14 DAY TRIAL // File recovering softwares have been a blessing since their release to the general public. GetDataBack and EasyRecovery, to name just two of them are among the top rated softwares in this category. They will allow you to retrieve important data even if the hard drive has been fully formatted. Of course, both of them are commercial and their prices start from $79.
Since Christmas is coming, I decided to bring you a data recovery tool that is free. After a strenuous search on the Internet I came across PC Inspector File Recovery. It is a CONVAR Deutschland application so we will get to see German technology into action.
The software has already reached its 4th version, so it should be pretty stable and efficient. The interface is not as "tough" as I thought when I learned about the German origin of the developer; on the contrary, it is very colorful and nicely drawn.
The first screen when launching the application will ask you to choose the language. There are ten choices available in here, Russian, Estonian, Chinese (Simplified), German and English being five of them. After OK-ing the desired language, the user will be presented with the options available in the software.
You can recover deleted files, find lost data, or find lost drive. Closing this window will enable you to pass to the software itself and perform a scan for the drives on your computer. The scan is done pretty fast, as it will find only the partitions and the hard disk(s) installed on the system. The info above the Select Drive window advises you to choose only a logical drive to recover the data. The Preview option gives you some details about the selected drive (number of clusters, sectors per cluster, partition type and volume label).
Pressing the Check button starts the data retrieving process. The scan will be performed in a terribly short time, which makes me think of the depth of the analysis of the drive. Anyway, all the found deleted files will be displayed. All the folders are shown on the left hand part of the window, while the content of the directory can be viewed on the right side.
Every detected file will be accompanied by information like the size, modification date, the MFT (Master File Table) entry, the condition of the file (all the files detected as deleted from my hard disk were labeled as "good", which made me a little suspicious) and the type of the file (folder, audio file, image or video file, etc.).
If you want to retrieve lost data (deleted from Recycle Bin), all you have to do is click on the red plus icon in the vertical toolbar on the left and select the cluster range. At the bottom of the window the user will be displayed the total size the Inspector will scan.
Sometimes the number of files detected by the software can be so large that you wish you had a search tool. Such an option is available and it also allows you to use a file mask so that the program displays only the files that match the mask. Saving the desired file is as easy as right clicking and selecting the "Save To..." option. The developer recommends that you save the file on a different drive than the one you are retrieving the data from so that the newly recovered items do not overwrite the data still to be saved.
The properties of the items display the name of the file, the number of clusters, and its size. The deleted files can also be viewed as hex and as text. These options are for more advanced users that want to know exactly the "consistency" of the file.
The Good
I managed to retrieve a series of pictures and the software displayed files I have shift-deleted a week ago. Working with PC Inspector File Recovery was easy and the scanning took very little time.
The list of the files it can recover is impressive enough to try it: ARJ AVI BMP CDR DOC DXF DBF XLS EXE GIF HLP HTML HTM JPG LZH MID MOV MP3 PDF PNG RTF TAR TIF WAV ZIP.
The Bad
Everything is working fine until you are trying to open the saved files. Indeed, I managed to recover some "lost" pictures and everything went OK, but they had been deleted one day before. I even tried to retrieve an executable I had deleted a few hours later. The size was correct, but the error message prevented me from running it. But apart from two or three pictures, I could not recover any other file.
The Truth
I had high hopes for this application, but it seems that it is like a lottery when it comes to opening the retrieved files. Be that as it may, I still recommend using the application as it is free and I know it can recover lost or deleted files from your computer.
My only hope is that the developer will continue to improve the program until it becomes a 100% reliable recovery tool.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
