G
Guest
I would like an opinion on Pc Inspector File recovery-- uses, etc. Thanks.
G
Guest
Very good, its rated 4 out of 5 stars. I tried it on several files and it
worked
to my satisfaction. In addition, its FREE.
worked
to my satisfaction. In addition, its FREE.
G
Guest
Thanks for the feedback.
Byte said:
M
Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)
I used it to recover a lost drive.. it did a reasonable job, but MP3
recovery resulted in some interesting medleys.. I still ended up using
Ontracks Easy Recovery Pro..
--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/user
recovery resulted in some interesting medleys.. I still ended up using
Ontracks Easy Recovery Pro..
--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/user
C
Colin Barnhorst
Have you used the Lite 6.0 Individual Edition?
M
Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)
No, Colin, I haven't.. I had two hard drive failures
--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/user
--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/user
Colin Barnhorst said:
C
Colin Barnhorst
I have lost two Maxtors this last month. One ATA one SATA. Maxtor's RMA
proceedures are a breeze. One serial number and failure code from the
diagnostics and a new hard drive is on the way. I'm wondering if OnTrack
Lite is strong enough for data recovery in such situations. I had my stuff
backed up, so nothing more than inconvenience, but I don't trust my
diligence. It has me thinking.
--
Colin Barnhorst [MVP Windows - Virtual Machine]
(Reply to the group only unless otherwise requested)
proceedures are a breeze. One serial number and failure code from the
diagnostics and a new hard drive is on the way. I'm wondering if OnTrack
Lite is strong enough for data recovery in such situations. I had my stuff
backed up, so nothing more than inconvenience, but I don't trust my
diligence. It has me thinking.
--
Colin Barnhorst [MVP Windows - Virtual Machine]
(Reply to the group only unless otherwise requested)
Mike Hall (MS-MVP) said:
M
Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)
Colin
Apologies for my post.. I lost the first before completion (now found) and
my second more informative post has disappeared..
Ontrack products promise a whole lot, and so far I have been lucky..
I use a two drive system.. all files generated/downloaded by me are on a
separate drive.. Easy Recovery Pro is installed on C which is fully
recoverable from original installation media.. this is a good thing because
the program can't be used to recover files on the drive where it is
installed.. it has to be on a drive that it is not recovering, and because
of the way my computer is set up and organised, this works well for me..
also, clients drives can be installed as temporary slaves, and I can recover
the contents..
Easy Recovery Pro has gotten 99% of files back so far.. unfortunately, there
is no guarantee that it will always be that way, and $500 is a lot to pay
for a maybe, but as clients of mine flatly refuse to make any kind of backup
plan, it is a necessary evil..
The Lite version will only recover 25 files per session, so if there is a
major failure, more than one pass has to be made.. depending upon the
general condition of the drive, one may not get more than one pass.. if a
backup plan is in place, then Easy Recovery Lite is a good deal.. it will
find all of the files that its big brother does, and hopefully there are not
too many additions since the last backup.. the only question is whether the
additions are worth $90.. over time, they could well be worth that..
With both of the above, it is possible to create a floppy which can be used
to boot and recover.. I have never used this function, so can't comment on
success rate or how it works..
PC Inspector is free.. no, it doesn't find as many files, and as stated, it
produced some weird medleys with some of my MP3 files.. JPGs and BMPs were
recovered with no problem at all, but recovery was only 50% with MS Word
files.. all local e-mail was beyond the scope of PC Inspector..
Having said that, for somebody that uses a computer to store holiday pics
and uses a web based e-mail service, PC Inspector is the best deal of all..
Re. Maxtor drives!!!!!.. quality control has obviously been traded off for
company dividends.. I have had two go down in quick succession.. I joined a
forum where others had problems (Hardware Analysis).. apparently, there is a
problem with the firmware.. Maxtor can supply it but are slow to respond, if
at all.. some Maxtor firmware is available from a Russian site, but I don't
read or understand Russian at any level..
I ran tests on mine (firmware was latest level), and both tested as ok..
yeah right.. two failures in three days.. I couldn't generate an RMA #, so
resorted to 'writing 0's', repartition and reformat.. a quick reload, and
all has been well since..
