View deleted files on a computer. Hard Drive Recovery step by step

Problem hard recovery  disk and information that was stored on it - one of the most pressing problems at this point in time. Due to the seriousness of the issue, it is advisable to always have at hand a tool that could eliminate malfunctions in the work of the railway. It can be like a comprehensive program for hDD recovery  and utilita, able to diagnose the specific functionality of the disk.



HDD Regenerator  - program for recovering bad sectors hard drive  and creating recovery boot disks. Its main advantages include a simple interface without unnecessary troubles, the ability to monitor the status of the HDD, as well as support for various file systems. And the disadvantages are that the official version of the product costs almost $ 90 and that using this program it is impossible to recover information after formatting the hard drive. It eliminates only bad sectors and then only at the logical level.



  R-Studio is a universal program that is perfect for recovering a hard drive after formatting, as well as for recovering damaged partitions. It works with a huge number of file systems and is one of the most effective programs for recovering lost data. Also, its advantages include an intuitive interface. But the main minus, R-Studio, just like the HDD Regenerator, is a paid product license.


The program compares favorably with other analogues due to the interface in the style of Windows Explorer, which allows its users to easily and quickly deal with the problem. Also, Starus Partition Recovery has the ability to view files before restoring them and has a built-in Hex editor, which will come in handy for experienced users. The price of such convenience is 2,399 rubles - which is the main disadvantage of the program.

Acronis disk director


Another paid, but very convenient and effective program for recovering a hard disk after damage. It has extensive functionality and allows the user to do with hard drive  everything he wants from recovery corrupted information  before optimization. Fast, powerful, paid.


Free program for diagnosing and restoring hard disk partitions. Its main task is low-level testing of the HDD and evaluating its performance. Its main disadvantages are that the program is no longer supported by the developer and has a complex interface, which will be difficult for an inexperienced user to cope with.

With most of the programs reviewed, you can easily manage hard sections  drive, recover lost and deleted data, as well as diagnose HDD operation. Unfortunately, almost all of them are paid, but have trial versions or demo modes. Therefore, you can try and evaluate the work of all programs and choose the one that you like the most.

HDDRegenerator is an easy-to-use program that allows you to recover bad sectors hard drives  through a special magnetization reversal algorithm. According to the developers, about 60% of damaged hard drives can be recovered. The program scans disks at the physical level, so it can work with any file system (NTFS, FAT, etc.) and, in addition, with unformatted disks.


HDD Regenerator free download:

Size: 8 MB | Downloaded: 41 times | File Type: zip | Version: 08/14/17

  Key features

  • Support for the most popular file systems;
  • Scan the hard disk for errors;
  • Information about the temperature of hard drives;
  • Display information about hard drives;
  • Recovery of bad sectors.

  Pros and cons

  • High power program;
  • Intuitive interface;
  • Hard recovery  drives without data loss;
  • The ability to download the program for free;
  • Real-time drive monitoring.
  • The free version has limited functionality;
  • The program is in English.

The hard drive on the computer is one of the most important details, because it is on it that the bulk of the information is stored. Therefore to hard choice  disk to the computer should be treated responsibly. How to choose hDD  learn on the computer from this. Nevertheless, no matter how good the hard drive was, once the hard drive can fail. With a similar problem, you can immediately contact the service center, where specialists will be engaged in resuscitation of your hard drive. However, there is another way out - namely, to use special utilities that are designed to repair and restore the hard drive. We will consider some of these programs in more detail.

The program for repairing the hard drive MHDD

It is quite difficult to say which program to repair a hard disk is better. Each utility has its own characteristics and is designed for a specific case. For example, let's look at MHDD, which is free and quite functional.


The program allows you to diagnose problems that have occurred with the hard drive. In addition, it has support for S.M.A.R.T technology and can resize HDDs. Using the program, you can run hard scan  drive. Its result will be presented by detailed statistics and a description of the sectors. In case they are found bad sectors, then the REMAP function is launched, which will allow them to be hidden from use by the operating system.

