Archive for April, 2011


Data Recovery Speed and Hard Drive Controllers

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April 26, 2011

In this post I am going to write about the speed of hard drive controllers as it relates to data recovery.

I have noticed from my own experience that if you are using a data recovery software program in dos then the speed at which the hard drive can be scanned and recovered will be much faster if the hard drive you want recovered is plugged into a good quality PCI or PCI-Express hard drive controller card instead of being plugged into one of the hard drive controllers on the motherboard.

This also includes data recovery programs that boot your computer from a CD without dos loaded. I have used data recovery programs that boot your computer from a CD without dos loaded and these data recovery programs have been faster at data recovery when the hard drive I wanted recovered was plugged into a hard drive controller built into a PCI or PCI-Express hard drive controller card instead of being plugged into one of the hard drive controllers built into the motherboard.

I think the reason for this is because the hard drive controllers on some PCI and PCI-Express hard drive controller cards are much faster than some of the hard drive controllers built into some motherboards. The reason could also be that you have a motherboard with older hard drive controllers built into it.

This is also true of data recovery programs run in the windows operating system. From my own experience data recovery programs run in the windows operating system will be able to scan and recover the files from the hard drive faster if the hard drive is plugged into a good quality PCI or PCI-Express hard drive controller card instead of being plugged into one of the hard drive controllers built into your motherboard.

One other thing I have noticed is that a data recovery program used in the windows operating system should be able to scan and recover a hard drive faster than a data recovery program used in dos even if the hard drive you want to recover is plugged into one of the built in hard drive controllers on the motherboard. If the hard drive is plugged into a good quality PCI or PCI-Express hard drive controller card then the data recovery program for windows will be able to recover the hard drive faster than if the hard drive were plugged into one of the built in hard drive controllers on the motherboard.

Every PCI or PCI-Express hard drive controller card may not have faster hard drive controllers on it than the hard drive controllers built into your motherboard but for me I have noticed a good speed increase when using data recovery programs to recover data on hard drives that were plugged into any hard drive controllers on a PCI or PCI-Express hard drive controller card I have bought from Promise Technology.

Below is a link to the website for Promise Technology.

1.Promise Technology

I have always bought my PCI and PCI-Express cards from promise technology. If you know of any good company’s that offer good quality PCI and PCI-Express hard drive controller cards then leave a comment to let us and our blog readers know.

I have used Promise Technology hard drive controller cards for years and have had no problems with them.

If you have any other thoughts on this subject please leave a comment to this post.

For more information on hard disk controllers read the disk controller wikipedia article.

For information on How IDE Controllers Work see the HowStuffWorks.com How IDE Controllers Work article.

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Free Data Recovery Software

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April 24, 2011

Below is a free data recovery program that I have used in the past to recover some of my files. If you need your data recovered then you should try the data recovery program below to see if it can recovery your files.

1.PC INSPECTOR™ File Recovery

If PC INSPECTOR™ File Recovery cannot recover your data then this does not mean that your data cannot be recovered. As i said before you need to run multiple data recovery programs to try and recover your data. One data recovery program may be able to recover some of your data or may not be able to recover any of your data at all and another data recovery program might be able to recover all of your data.

This can happen because of data corruption on the disk. For more information on data corruption on the disk read our Data Recovery and Corrupted files post.

If you would like to learn more about the structures on the disk then read our Learning Data Recovery post. Learning about the structures on the disk and how the file system stores data can help in finding data corruption in the structures on the disk and correcting them.

To correct the structures on the disk you need to use a disk editor. For information on disk editors read our Data Recovery and Disk Sector Editors post.

If you know of any good free data recovery software then leave a comment to this post to let our blog readers know about it.

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Data Recovery and Disk Sector Editors

Filed under: Data Recovery and Disk Editors — 1 Comment
April 20, 2011

Below are some good disk editors for windows and linux.

1.DiskExplorer for NTFS

2.DiskExplorer for FAT

3.DiskExplorer for Linux

4.Disk Digger

Below is a full data recovery program that has a disk editor built into it.

1.Media Tools Professional

Media Tools Professional will need a windows system to create the CD that it boots from to run. Once the CD is created in windows then Media Tools Professional can run without windows being started.

Below is a good free hex and disk editor for windows.

1.HxD – Freeware Hex Editor and Disk Editor

These disk sector editors could help you if you understand the disk structures and are trying to recover a file manually because none of the data recovery programs you are using are able to recover your file.

Also if you are a programmer then you could use the disk editors above to make sure that any data recovery programs you make work. For example if you are making a data recovery program that is able to repair the boot sector of a disk then you could use a disk sector editor to erase the boot sector of the disk you want to try and repair with your data recovery program to see if your data recovery program can repair the boot sector on the disk properly.

For more information on disk editors read the disk editor wikipedia atricle.

For more information on disk structures read our Learning Data Recovery post.

If you know of any good disk editors please leave a comment to this post and let our blog visitors know about them.

