Top ‘Data Recovery Tools’ for your Desktop

I don’t know what you think, but the data on your computer is definitely not stored at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Almost every major operating system out there has a built-in backup solution. Data on your hard disk could be accidentally deleted or even worse, the disk could fail. Times like these are when you’d realize the importance of data recovery. But it’s not the end of the world as data recovery tools come to your rescue. We’ll look at two data recovery tools for each, OS X, Linux and Windows.

Data Recovery tools for Mac OS X

There are loads of data recovery tools available for OS X and the two that stand out are Disk Drill Basic and FileSalvage, let’s have a brief look at both

Disk Drill Basic: This is a freeware and it supports both FAT and HFS+/HFS formatted disks. Built using the Recovery Vault technology, this tool is both, light and efficient. Disk Drill Basic can be downloaded from http://bit.ly/9kNnbd

FileSalvage: This tool retails at $79.95 and supports a wider range of file systems that include HFSX, NTFS and ext2fs. FileSalvage has a good user interface and is easy to use. There are presets available and you can search and recover files either by defining the kind (like pictures, audio or video). This tool can be downloaded from http://bit.ly/zgOCae

Data Recovery tools for Windows

Just like Mac OS X, there are tons of data recovery tools for Windows. Let’s look at GetDataBack and TotalRecovery Pro.

GetDataBack: Developed by Runtime Software, there are two versions. GetDataBack for FAT file system retails at $69 and GetDataBack for NTFS retails at $79. It is a very efficient tool and has a footprint of about 2.5 MB. This tool can be downloaded from http://bit.ly/18LWv2

TotalRecovery Pro: This is a bootable tool and since it uses WinPE, users with administrator rights can run it well before the operating system loads. TotalRecovery Pro has a 30 day trail and a single license retails at $39.95. This tool can be downloaded from http://bit.ly/9zX05y

Data Recovery tools for Linux

Linux has both free and open source data recovery tools. Ddrescue and Foremost are worth mentioning and let’s have a look;

Ddrescue: Licensed under the GNU General Public License, this tool is used for both, data recovery and forensics. The user interface is a wee bit elusive and navigating through the myriad of options can be tricky. Nonetheless, it is one of the most effective data recovery tools. Ddrescue can be downloaded from http://bit.ly/JNDHh

Foremost: A tool that is released under the GNU General Public License was developed for the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations for forensic analysis. Unlike Microsoft’s COFEE, Foremost is available for the general public and it can be used for data recovery. Written in C, this tool doesn’t have a graphical user interface and everything is command line (through the Unix Terminal). Foremost can be downloaded from http://bit.ly/aVeVi.

Must Read: Free data recovery tools: Recover your deleted files

Although there are loads of data recovery tools available, these are some tools that are worth mentioning. Do you know of any of good data recovery tools? Please share with me using the comment form below. Remember to subscribe to my RSS feeds.