In order to run the utility, you will need to write it to removable drive. Next, we set priority boot from the DVD drive in the BIOS. After that we load the program. The utility accesses directly the IDE or SATA controllers, so hard diagnosis  drive is possible even if the BIOS does not detect the device.

Dalas

Another one simple program  for hard drive repair - Dalas. This utility  works in the operating room windows system, versions 98 / ME / 2000 / XP. It does not require the installation of additional software.
  At the same time, the following functions are characteristic of Dalas:

  • S.M.A.R.T. system support,
  • Search for bad sectors,
  • Endurance testing of a hard disk in various working conditions,
  • Getting the most detailed report on the capabilities and parameters of the hard drive, etc.

Despite the fact that the program is relatively simple, inept actions can lead to failure of the hard drive. Therefore, before using it, it is recommended that you carefully read the instructions. Almost all versions of the utility are attached in Russian.

HDD Regenerator

HDD Regenerator is a unique program of its kind. Its functions include not only the diagnosis of bad sectors, but also their recovery. Learn more about restoring broken hard sectors  drive can. Similar utilities usually hide damaged areas from use by the operating system. This program almost always restores them. The developers used a method of special magnetization reversal of bad sectors.


In addition, it should be noted such a utility function as. The program can be run directly from operating system. The application scans the disk on a physical level. Accordingly, it can work even with unformatted disks.

The listed programs are far from all utilities that are used to diagnose and repair the hard drive. Choose the right utility based on your own knowledge and capabilities. So, some applications are easier to use, and are suitable even for beginners. Other programs are used mainly by professionals. Even if you first encountered hard repair  drive, you can try to work with some application. Try to choose a utility with a Russian interface to make it easier to use.

Naturally, accidental and intentional deletion of files destroys information previously recorded on hard drives that can be restored using special utilities. But you can also find cases of fast or full formatting of hard drives, when data is believed to be permanently deleted, not to mention damage to the hard drives themselves. What to do in this case? Here programs come to the rescue. For free, you can download mostly the simplest utilities. However, even they help, as they say, bring the disk to life. Consider the most popular utilities, including both free and paid ones.

How is the process of deleting files from the hard drive?

Before considering the main topic, we make a small digression into the theoretical part and see how information is deleted. In Windows-based systems, there are two ways: removal to the "Recycle Bin" and without it. In the first case, the files are simply moved to the area reserved on the hard drive, so restoring them from the "Recycle Bin" is easy.

In the second case, what happens is when the first character in the name changes to unreadable ($). If during the work in the clusters where such a file is located, the overwrite was not performed, information can also be restored.

The situation is worse with the fast or full formatting of disks and partitions, as well as with situations when the hard drive starts to “crumble” or is simply exposed physical damage. Many users mistakenly believe that it is impossible to restore files in this case, they say, only professional experts can do it. Nothing like this! If you use, for example, the same Seagate Barracuda, with which at one time there were many problems, such a process can be carried out by any, even untrained user. And it’s completely elementary.

Programs for recovering hard drives after formatting: can this be done?

In the case of fast formatting of the hard drive, the partition tables are overwritten, and with full formatting, the disk surface is also checked with the subsequent correction of bad sectors. At the same time, we are not talking about the factory at all.


This is precisely what allows many developers to create programs for recovering hard drives that, as it were, produce the reverse process. This gives the same recovery effect. But first things first.

The best hard drive recovery programs

As for the most famous utilities to date, a sample list may look like this:

  • Victoria HDD;
  • R.Saver and R-Studio;
  • HDD Regenerator;
  • Acronis Recovery Expert  and Active Partition Recovery Pro;
  • Hetman Partition Recovery;
  • Zero Assumption Recovery.

Naturally, a complete list is impossible, since today there are hundreds of such software products. But let us dwell on the above utilities in more detail.

