There are several scenarios where any of our tools will be able to
help you, but keep the following in mind:
iUndelete supports all Windows file systems but
doesn't support damaged volumes, DiskPatch
does not salvage individual files but repairs disk
structures, and iRecover is the most comprehensive
of all products: it does undelete, partition- and
unformat recovery, can handle bad disks, and it
supports most common file systems.
For iRecover and iUndelete you will need a
spare disk (or volume) to restore lost data to,
for DiskPatch you do not unless you will be cloning a disk.
If you are unable to boot your system, you will need an
alternative system to create a boot disk.
DiskPatch
can be run from a boot diskette or boot CD/DVD; everything
you need to create a bootable diskette or CD/DVD is
included. iRecover
can be run from a bootable Windows XP CD; use BartPE builder
to create one. Read more about creating a Windows
boot CD with BartPE here. |
| Goal/Task |
Description |
Solution(s) |
| Partition
recovery |
A
partition was (accidentally) deleted or otherwise lost. |
You
can undelete the partition using DiskPatch
OR you can salvage data from the deleted partition using iRecover. |
| Partition
undelete |
A
partition was (accidentally) deleted or otherwise lost. |
You
can undelete the partition using DiskPatch.
DiskPatch will scan your disk and re-enter the partition in
the partition table. |
| Partition
table repair |
Partitions
disappeared due to partition table damage. |
DiskPatch
can be used to scan your disk and rebuild a valid partition
table. This is by far the most convenient way to recover
data from this type of damage. |
File
undelete, unerase,
deleted file recovery |
A
file was (accidentally) deleted from the recycle bin, by an
application or process, or from a command prompt. |
iUndelete will be the easiest way to deal with this, if the volumes are intact. If volumes are corrupted or inaccessible, use
iRecover. |
| Unformat recovery,
file
recovery, data recovery, file restore |
Common symptoms are
disks showing up as 'not formatted', 'unformatted' or 'RAW'. Windows may ask 'do you want to
format it now?' |
Use
iRecover
to recover the data. It doesn't matter how
data was lost, iRecover will scan a disk and make
recoverable data available to you. |
| Recover
data from a disk with read errors, or bad sectors |
Symptoms can
vary; Windows being sluggish, or lock ups. A disk may be
partially accessible, or not at all. |
Both
DiskPatch and
iRecover
are capable of dealing with 'bad' disks. DiskPatch clones
bad disks. iRecover allows tuning of disk access
parameters to adapt to bad disks, then read the data. |
| Recover
images from a memory card, digital image rescue, photo
recovery |
Memory
card was corrupted, formatted, or images were accidentally
deleted. |
iRecover
offers 'image recovery mode'; tailored to retrieve lost images
from memory cards. |
| Recover
data from a broken RAID 0 array |
Not
all RAID 0 adapters are as robust as you'd like, RAID
configuration data is easily lost. |
Use
iRecover to automatically
retrieve RAID configuration data. iRecover will then allow
you to salvage files as if you were recovering them from a
normal disk. |
| Recover
data from a broken RAID 5 array |
Data
recovery from a (degraded) RAID 5 array is complex. Often
array parameters such as stripe size and rotation are unknown. |
Use
iRecover to automatically
retrieve RAID configuration data. RAID 5 arrays can be
processed even if a member is missing. iRecover is capable of
processing hardware RAID and Microsoft Windows RAID (dynamic
disks). |