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This post is for technorati tags

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April 19, 2011

We have to have this code here for technorati tags RFEBUED6TYTK

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Data Recovery From Bad Sectors

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April 16, 2011

If you want to recover your data before repairing any bad sectors then I suggest you use a program that can read a bad sector more than once to increase your chance of being able to get a good read on a bad sector. This would give you a good chance at recovering your data from the bad sector. You might not always be able to recover all the data from the bad sector so I suggest that when your data is recovered that you check and make sure all of it is there.

One such program that can read a sector more than once is.

1. Media Tools Professional

When you need to recover data from bad sectors then the program below is one of the better programs to use on a hard drive with bad sectors. If the bad sector cannot be repaired then data is moved from the bad sector to a good sector.

1.SpinRite

Also if you want to try and repair the drive with bad sectors without erasing all the data on the hard drive then spinrite is one such program that can do this.

PC-Check is a good computer hardware diagnostic program that can help you repair bad sectors on your hard drive.

PC-Check does not have a bad sector repair option in it’s menus but the way to repair bad sectors with PC-Check is to use the option that erases all the data on the hard drive you want to remove the bad sectors from.

This option is usually the Low Level Format, Destructive Write Test or Low Level Initialise Drive option. The option you choose in PC-Check will be the option to erase all data on the hard drive with bad sectors. This option may be called something different in each version of PC-Check.

Make sure to use a data recovery program first to recover any data you want off of the drive before using PC-Check to erase it.

PC-Check may not always be able to remove the bad sectors from the hard drive so this may not always work.

One reason that PC-Check may not be able to remove bad sectors from a hard drive by erasing it is because over time the magnetic media on the hard drive can become weaker. A hard drive comes with spare sectors that are used in place of the bad sectors when needed. When there are no spare sectors left on the hard drive then any other bad sectors that the hard drive gets cannot be repaired.

Also if you are interested in a good hardware diagnostic program to check all the hardware in your computer for problems then PC-Check in my opinion is the best program to use for doing this.

Get more info on PC-Check

If you have tried using PC-Check or some other diagnostic program to Low Level Format your hard drive and still have bad sectors then I have one more bit of information to tell you that might help.

We have read that using the following program below may be able to help repair bad sectors that a Low Level Format may not be able to repair.

1. HDD Regenerator

Also if you want to try and repair the drive with bad sectors without erasing all the data on the hard drive then HDD Regenerator is another program that can do this.

For more information on bad sectors see Wikipedia Bad Sector article

For even more information on Bad Sectors read Hard Disk Drive Myths Debunked

If you have used programs that have been able to repair bad sectors on a hard drive for you then let us know which programs you have used.  I am sure our blog readers would be interested in that information.

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Data Recovery From Music CDs

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April 13, 2011

I have used the following program below to recover data from one of my music CDs.

1. Exact Audio Copy

The music cd that I used Exact Audio Copy to recover was scratched and the audio was skipping like crazy when played. Once I used Exact Audio copy then the music played almost perfectly with very little skipping. If you have a music CD that skips when played then you should give Exact Audio Copy a try. It might be able to save the songs on your CD.

Exact Audio Copy is a free program.

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CD and DVD Data Recovery

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April 13, 2011

I have used the following programs below to recover data from CD, CD-R and CD-RW discs. These programs will also recover data from DVD discs.

1. CD/DVD Diagnostic 3.0

2. DVD Data Rescue® v3.0

3. CD Data Rescue® v2.6

4. isobuster

5. CDRoller

One time I had a CD-RW disc that I used to store files on using InCD from the NERO Burning ROM program. My system crashed and had to be reinstalled. When I installed the newer version of NERO  that had a newer version of InCD I could not access the files on my CD-RW because the CD-RW disc had not been closed out. I did not want to reinstall the old version of NERO Burning ROM  just to access my files on the CD-RW disc. I used CD/DVD Diagnostic to recover all my files off of the CD-RW disc and it recovered every single file without any problems. Out of all the programs I tried to use to recover the files from my CD-RW disc CD/DVD Diagnostic was the only one that was able to read and recover the files from my CD-RW disc.

For information on How CDs Work look at the following article from http://www.howstuffworks.com title How CDs Work.

For more information of CD-R discs view the CD-R information on Wikipedia

For more information of CD-RW discs view the CD-RW information on Wikipedia

For more information of DVD discs view the DVD information on Wikipedia

I suggest you search the HowStuffWorks website for more info about CD, CD-R,CD-RW and DVD discs.

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Data Recovery and Corrupted files

Filed under: Data Recovery and Corrupted Data — 2 Comments
April 12, 2011

When you are using a data recovery program to recover your files you need to make sure that the files recovered are not corrupted. Some data recovery programs will tell you that the data is not corrupted before recovery but the best way to check for data corruption is to

1. If its a document then open the document and see if all your data is there. If the document is corrupted then the document will not open or the document will open but some of your data will be missing.

2. If its a program then see if the program will start. If the program is corrupted then it will not start or run properly.

