How can the answer be improved?
I haven’t checked in on Puran Software in quite a while. Many of you know them from the excellent freeware program Puran Defrag.
I knew they were working on Puran Utilities but frankly I got sidetracked and forgot about it. Vishal is the software guy over there and he asked me to give his newest freeware utility a run through. It’s called Puran File Recovery. Home Page: Description: “Puran File Recovery can be used to recover deleted/lost files/partitions. Files can be recovered from formatted disks too. Almost everything that is detected as a drive by Windows can be scanned irrespective of its file system. Be it Hard Disks, Pen Drives, Memory Cards, Mobile Phones, CDs, DVDs, basically any storage medium.” Testing I’ve tested the following scenarios: Test 1 – Deleted files, emptied recycle bin, rebooted and searched for files.
Attempt recovery. Test 2- Deleted partition, created another partition over it, searched for files. Random Tests – See below.
Test 1 Basic test – Deleted files, emptied recycle bin, rebooted and searched for files. Attempt recovery. Search was blazing fast. Found and restored the specific files I was testing for. Found files I deleted months ago too! The user interface is straight forward. For basic file recovery: Select the drive press the Scan button when scan finishes select the files you want to recover and press the Recover button Choose a method, in this case I choose Just Recover choose a recovery location, preferably on another drive / partition.
All files recovered successfully. Test 2 Advanced test – Deleted partition, created another partition over it, searched for files. If you have used a file recovery program before, you know you need to RTFM.
If you haven’t used a file recovery program before then you really need to RTFM. Every file recovery program I’ve every used requires you to understand more than just pushing a button to go beyond a basic scan and recover. This test basically scanned the entire 1TB hard drive, bit-by-bit. This takes a long time.
All files recovered successfully. Random Tests I threw a couple of old hard drives into my last XP dinosaur. I have a pile of these PATA drives that have manufacture dates ranging from 2002-2006. Most have had the partitions deleted and recreated.
I was able to successfully scan these drives and recover files. In fact I’m going to scan every one of them, I’m just curious what’s on them! Closing Thoughts I’ve used other file recovery tools (both free and not) that weren’t up to the task. Puran File Recovery exceeded my expectations. You can or bundled with all the other excellent Puran freeware in.
Recommendation Puran File Recovery is a great file recovery program and one Cool Tool. I highly recommend it.