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How To: Recover Lost Files
By TheEmperor | September 19, 2008
In the course of running my vast empire it occasionally occurs that one of my subjects neglects to follow my sage advice regarding backups and is struck by the horror of data loss. In the event of such a cataclysmic situation I turn first to my trusted allies at Recover My Files.
Recover My Files is a relatively inexpensive utility, it will run you about sixty bucks and is well worth the price. The recovery process is very simple, connect the problem drive or the drive with missing files to your recovery PC (You do have a PC setup to do your spyware/virus cleaning and file recovery and whatnot, right?) and fire up the software.
The options for the depth of the recovery are pretty self explanatory, if you just deleted the file 10 minutes ago choose the Fast File Recovery, if it’s been 2 weeks choose Complete File Search, if you just did a quick format on a drive and need some stuff back choose Quick Format, if you did a format and reinstalled a new OS choose Complete Format. Recovering from a Complete Format can take a few hours, but the other options are pretty quick in general.
Now choose the drive you want to recover files from and click next.
This next screen has a huge list of file types and a request that you choose which ones to recover. Don’t be daunted, the default selections are all you really need. If you know what type of file you are looking to recover it can save you some search time to select only that type of file though. Now click Next again and wait a while.
After the recovery completes, which on a 35gb drive doing a fast file search takes about 6 minutes, you will be presented with a list of the recovered files grouped by file type. If you click on the file it will try to give you a preview, if the file is corrupt it will fail. If you get a preview you’re all good. Now just select the files you want recoverd and choose Save As and save them.
In addition to recovering lost files I’ve found that running the Complete File Search will actually repair the file table on a corrupt file system and make an unbootable drive bootable again long enough for you to back your data up. Recover My Files is truly an excellent utility and should be in every sysadmin toolbox.
Topics: get data back, lost data, lost files, recover data, recover files, restore mft |
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