Free Undelete Software

erco

DOH! I accidentally deleted the girls' birthday pictures from the camera's SD card while plugged into the computer to download them. Fortunately, I found this software on cnet and was able to recover them to my computer. It's free, it worked great, no surprises except that the photo info (time & date) were gone. No biggie. Does anybody have recommendations for similar programs I should try before putting the SD card back in service and overwriting the "deleted" files once & for all?

http://download.cnet.com/Recuva/3000-2242_4-10753287.html?tag=posts;msg3223036

Publison

erco wrote: »

DOH! I accidentally deleted the girls' birthday pictures from the camera's SD card while plugged into the computer to download them. Fortunately, I found this software on cnet and was able to recover them to my computer. It's free, it worked great, no surprises except that the photo info (time & date) were gone. No biggie. Does anybody have recommendations for similar programs I should try before putting the SD card back in service and overwriting the "deleted" files once & for all?

http://download.cnet.com/Recuva/3000-2242_4-10753287.html?tag=posts;msg3223036

I'm sure you know about all the free software at Kim Komando's site. I haven't looked through it in about a year, but a bunch of the free stuff saved my a%%.

http://www.komando.com/

In particular:

http://www.komando.com/downloads/search.asp?cx=partner-pub-1581871527628066%3Anxpi21-taft&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=undelete&sa=Search+Downloads&siteurl=www.komando.com%2Fdownloads%2F&ref=www.komando.com%2F&ss=3179j1786259j8

I have about three years worth of podcast of her shows for my travels.

erco

Amazing site, had not seen that before. I have some catching up to do. Thanks!

http://www.tvkim.com/watch/2374/kims-picks-the-amazing-true-story-of-the-hexaflexagon

RDL2004

This points out the fact that when you "delete" a file, it's not really gone. Sometimes this may not actually be good. Possibly the file contains private or sensitive information and you would prefer that it really be gone. For those situations, I'd like to introduce you to Recuva's counterpart, Eraser.

http://eraser.heidi.ie/

Beau Schwabe

It's not free, but it's the best $40 I spent after a hard drive crash and years worth of Photo's and Video's needed to be recovered. <- A lesson learned the hard way about making backups.

http://www.active-undelete.com

Oldbitcollector (Jeff)

A note of caution.. If you are in a situation that requires recovery of a deleted file, stop everything.

Those open file positions can be overwritten by any other file. (ie: surfing the web, temp files, etc, etc) It's generally a good idea to stop immediately to recover the file. Many of the recovery tools I've used also come on a bootable CD/DVD.

Jeff

Circuitsoft

TestDisk and PhotoRec (same package/author) are both amazing and free tools to use. I've recovered a /lot/ of data with them.

Gadgetman

I use FileRescue Professional.
www.objectrescue.com

Costs a bit, but I've successfully recovered pictures from reformatted and even physically damaged SD cards and Sony Memory Sticks.
Doesn't work very well with USB-based readers, though. (I use a laptop with a PC-card slot and adapters)
Like most Pro programs it doesn't alter the 'target' drive, and will only recover files onto another drive.
The program can be downloaded for a tryout, but until you buy the license it will only allow 500KB of recovered files.
(It will display the complete directory structure and file list, with estimates of how succesful the recover will be, so you know if its worth paying for it)

EDIT: Also, they used to have a 'translate program into another language, get a free license' deal going. Don't know if that offer still exists.