Maxtor drives run very hot.. mounting multiple Maxtor drives close together
is not a good idea.. I don't know if heat can affect the electronics such
that the firmware rolls over and dies, but there is no doubt that some
Maxtor failures are down to heat generation.. I now leave a CD sized gap
between them..
--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/user
Apologies for my post.. I lost the first before completion (now found) and
my second more informative post has disappeared..
Ontrack products promise a whole lot, and so far I have been lucky..
I use a two drive system.. all files generated/downloaded by me are on a
separate drive.. Easy Recovery Pro is installed on C which is fully
recoverable from original installation media.. this is a good thing because
the program can't be used to recover files on the drive where it is
installed.. it has to be on a drive that it is not recovering, and because
of the way my computer is set up and organised, this works well for me..
also, clients drives can be installed as temporary slaves, and I can recover
the contents..
Easy Recovery Pro has gotten 99% of files back so far.. unfortunately, there
is no guarantee that it will always be that way, and $500 is a lot to pay
for a maybe, but as clients of mine flatly refuse to make any kind of backup
plan, it is a necessary evil..
The Lite version will only recover 25 files per session, so if there is a
major failure, more than one pass has to be made.. depending upon the
general condition of the drive, one may not get more than one pass.. if a
backup plan is in place, then Easy Recovery Lite is a good deal.. it will
find all of the files that its big brother does, and hopefully there are not
too many additions since the last backup.. the only question is whether the
additions are worth $90.. over time, they could well be worth that..
With both of the above, it is possible to create a floppy which can be used
to boot and recover.. I have never used this function, so can't comment on
success rate or how it works..
PC Inspector is free.. no, it doesn't find as many files, and as stated, it
produced some weird medleys with some of my MP3 files.. JPGs and BMPs were
recovered with no problem at all, but recovery was only 50% with MS Word
files.. all local e-mail was beyond the scope of PC Inspector..
Having said that, for somebody that uses a computer to store holiday pics
and uses a web based e-mail service, PC Inspector is the best deal of all..
Re. Maxtor drives!!!!!.. quality control has obviously been traded off for
company dividends.. I have had two go down in quick succession.. I joined a
forum where others had problems (Hardware Analysis).. apparently, there is a
problem with the firmware.. Maxtor can supply it but are slow to respond, if
at all.. some Maxtor firmware is available from a Russian site, but I don't
read or understand Russian at any level..
I ran tests on mine (firmware was latest level), and both tested as ok..
yeah right.. two failures in three days.. I couldn't generate an RMA #, so
resorted to 'writing 0's', repartition and reformat.. a quick reload, and
all has been well since..
Maxtor drives run very hot.. mounting multiple Maxtor drives close together
is not a good idea.. I don't know if heat can affect the electronics such
that the firmware rolls over and dies, but there is no doubt that some
Maxtor failures are down to heat generation.. I now leave a CD sized gap
between them..
--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/user
Colin Barnhorst said:
C
Colin Barnhorst
Where heat got me was in a plain external enclosure. I am steadily
replacing those with more sophisticated enclosures with fans and integrated
power supplies. I am switching to Hitachis for internals over time. My
favorite for SATA enclosures is SPIO, see
http://store.yahoo.com/drivecase/sadrenwioufo.html (ignore the Firewire
reference and read down). Since I am running 1.25TB on this machine, you
can see why my interest. I have used OnTrak at a local shop and was hoping
to hear that the functionality was the same for Lite as I saw there, give
the 25 file per pass limit. (Is that file or folder?)
--
Colin Barnhorst [MVP Windows - Virtual Machine]
(Reply to the group only unless otherwise requested)
replacing those with more sophisticated enclosures with fans and integrated
power supplies. I am switching to Hitachis for internals over time. My
favorite for SATA enclosures is SPIO, see
http://store.yahoo.com/drivecase/sadrenwioufo.html (ignore the Firewire
reference and read down). Since I am running 1.25TB on this machine, you
can see why my interest. I have used OnTrak at a local shop and was hoping
to hear that the functionality was the same for Lite as I saw there, give
the 25 file per pass limit. (Is that file or folder?)
