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Free File Recovery and Data Recovery Software
You've probably plugged your memory card into your computer and noticed .ctg files lurking there. Are these friend or foe and can you delete them? To get the answers, see What is the purpose of a .ctg file and the MSCANON directory?. Guide: free photo recovery While moving through the numerous menus on a digital camera or juggling a host of memory cards, it is surprisingly easy to accidentally delete or lose important photos. This short and free tutorial will show you how to use photo recovery software to rescue, or undelete, your lost photos. See the in-depth photo recovery guide. The role of data recovery software What do you do if you have deleted a file and want to recover it? Fingers crossed, the data has not been over-written and is still on the drive. If so, you need to scan the entire drive looking for file. Going back to the atlas analogy, this is a like scanning every page of the atlas to find a place that is not in the index. File recovery software does this job for you. Typically, it is looking for certain patterns that it recognizes as file fragments (files are stored in small pieces) and works out how they should fit back together. It is to understatement to say file recovery software can save your sanity. Why does data recovery software sometimes fail to recover my file? There are several reasons this may occur, but the two most common are: 1. The hardware, memory or disc containing the data has been damaged 2. As mentioned above, the file is not deleted but it is now marked as empty. This means that other data may be written over top of the file you are trying to recover. Which leads to the most important rule. |
What is data recovery? To understand how data recovery works, it is important to get a grasp on the process that computers follow when a file is deleted. Computers may be logical but that doesn't make them obvious - particularly when it comes to file recovery. Whether it be Windows, a digital camera's memory card or an iPod, they all typically delete data files in the same way, and the file recovery process follows a similar pattern. In short, when you delete a file, the file itself is not deleted. Here's why... Storing data files has two major components. The first is the file itself. The second is a table that keeps track of where the files are stored on the hard drive (or flash memory card). If a data file needs to be accessed, the software looks up the table and finds the location of the file. A simple analogy is to think of using an atlas or map. You look up the name of a place in an index: here you will be given it's co-ordinates. You use these co-ordinates to find your location - in the case of computers, it is the location of a file. When you delete a file, the data itself is not touched. Only the entry in the index is removed. It's like your hard drive or storage device had a memory lapse and has completely forgotten about the file. The drive now marks the space occupied by the file as free (in other words, when a new file file is added to the drive, it can be placed in the space). The most important rule in data recovery Once you have realised that an important data file has been deleted, stop using that device. Whether it is your computer, usb flash drive or camera's memory card - do not use it until you can start the data recovery process. Remember - if your important files get overwritten, they are gone forever. The next steps Work out what type of storage media has the file you want to recover (for example: is it a hard drive, CD drive or camera memory card?). Also consider the reason for the lost file. Do you need to run file recovery software because the media may be damaged or is it because you accidentially deleted it. Each of the data recovery programs software listed on the left has an explanation for its inteded use. CD Recovery is ideal for damaged CDs or DVDs, while File Recovery is suited for hard drives and USB drives and Smart Recovery is designed specifically for memory cards and USB flash memory (it can also perform checks to determine if the card or USB flash key are damaged). |