Vintage DSLR forum

I recently tested a couple of free file recovery tools. My favourite: Recuva (http://www.piriform.com/recuva). Found and recovered old NEF and JPEG files from a formatted CF card, and a bunch of different files from a formatted mini SD-card. Easy to use interface and relatively fast, too.

Another free program that was recently recommended on another forum (I haven't tried it myself): http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

There are plenty of file recovery tools available, but I've found several of them to be too slow or too difficult to use.

Any other good alternatives?

Jarle

Hi Jarle, since a few months I am using SanDisk RescuePRO 3.2. which came free of charge with some CF-cards. It is a very nice recovery tool. It is distributed in Norway by Aronsen and Aurora Group Norge.
Regards,
Nico

Hi Nico,

I have the Sandisk software as well, but it's not really free, and apparently the standard version (which is distributed with the Sandisk cards) doesn't support all file types. There may be some other limitations as well.

With a little luck, most of us will never need such a program, but it's good to be prepared. I've got a couple of different file recovery programs installed on my laptop, just in case. This way, I don't have to go online and Google, download and install if/when needed.

Jarle

UPDATE: Recuva is still free. I was fooled by their $25 "Priority Support" ad. This is still my favourite file recovery tool, but here's a great alternative:

MiniTool Power Data Recovery found at http://www.powerdatarecovery.com/

Free for home use. Just recovered some lost files from a formatted SD card. Fast, easy to use, no problems whatsoever.

Jarle

I've just had a scary disk crash. Luckily, my automated backup was up-to-date and working, so I've recovered *all* of my data. Some of the restore process required some manual labor (files spread across different locations), so I'd just like to mention a few great tools which have proved to be invaluable in a stressful situation:

Cobian backup, my current set and forget backup program. Completely free and way better than many (meaning all) commercial programs I've tried: http://www.cobiansoft.com/

SyncBack, freeware tool making it easy to synchronize and compare folders: http://www.2brightsparks.com/freeware/freeware-hub.html

Fast Duplicate File Finder, another free tool, making it easy to find duplicate files: http://www.mindgems.com/

Jarle