Data Recovery Tools - How To Recover Data

Data Recovery Tools and how to recover lost or deleted files. Deleted, corrupt, lost files, no problem. Bad virus. Even if your computer crashed and will no longer boot don't panic all your data can be saved.

If you computer still boots, skip to the bottom of this page for file recovery software 

Windows just crashed. The computer won't boot back up. Those "System Recovery Disks" that came with your computer will erase all of your data. In most cases, when Windows crashes or becomes corrupt and will not start up again, none of your data has been lost, you just don't have a way to get to it.

A bad virus or a corrupted boot sector will keep your computer from booting. Don't panic, you can still save all your files. If you have another computer or can borrow a friends you can download Knoppix. It is an open source operating system and it is free. What I love about Knoppix is that you do not have to install it. It will run completely from your CD.

Go here and download the latest version. Burn it onto a CD with the iso image. Insert the CD in your computer and it will boot to Knoppix.

Put the Knoppix CD in the CD drive of the computer you need to get data out of. If you have a zip drive or other removable disk drive, put a disk in the drive. If you have a USB keychain drive or USB hard drive connect it to the computer. Turn the computer on. Some computers will start the CD automatically, while others will act like it isn't there. If the CD boots just by putting it in your computer and turning the computer on, great. You can skip the next paragraph.

If Knoppix does not start when the computer is turned on, first try restarting the computer. If that does not work, try pressing Del, ESC, F1, or F2. One of these keys should bring up either a menu from which you can select to boot from a CD, or the BIOS configuration. In the latter case, you will need to find the "Boot Order" in the bios configuration and make the CD drive first. The documentation that came with your computer should be helpful in finding this setting. After making this change and saving, restart the computer.

When you get to the boot prompt press enter.

There will be a series of icons down the left side of the screen. The ones labeled "Hard Disk Partition" are the hard drives in your computer. If you can, find one labeled "Hard Disk Partition [hda1]" or "[sda1]". If you can't, just pick the top one. This is probably the drive that is called "C:" in windows. Click on this icon. This will bring up a window that looks similar to the Windows Explorer File Manager. This window will have a directory tree view on the left, and an icon view on the right. If the drive you found is your C drive, the icon view on the right will have some icons called things like "Program Files", "winnt", "windows", "My Documents", "recycled", "Documents and Settings", etc. If you are disappointed by what is on this drive, or you get an error message, close the window and try another one.

Once you have a window open with your hard drive files displayed you will need to save them to somewhere. Your choices are -

  1.  Floppy Disk: This requires that you have a floppy disk drive and that the files you are trying to save are small.
  2. Zip Disk or Other Removable Disk: This requires that you have a zip drive or other removable disk drive.
  3. USB Keychain Drive or USB Hard Drive: This requires a USB drive connected to the computer.
  4. CDROM: Burning files to a CD requires that you have two CD drives. You must have the CD drive that Knoppix was booted from and another CD drive that can write CDs.
  5. E-mail: You need a working internet connection through a local area network.
  6. Windows Networking: You need a working connection to a local area network, and another computer on the network with a shared folder that you can copy files to.
  7. Another Hard Drive or Partition: You need another hard drive installed, or another hard drive partition onto which to rescue your data. 

After you save all the files that you need you can shut down your computer and re load windows or use you restore disc that came with your computer. Replace the files you saved and you should be back in business.

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