3. If its a picture then open the picture in a program and see if the picture opens.

Even if the data recovery program your using to recover your files tells you that the data that you want to recover is not corrupted before you try and recover it you still need to check the recovered data for corruption after recovery. The data could be corrupted even if the data recovery program tells you your data is not corrupted.

One reason your recovered data might be corrupted is that some data recovery programs use the boot sector, partition table and Fat(File allocation table) on the disk to recover your files. If the boot sector, partition table, or Fat (File allocation table) information on the disk is corrupted then the recovered data will be corrupted.

This is one reason that using a data recovery program that does not need to look at the boot sector, partition table or Fat (File allocation table) on the disk could recover your data in the case where the boot sector, partition or Fat (File allocation table) on the disk is corrupted.

Read more information on The PC Guide about the Fat(File allocation table)

Read more information on Wikipedia  about the Fat(File allocation table)

We have mentioned the Fat (File allocation table) in this post. There is another file system called NTFS (New Technology File system)

Read information on the PC Guide about the NTFS(New Technology File System)

Read information on Wikipedia about the NTFS(New Technology File System)

For more NTFS(New Technology File System) information we suggest you visit http://www.ntfs.com/

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Learning Data Recovery

Filed under: Learn Data Recovery — 1 Comment
April 11, 2011

Below is a list of books that you can use to learn data recovery and how the file system works and stores data at the lowest level on the disk. The information in the books below could be useful if you are a programmer and would like to make data recovery programs. The information could also be useful if you are having trouble with data recovery programs finding or recovering some of your data. With the information from these books you could use a disk sector editor and recover some of your files manually yourself. If you understand the file structures on the disk you could also make repairs to the file system on the disk if you cannot boot into windows anymore.  Making repairs would prevent you from having to recover all the files on the disk and reinstalling the operating system and your applications.

Title: File System Forensic Analysis [Paperback]
Author: Brian Carrier
Paperback: 600 pages
Publisher: Addison Wesley Professional; 1 edition (March 27, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0321268172
ISBN-13: 978-0321268174

Title: The Data Recovery Bible, Preventing and Surviving Computer Crashes/Book and Disk [Paperback]
Author: Pamela Kane, Andy Hopkins
Paperback: 512 pages
Publisher: Brady; Pap/Dis edition (May 1993)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1566860806
ISBN-13: 978-1566860802

Title: The Paul Mace Guide to Data Recovery [Paperback]
Author: Paul Mace
Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Brady (December 1988)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0136544274
ISBN-13: 978-0136544272

Title: Data Recovery with and without Programming [Paperback]
Author: T Tyagi
Paperback
Publisher: BPB Publications (November 15, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 8176569224
ISBN-13: 978-8176569224

Website: Data Recovery with and without Programming

Title: Que’s Guide to Data Recovery [Paperback]
Author: Scott Mueller
Paperback: 820 pages
Publisher: Que Pub (September 1991)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0880225416
ISBN-13: 978-0880225410

Title: Inside the Windows NT File System [Paperback]
Author: Helen Custer
Paperback: 91 pages
Publisher: Microsoft Press (September 1, 1994)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 155615660X
ISBN-13: 978-1556156601

These books are some what dated but these are the books that I used to learn data recovery. There is a lot of information in these books about data recovery. If you are serious about learning data recovery and the structures of the file systems I recommend you get these books. If you know of any other good books to learn data recovery please let us know by leaving a comment.

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Data Recovery and Dynamic Drive Overlay (DDO) Software.

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April 11, 2011

Dynamic Drive Overlay (DDO) Software is a program that loads when your hard drive is booted that allows the computer bios to see the entire size of the hard drive. Dynamic Drive Overlay (DDO) software is used on a computer where you have a hard drive installed that is bigger than the computer bios supports. If you are trying to perform data recovery on a computer with a hard drive that uses the Dynamic Drive Overlay (DDO) Software then it can come in handy if your data recovery software can access the hard drive at the hardware level instead of the bios level. The reason you should use a data recovery program that can access the hard drive at the hardware level instead of the bios level when the hard drive is using Dynamic Drive Overlay (DDO) Software is because any data recovery programs that access the hard drive at the bios level will only see the size of the hard drive the bios can access without the Dynamic Drive Overlay (DDO) Software loaded or will not be able to see that the hard drive is installed in the computer system without the Dynamic Drive Overlay (DDO) Software loaded. If this is the case then the data recovery program will not be able to recover you data. The bios will not be able to see the entire size of the hard drive without the Dynamic Drive Overlay (DDO) Software Loaded. The Dynamic Drive Overlay Software will not be loaded if you try to boot the computer from a floppy disk or cd that does not have the Dynamic Drive Overlay Software (DDO) on it. If your data recovery program can access the hard drive at the hardware level instead of the bios level then it does not matter if the Dynamic Drive Overlay (DDO) Software is loaded. You will be able to see and recover the full size of the hard drive as long as the data recovery program you are using can access the hard drive at the hardware level.

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