--
Colin Barnhorst [MVP Windows - Virtual Machine]
(Reply to the group only unless otherwise requested)
Mike Hall (MS-MVP) said:Colin
Apologies for my post.. I lost the first before completion (now found) and
my second more informative post has disappeared..
Ontrack products promise a whole lot, and so far I have been lucky..
I use a two drive system.. all files generated/downloaded by me are on a
separate drive.. Easy Recovery Pro is installed on C which is fully
recoverable from original installation media.. this is a good thing
because the program can't be used to recover files on the drive where it
is installed.. it has to be on a drive that it is not recovering, and
because of the way my computer is set up and organised, this works well
for me.. also, clients drives can be installed as temporary slaves, and I
can recover the contents..
Easy Recovery Pro has gotten 99% of files back so far.. unfortunately,
there is no guarantee that it will always be that way, and $500 is a lot
to pay for a maybe, but as clients of mine flatly refuse to make any kind
of backup plan, it is a necessary evil..
The Lite version will only recover 25 files per session, so if there is a
major failure, more than one pass has to be made.. depending upon the
general condition of the drive, one may not get more than one pass.. if a
backup plan is in place, then Easy Recovery Lite is a good deal.. it will
find all of the files that its big brother does, and hopefully there are
not too many additions since the last backup.. the only question is
whether the additions are worth $90.. over time, they could well be worth
that..
With both of the above, it is possible to create a floppy which can be
used to boot and recover.. I have never used this function, so can't
comment on success rate or how it works..
PC Inspector is free.. no, it doesn't find as many files, and as stated,
it produced some weird medleys with some of my MP3 files.. JPGs and BMPs
were recovered with no problem at all, but recovery was only 50% with MS
Word files.. all local e-mail was beyond the scope of PC Inspector..
Having said that, for somebody that uses a computer to store holiday pics
and uses a web based e-mail service, PC Inspector is the best deal of
all..
Re. Maxtor drives!!!!!.. quality control has obviously been traded off for
company dividends.. I have had two go down in quick succession.. I joined
a forum where others had problems (Hardware Analysis).. apparently, there
is a problem with the firmware.. Maxtor can supply it but are slow to
respond, if at all.. some Maxtor firmware is available from a Russian
site, but I don't read or understand Russian at any level..
I ran tests on mine (firmware was latest level), and both tested as ok..
yeah right.. two failures in three days.. I couldn't generate an RMA #, so
resorted to 'writing 0's', repartition and reformat.. a quick reload, and
all has been well since..
Maxtor drives run very hot.. mounting multiple Maxtor drives close
together is not a good idea.. I don't know if heat can affect the
electronics such that the firmware rolls over and dies, but there is no
doubt that some Maxtor failures are down to heat generation.. I now leave
a CD sized gap between them..
--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/user
Colin Barnhorst said:
C
Colin Barnhorst
I bought the OnTrack EasyRecovery/DataRecovery suite. $199.00. The Lite
edition is too lite except casual recovery of just few files.
ERDR is capable of recovering even raw data files if need be and can recover
files from a SATA hard drive that has already had multiple attempts to
reformat that failed part way through. In my current drive crisis it was
able to recover everything that was not in a damaged area (just a handful of
files) with the Recover from Formatted Drive function and it was not
necessary to use the Recover Raw Files tool (but a scan showed it could
have). Over 100 GB of files were involved and all the critical ones were
already safely backed up, but I decided to see what ERDR could really do.
It exceeded my initial expectations.
For others reading this post, note that it makes a difference how you save a
file as to whether and how easily you can recover it later in an emergency.
For some years now I have used only the Save As function (writes a whole new
copy of the file) and not the Save function (which only writes the changes
and to a non-contiguous location) when saving files. In the event I would
have had to use a Raw File recovery, files saved with Save As had an
excellent chance of recovery because they are contiguous, but any files
saved with Save more than once would have been scattered over the disk with
insufficient info about the file to find all the pieces and stitch them back
together. When 250,000 + files are involved, manually browsing to see what
is in a fragment so as to reassociate it with its other fragments is out of
the question.
Since Save As also cuts down fragmentation and improves access time, I
encourage folks to get into the habit of using Save As, especially for
frequently edited files such as Office data files.