Victoria HDD

If we consider the most popular programs for recovering hard disks and disk partitions, of course, the leadership belongs to one of the most powerful utilities of our time called Victoria HDD, the developer of which is Sergei Kazansky.


The program has five levels of hard drive testing, it is able to identify and display bad areas, eliminate errors, plot surface conditions, measure performance, etc. Operating modes also look interesting. The application can be run in a regular graphical shell, or you can use a somewhat unusual DOS mode. By the way, it is with such a check that the most powerful effect is achieved.

R.Saver and R-Studio

These two programs for recovering hard drives from a flash drive work just fine and are very similar to each other. They can even be used as portable versions.


The main advantage of these utilities is that they support almost all file systems known today and are capable of recovering data on any type of media, including even formatted or damaged cards  memory.

HDD Regenerator

This utility among all programs is relatively new. It is designed specifically to restore bad sectors and, as the developers themselves say, even to reanimate the surface of the hard drive.


It uses the latest technology of the so-called magnetization reversal, which allows you to completely restore the hard drive and the information that was recorded on it earlier. It works, however, only in the DOS mode, which many cause some bewilderment. In addition, the technology itself seems almost unrealistic, because some do not imagine how it is possible to remagnetize the surface in a programmatic way. Nevertheless, everyone who came across it expresses admiration only - the application is able to reanimate even completely "dead" disks.

Acronis Recovery Expert and Active Partition Recovery Pro

Before us are two representatives of the family of utilities for HDD recovery. The peculiarity of these applications is that they support a large number of  file systems and hard drives.


In addition, they have a creation mode. bootable mediawith which you can fix many problems if the start of the operating system from a problematic hard drive is impossible.

True, the first utility is paid, the second - no. But the second application is also interesting in that it can be run both from under DOS and from under Windows.

Hetman partition recovery

Another utility for recovering disks, USB drives or memory cards and the information stored on them is interesting in that it can work with all types of virtual partitions. It goes without saying that data can be restored even after full formatting.


But the most important thing is that the program can work both in manual mode and in the “Wizard” mode, which allows any user to apply automation of the entire recovery process.

Zero Assumption Recovery

Finally, another small and fairly simple application, abbreviated as ZAR. This program is primarily for FAT and NTFS, although it can also be used for Linux. For users of Windows-systems, it is perfect.


But here it is worth considering that in this case we are talking exclusively about information recovery (even from bad sectors). In this case, the program on the hard disk itself does not make any corrections after analysis.

Conclusion

Of course, only the most basic programs for recovering hard drives were considered here. When choosing a program, you should be guided by the situation itself, that is, choose which operation should be applied (information recovery or troubleshooting on the hard drive itself), and only then make a decision about using this or that utility.

Before restoring a hard drive, make sure that there is no important information on it. For example, consider WD or Seagate devices. If there are surface defects on them, even reading the data often affects their performance, therefore folders and files after restoration are often inaccessible. To save data, it is first customary to make a sector-by-sector image of the HDD with a special program.

It is better to launch applications for troubleshooting from another computer, connecting the damaged hard drive as a backup or boot from the recovery flash drive.

We work with HDDScan

A modern hard drive is a very reliable device, so if there was no crash, the probability that the disk is physically damaged is extremely small. Diagnostic utilities, checking the hard drive, take for bad blocks  sectors with an incorrectly written checksum. This often happens due to a power failure at the time of recording to the HDD, Seagate USB drive, WD, etc., or in general due to poor quality power supply. But this can be treated even though the drive behaves like a dead one. Run HDDScan first in test mode to determine the number of bad sectors:

The wait will probably be long - small 250 gigabyte WD USB drives, Seagate will be tested for about 45 minutes. Scanning progress can be observed in the Test Manager window if you double-click to open RD-Read.

At the end of testing, you can see all the bad sectors found on the HDD of the computer. They are marked in red and blue. If there are any, most likely their logical structure and they can be cured at home.

