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GetDataBack- A Review by Mickyj
Data recovery made easy
Data recovery is always a daunting task. It is also an unexpected and
unpleasant surprise. You never plan to loose data. You never count on your
hard drives failing, a power spike or simple file deletion. Especially if
the accident happened weeks ago and you are only just now discovering the
damage.
Recently I have had many occasions where
friends and co workers have accidentally deleted precious photos. The kind
where wives are very unforgiving, irreplaceable pictures of babies and
weddings. The kind of events that can never happen again.
Even more recently, I had 100 Gb of my own
data lost due to bad sectors. My
S.M.A.R.T. (1)
software had not alerted me of my pending doom. It just happened and now
Windows XP wants to reformat my drive. It is one of the worst feelings you
can have, when you can not recall what was on this exact drive but you know
it is irreplaceable.
GetDataBack to the rescue. This tool is able
to only do what is physically possible using your drive as-is (Short of
sending your drive off to a clean room for rebuilding). The tool scans the
drive for various NTFS or FAT tables and rebuilds what it can. Then you can
use the registered version to save off your valuable items to another drive.
I have used it for deleted volumes, deleted files, recovering files after an
Fdisk, reformat and reinstallation of Widows XP and now bad sectors.
It has done a fantastic job in all the tests I
have run it against. It is the I.T. persons best friend and can help give
business owners the assurance that all that can be done to save their data
will be done.
GetDataBack will recover your data
if the hard drive's partition table, boot record, FAT/MFT or
root directory are lost or damaged. It will work if data was
lost due to a virus attack, the drive was formatted, Fdisk has
been run, a power failure has caused a system crash, files were
lost due to a software failure, files were accidentally deleted.
This tool is the Swiss army knife
of data recovery.
GetDataBack
can even recover your data when the drive is no longer
recognized by Windows or Windows wants to format the drive. It
can be used even if all directory information - not just the
root directory- is missing.
GetDataBack uses advanced
algorithms will make sure that all directories and sub
directories are put together as they were, and that long file
names are reconstructed correctly. As the program read-only,
(the program will never attempt to write to the drive you are
about to recover) then it is completely safe.
Using GetDataBack
The software easily enables the
any user to initiate their own data recovery by guiding them
through three easy to understand steps. It also gives the
advanced user the possibility to interfere with the recovery and
improve the results, by examining the scan log, the file system
details, file and directory information, by selecting the sector
range to be scanned, by choosing excessive search for file
systems or search for lost files, by calling Runtime's
DiskExplorer. You can save out your progress and return to the
recovery later.
Limitations
At this point in time I have only found
one limitation. This is beyond the obvious physical where actual
physical damage to the drive prevents data recovery.
The software located each of my Virtual
Volumes for Virtual PC, found the NTFS partition information
within them and loaded them into the root of my recovery
information confusing my recovery. This is something that
Runtime Software should address but in no way limits the
product.
System Requirements (NTFS version):
Pentium Processor
32 MB RAM
Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, 2003 or Vista
Warnings
Do not install GetDataBack on the drive you want to
recover. As with all data recovery, be mindful of what you do to the drive
you are working with. If you are recovering to external drives, make sure
that you and no one else will trip on USB or Power cables.
If you have bad sectors or other physical issues,
attempt to recover your data ASAP.
Ratings
Do you need this tool? Why
did it get the thumbs and star rating above?
( )
(1)
S.M.A.R.T. stands for Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology.
S.M.A.R.T. technology was developed by a number of major hard disk drive
manufacturers in a concerted effort to increase the reliability of drives.
It is a technology that enables the PC to predict the future failure of hard
disk drives. S.M.A.R.T. technology has become an industry standard for hard
drive manufacturers.
Through the S.M.A.R.T. system, modern hard disk drives incorporate a suite
of advanced diagnostics that monitor the internal operations of a drive and
provide an early warning for many types of potential problems. When a
potential problem is detected, the drive can be repaired or replaced before
any data is lost or damaged.
The S.M.A.R.T. system monitors the drive for anything that might seem out of
the ordinary, documents it, and analyzes the data. If it sees something that
indicates a problem, it is capable of notifying the user (or system
administrator). S.M.A.R.T. monitors disk performance, faulty sectors,
recalibration, CRC errors, drive spin-up time, drive heads, distance between
the heads and the disk platters, drive temperature, and characteristics of
the media, motor and servomechanisms. The errors the system can detect can
be predicted by a number of methods. Currently the SMART system can detect
about 70% of all hard drive errors.
Here's an example: motor and/or bearing failure can be predicted by an
increase in the drive spin-up time and the number of retries it takes to get
the drive spinning at full speed. Or, if the drive notes that error
correction is being needed excessively, it can attribute this to a broken
drive head or surface contamination, and it will create an alert before the
problem gets worse. Armed with a prediction of failure, the user or system
administrator can make a backup copy of key data, replace a suspect device
prior to data loss, and avoid undesired downtime.
See also
Has your hard drive died? Do you need the
data that is on it?
Put it in your Freezer.
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