Freewar, open source recovery tools?

Hey, do you guys know of any good free recovery tools? I was working on a computer and it started to format the machine. If the stupid thing would have recognized that I had a USB drive in the machine, for data backup, in the first place, none of this would have happened. I tried to hit power button to stop it, but the partitions were allready damaged at that point, so it cann't be read logically, and there are no more options for data backup in the factory restore settings anymore. I tried Dr. Freeware. It recovers stuff for sure, but it only seems to recover absolutely everything that was ever on the drive, hence a long time babysitting, and digging through mountains of files to find pictures or music. I just don't have the drive space for every single file that's ever been on that machine. I need it to be more selective about what it recovers. Any ideas?

Ok,

Here is my advice......

Do you or a friend have another computer???

If so, load your harddrive into computer 2 as a data drive.

First run anti virus and anti spy programs then defrag it.

Ok, now ready for work......

I hear you don't have space for a complete copy.....

Ok, what files do yuou have that you need to keep, I mean files and not programs..for example:

Save Microsoft word documents, but not microsoft word program...see???
Save music files but not windows media player...
Save Video files, but not the player.......

Even with games, if you google it, you can find exactly where the games data base is and save it. When reloaded, you will be at same point in game.

I hope this starts to help your process.

If you have more questions, feel free to post them or u2u me.

reply to post by mrmonsoon


he could do that but he destroyed the partition so it won't read as a logial drive. sorry but your gonna have to sift through everything to get it back. please be more careful in the future and always keep an external hd to copy all of your files. always buy hard drives in TWO"S!

your very lucky to have ways to get it back in the old days it would cost you 3G's at a data recovery center.

You could give the sleuthkit a go... It's a browser based front end for autospy.

I've not actually got around to using it yet, I believe it's included on my copy of backtrack whing I keep on a flash drive on my keyring.

You can DL it separately - the front page of that site above does say it's available for windows?? But a quick look didn't come up with any link I could see...

Good luck