We repeat that the process will be accompanied by a complete erasure of all information from Seagate. Therefore, if you have not yet saved important data to external storage  USB, it's time to start doing this so that no new deleted data appears on the device.

A sector with such defects cannot be read and can only be restored by forcibly writing zeros. This is possible in Erase mode. HDDScan completely fills the Seagate drive sector by sector with zeros, reads the information and compares it with the checksum. If after this there are no errors when accessing the bad sector, then WD restores its working capacity and the system will again be able to fully use it if all the deleted data is then written to the drive. This mode starts in exactly the same way:

  1. The Suface Test window opens;
  2. The Erase method is selected;
  3. Scanning is started with the Add Test button.

After this, it is highly likely that all logical sectors on the device can be cured of reading errors at home, and it will be safe to store information folders on the device without fear. Physically damaged as a result of the fall, no program can fix it.

We use the advanced features of Victoria

Many believe that this free application is the best utility for resuscitation HDD WD and Seagate, which appeared on the remote sector. Therefore, it is worthwhile to figure out how to conduct the process of recovering a hard drive using Victoria. It can be run from under Windows, but in this case, the probability of successful treatment of bad sectors is greatly reduced.

This mode is more suitable for testing a hard drive.. But if you run Victoria from a bootable USB flash drive or disk, then she is likely to be able to restore or extend her life even completely killed Seagate HDD. In addition, the flash drive is very convenient for working with a laptop, if due to bad sectors it stopped loading.

The program for Windows and for installation on a USB stick is downloaded on the developer's site. An ISO image on a USB flash drive can be deployed using the UltraISO utility.

Testing Winchester with Victoria

Before proceeding with the restoration of bad sectors, it is better to test the HDD WD or Seagate directly from under Windows, especially since Victoria spends seconds on this:



There are several important lines:

  • Reallocated Sector Count - shows the number of reassigned bad sectors to reserve;
  • Current Pending Sector - displays the number of unstable sectors that may soon become bad blocks;
  • Offline scan UNC sectors - current number of bad blocks.

Opposite these lines are attributes, the meaning of which is very important to understand:

  • val - parameter value at the current moment (should be as high as possible);
  • wrst - the lowest value for val all the time using the HDD;
  • tresh - critical value of val, which on a healthy WD should be much less than the current;
  • raw - in most cases, the real value of the value, on the basis of which Value is calculated, should have the smallest possible value.

Indicators that indicate the poor condition of the WD drive are highlighted in red. After the Get SMART button, there is an indicator that allows you to make a conclusion about whether the disk is suitable after a fall for further operation or not and whether it is worth returning deleted data to it. To do this, a Good or Bad message is displayed on it with green and red indicators, respectively.

You can duplicate the test results and verify their correctness using another free CrystalDiskInfo utility, the interface and results of which are displayed in Russian. Next, you can proceed to the treatment procedure.

How to fix bad sectors with Victoria

The WD and Seagate hard drive recovery application works most effectively in DOS mode, so it is best to boot the device from a pre-created bootable flash drive with this program.

Before this, do not forget to change accordingly bIOS configuration, or use the boot menu of the laptop to select the flash drive as the boot device.

Thereafter:

  1. A program is loaded from a flash drive, for which, in the start window, select Victoria Russian for Desktop;
  2. In the main program window, select desired driveby pressing the Latin P and moving the keys "up and down";
  3. Confirm hDD selection  Enter key
  4. Enter the number of the hard disk (in the program it is called the channel number).

Press F4 to set the scan settings:



All that remains is to start the process by selecting Change end of test and pressing Enter. If the bad sectors of your HDD WD are logical and not physical in nature, then they can be fixed at home by the program. How much does this work in the service center depend on how damaged the hard drive. In our case, we restored it with our own hands, but it is no longer worth using this hard drive to install the operating system. Keep on it folders with reserved data, or with those that are not a pity to lose.