14 DAY TRIAL // Recovery tools have appeared the moment someone realized that the data we are saving on different storage devices is not lost for ever when we delete it (in the case of hard disks) and the bad sectors on the discs can be copied back.
The technology used by these softwares has been a secret for a long time and only certain institutions had access to it. Nowadays, this technology is available for the public (maybe it has become obsolete for the institutions and agencies that kept it a secret) and there are even companies that have as the object of activity data retrieval from different storage devices. Of course, the prices are extremely high.
But a regular data recovery software, be it for recovering the lost files from a hard disc or an application that can read the bad sectors on a CD/DVD disc, can be purchased by the general public and some of these programs are even free.
Retrieving the data from a broken hard disk or the lost files is pretty easy nowadays if you haven't overwritten it by mistake. But recovering the files from a broken CD/DVD disc is a bit more complicated as the reconstruction of the information in the case of bad sectors is pretty difficult.
DigitByte Studio comes to the rescue by providing CD/DVD Data Recovery, a software designed to get back the files stored on a disc (CD or DVD) that has not been taken care of properly. The price of the application is $39.99 and the restriction applied for the trial version is that only 99% of the data will be recovered. This is the only limitation of the free trial version.
Working with the application is extremely easy as there are no complicated options or intricate menus to deal with. All the user has to do is add a folder or the files in a folder, define the destination directory and click start. Another setting available is the Speed (quality) control which allows the user to choose from the five options available.
Normal option offers the best compromise between quality and speed. Choosing Slower will result in a better quality of the scan and of the recovery, but the speed will have to suffer. Slowest, as the name clearly shows is the most sluggish of the options and will offer you the best quality of the files and the amount of time necessary to complete the operation is the longest.
Choosing Faster will result in a lower quality and a shorter amount of time for the process to complete. The last option available is Fastest and as you probably realized it takes the shortest time to finish the recovery, but the quality will be the lowest.
Our tests included a CD a stainless steel key, a coin, CD/DVD Data Recovery and Softpedia's optic devices. The disc tested was subjected to maltreatment from my part. I did not exaggerate, as I did not want to ruin the disc. I proceeded to scratching the disc and strove not to damage it beyond recovery. You can see some pictures of the disc in the snapshot area. They were taken after the software succeeded into recovering 88% of the data I had stored.
To be sure that the CD is properly damaged I tested it first on the optic device. No surprise here as the system could see the disc and the stored data, but it could not copy a single file in there. It was time for CD/DVD Data Recovery to come into action. I chose the Normal speed/quality control option as it was the best compromise and hit the start button. In about forty minutes the task was completed.
The six archives it managed to recover contained six files each. From the total of 36 files available, 32 of them opened just fine and I had no problem with them. The disc in question was a regular Traxdata CD-R, 52x, 700MB.
The Good
The software handles well and it is very easy to use. The interface is simple but looks good. The data recovery percentage of our test reached 88%, which is pretty good considering the way the disc looked after I finished my part of the job.
The Bad
The price seems to me a bit high, but that may be because I had no use for such a software until now and I had no extremely important data to recover from a partially damaged CD/DVD. Of course, I could compare it with a hard disk data recovery software which costs about the same amount of money...
The Truth
I am impressed with the results of the test and CD/DVD Data Recovery proved to be pretty reliable. Of course, I did not exaggerate with the damaging. I just made it look like the one that one of my friends uses (he leaves his keys on them, keeps them on the floor, does not protect them with cases, and does not care for the stored data at all).
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
