ideally you install a software like this before they need it....Or you slave their drive to your system and then scan it....The quicker you scan a drive for deleted files (before they get over written) the better your odds of being able to recover it.

[perkster]

thanks looks ideal. what i will do slave any client drives in my system for recovery, seems safer option.

[glc]

PC Inspector is very light duty compared to the commercial packages - generally, the more it costs, the stronger it is and the easier it is to use. It's worth a first try, I'll give it that. If it's not enough, you can always try trials of the stronger packages to see what they can recover, then make a purchase decision. Ontrack costs a LOT less for a one shot license. The $1500 deal is an unrestricted technician's license.

If you want to recover all types of removable media (floppy, CD, flash media, etc.) the BEST I've found is Badcopy Pro which only costs $49.

If you want to provide a service such as this, you should set up a dedicated bench machine and get adapters for all types of media. The bench machine can be something as simple as a motherboard screwed down to a piece of plywood. That's what I have - it's an old BX board with a P3-500, 384 ram, and a 6gb hard drive with Win2K and various utility software installed. Anything the motherboard can't handle, I slap in an appropriate PCI card and media. I have a USB 2.0 card, a Firewire card, a combo 3.5/2.5/SATA USB dongle, a couple large external hard drives - and a USB DVD burner.

[rjfvillarosa]

If you want to provide a service such as this, you should set up a dedicated bench machine and get adapters for all types of media. The bench machine can be something as simple as a motherboard screwed down to a piece of plywood. That's what I have - it's an old BX board with a P3-500, 384 ram, and a 6gb hard drive with Win2K and various utility software installed. Anything the motherboard can't handle, I slap in an appropriate PCI card and media. I have a USB 2.0 card, a Firewire card, a combo 3.5/2.5/SATA USB dongle, a couple large external hard drives - and a USB DVD burner.
Ditto.
Different motherboard but near enough the same setup. I have been running a setup like this for a few years now and with it screwed to an old piece of ply it can be quickly packed away in one of those large plastic storage boxes.
I didn't even pay for the parts, Perkster you can make this up out of old scrap stuff you have lying around. The recovery software I use takes it's time to analyse the suspect harddrive, so a powerful machine is not that important.

[glc]

Yep - don't waste time sitting there and watching it crunch, go do something else then come back. This is why you don't want to tie up your main machine doing this stuff. I have better things to do than watch paint dry!

[rjfvillarosa]

You can even go as far as making this old BSA sacrificial.
Got a badly virus infested harddrive? make sure the BSA has good up to date antivirus software on it and off you go, slave the infested harddrive to it and run your scans, if it all goes pear shape who cares?, zero the BSA's harddrive and start again.
The uses for an old machine like this are endless especially with some kind of CD/DVD burner connected to it so you can recover and back up your clients data and personal files.



BSA = Bits, Scraps and Allsorts.
An acronym we had for an old British BSA (sometimes refered to as "Beezers") motorcycle that looked like it was made of Bits, Scraps and Allsorts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham_Small_Arms_Company

[glc]

You could also keep an image of your bench hard drive on a DVD-R or something for a quick restore if you cheese it up.

Even better - old 6 or so gig hard drives are a dime a dozen - have a spare ready to simply swap in.

[rjfvillarosa]

Good idea G. I haven't pulled the old machine out yet since getting back, but when I do that's going to be top of the list.

[perkster]

i ahve an old machine so thats not a problem, lots of good ideas! thanks, the PC insector will be a good one to start with, then up to the $49 one, if not ill trial others and depending on amount of business like this i get depends if its worth the investment.

how does recovering data from CD work? i thought once i CD was screwed, aside from cleaning it , it was screwed?

[glc]

Badcopy Pro only works on removable media. I dunno how it works, but I've seen it work on trashed CD's.

BadCopy Pro - Comprehensive data recovery software for floppy disk, CD, DVD, Zip disk, digital media, and flash drive.

Features include floppy disk repair, CD, DVD data recovery, digital camera cards images rescue, and retrieval of damaged or lost data from flash drive and removable disks.

It's down to $39.50 for a single user license now.