--
Colin Barnhorst [MVP Windows - Virtual Machine]
(Reply to the group only unless otherwise requested)
edition is too lite except casual recovery of just few files.
ERDR is capable of recovering even raw data files if need be and can recover
files from a SATA hard drive that has already had multiple attempts to
reformat that failed part way through. In my current drive crisis it was
able to recover everything that was not in a damaged area (just a handful of
files) with the Recover from Formatted Drive function and it was not
necessary to use the Recover Raw Files tool (but a scan showed it could
have). Over 100 GB of files were involved and all the critical ones were
already safely backed up, but I decided to see what ERDR could really do.
It exceeded my initial expectations.
For others reading this post, note that it makes a difference how you save a
file as to whether and how easily you can recover it later in an emergency.
For some years now I have used only the Save As function (writes a whole new
copy of the file) and not the Save function (which only writes the changes
and to a non-contiguous location) when saving files. In the event I would
have had to use a Raw File recovery, files saved with Save As had an
excellent chance of recovery because they are contiguous, but any files
saved with Save more than once would have been scattered over the disk with
insufficient info about the file to find all the pieces and stitch them back
together. When 250,000 + files are involved, manually browsing to see what
is in a fragment so as to reassociate it with its other fragments is out of
the question.
Since Save As also cuts down fragmentation and improves access time, I
encourage folks to get into the habit of using Save As, especially for
frequently edited files such as Office data files.
--
Colin Barnhorst [MVP Windows - Virtual Machine]
(Reply to the group only unless otherwise requested)
Mike Hall (MS-MVP) said:Colin
Apologies for my post.. I lost the first before completion (now found) and
my second more informative post has disappeared..
Ontrack products promise a whole lot, and so far I have been lucky..
I use a two drive system.. all files generated/downloaded by me are on a
separate drive.. Easy Recovery Pro is installed on C which is fully
recoverable from original installation media.. this is a good thing
because the program can't be used to recover files on the drive where it
is installed.. it has to be on a drive that it is not recovering, and
because of the way my computer is set up and organised, this works well
for me.. also, clients drives can be installed as temporary slaves, and I
can recover the contents..
Easy Recovery Pro has gotten 99% of files back so far.. unfortunately,
there is no guarantee that it will always be that way, and $500 is a lot
to pay for a maybe, but as clients of mine flatly refuse to make any kind
of backup plan, it is a necessary evil..
The Lite version will only recover 25 files per session, so if there is a
major failure, more than one pass has to be made.. depending upon the
general condition of the drive, one may not get more than one pass.. if a
backup plan is in place, then Easy Recovery Lite is a good deal.. it will
find all of the files that its big brother does, and hopefully there are
not too many additions since the last backup.. the only question is
whether the additions are worth $90.. over time, they could well be worth
that..
With both of the above, it is possible to create a floppy which can be
used to boot and recover.. I have never used this function, so can't
comment on success rate or how it works..
PC Inspector is free.. no, it doesn't find as many files, and as stated,
it produced some weird medleys with some of my MP3 files.. JPGs and BMPs
were recovered with no problem at all, but recovery was only 50% with MS
Word files.. all local e-mail was beyond the scope of PC Inspector..
Having said that, for somebody that uses a computer to store holiday pics
and uses a web based e-mail service, PC Inspector is the best deal of
all..
Re. Maxtor drives!!!!!.. quality control has obviously been traded off for
company dividends.. I have had two go down in quick succession.. I joined
a forum where others had problems (Hardware Analysis).. apparently, there
is a problem with the firmware.. Maxtor can supply it but are slow to
respond, if at all.. some Maxtor firmware is available from a Russian
site, but I don't read or understand Russian at any level..
I ran tests on mine (firmware was latest level), and both tested as ok..
yeah right.. two failures in three days.. I couldn't generate an RMA #, so
resorted to 'writing 0's', repartition and reformat.. a quick reload, and
all has been well since..
Maxtor drives run very hot.. mounting multiple Maxtor drives close
together is not a good idea.. I don't know if heat can affect the
electronics such that the firmware rolls over and dies, but there is no
doubt that some Maxtor failures are down to heat generation.. I now leave
a CD sized gap between them..
--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/user
Colin Barnhorst said: