Thread: The Data Savers Test Results

The tabulated results display a myriad of information. Here's how it's broken down.

DELETED FILE RECOVERY:

This is the easiest file recovery situation: the user has moved a file to the Recycle Bin and emptied it, but now needs it back. Since the file system has not permanently deleted the file, but has instead only noted in its file system table that it has been deleted, and all the other entries associated with the file, including the size, file name, type and cluster location of the data are still available it's easy for the programs to recover it. In fact, the recovery only involves rescinding the 'delete' log from the table, and it's restored. Thus, it's no surprise that all the applications under test complete this test without any problems. They each had to restore about 6,200 images and they did it with a hundred percent recovery rate. In situations like this one, the user can safely resort to using freeware applications like Recuva or PC File Inspector Recovery.

MISSING FILE RECOVERY:

If a file is 'missing' it means that the file system has overwritten the file's corresponding entry in the file system table; especially if the file has been deleted a while back and the hard drive has limited storage space. Thus, when a file is missing, the recovery program must execute a RAW or controlled deep space of the drive the file was on. This takes a lot longer for the program to execute, since
it has to thoroughly search the partition or drive to first identify the missing file based on its attributes.

The test field in this scenario was divided. While programs such as DiskDoctor Undelete and 0&0 UnErase scored low since they couldn't execute a RAW scan, all the other applications successfully tracked down the missing files with nary a problem. The time taken for the scan process to complete was the clinching factor here. Consider Stellar Phoenix's Windows Data Recovery which took around 50 minutes to finish scanning a 5 GB NTFS partition, while ToolStar File Recovery finished first by completing it in two minutes.



Stellar Phoenix took 42 hours to scan a one terabyte hard drive, However, it made up for its slow speed with its plethora of repair functions. This includes a feature wherein users can re-define the size of corrupt files, as well as re-write the header information to assign a suitable file format to it. Get Data's Recover My Files displayed considerable difficulty in recovering files from USB sticks and smart cards in the test. The program displayed the Same file size of 1 MB for every recovered image file during the recovery process, even though the JPEG files were limited to a maximum file size of 200 KB.

DELETED PARTITIONS:

We tested the ability of the recovery programs in restoring the files from a deleted partition. This can be performed easily by utilizing the function that searches for missing files outside the disk drive. For instance, PC Inspector does this with the press of a button. Still, this method only functions if the deleted partition has not been overwritten by a new one. If this is the case, the programs have to scan the entire hard disk for boot sectors of deleted partitions that have not yet been overwritten.

Disc Doctor's Undelete came out on top in this test scenario by hunting down five deleted partitions. But, it fails in more complex deleted partition scenarios since it can't comb through the overwritten boot sectors of newly formed partitions, where the file system table contains absolutely no information about missing files. The best performer's here were GetData and Stellar Phoenix. They tracked down only four deleted files, but got hold of the old data on the newly formatted partitions using the RAW scan without any problems.

COMPLEX FilE RECOVERY:

Recovering data from the NTFS file system places another challenge for the recovery programs, since in this file system, files can be also be compressed and encrypted. Thus, the recovery programs must also mark such files as compressed and encrypted during the restoration process, or else, they will be unusable. Apart from ToolStar, only 0&0 UnErase managed to restore encrypted files. All the others applications only managed to restore compressed files, while PC Inspector failed in both the cases. What's missing in all the test candidates is a bootable recovery medium to access the system partition on the hard disk in case of a system partition crash.

ADDITIONAL FUNCTIONS:

Portable versions were a plus, and with the exception of PC Inspector, all the programs run on Vista, though for it to function smoothly, you may need to disable the User Account Control.