Lost Data? Regret Formatting a Drive? Easy Recovery Lite Can get your Files Back
Written: Jul 05 '04 (Updated Jul 27 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Ease of Use, Powerful
Cons: Only recovers 25 files per session
The Bottom Line: If your lost data is worth $90, Easy Recovery Lite is an "easy" option well worth trying.
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| nc10's Full Review: Ontrack EASY RECOVERY LITE (01RD70010001) |
Easy Recovery Lite is the entry level version in the Ontrack Data Recovery's line of software programs designed to recover deleted, damaged, or inaccessible data from PC's hard drives, floppy disks, flash memory media, and Jazz/Zip disks. Optical media (CD's and DVD's) are not supported. Ontrack lists the following features for Easy Recovery Lite (ERL):
- Recovers all types of lost, deleted or inaccessible files
- Repairs corrupted or damaged zip files or Word documents
- Recovers files from formatted disks
- Emergency boot disk option to recover data from systems that cannot boot
- Can recover files to FTP
- File filter options for quick scan or a full scan.
- Quick Undelete option
- User-friendly graphical interface for ease of use.
- Built in file viewer to "view" many types of files before recovery
Easy Recovery Lite offers almost all of the file recovery options available in more expensive Easy Recovery DataRecovery software, except that you are limited to recovery of only 25 files in any session. You can restart sessions to recover more files.
I acquired my copy of ERL from OnTrack's website as a 27 mb download, where it is available as a $90 download (though it was supplied at no charge for this review). A free trial version, to help determine if ERL will be able to recover your files, is also available. Installation on my PC was straightfoward, needing only to input my registration code. If you have lost the boot hard drive on your PC and want to use ERL, you'll need to install ERL on another PC with a floppy drive and create an ERL boot floppy to try to recover files from the failed or corrupted drive. OnTrack warns users on their website, in the help files, and generally whenever they get a chance that if you do need to recover data from a disk or drive, its critical that you do not write any more data to that drive, including not installing ERL to the drive. Ontrack recommends running ERL from a boot floppy instead. I installed ERL on two systems, a Dell 4550 running Windows XP, and an older home built system with an Athlon 750mhz cpu and Asus motherboard. No problems occurred during the installation on either system.
Using Easy Recovery Lite
Launching ERL brings up a very clean and intuitive interface. The "HOME" screen offers four main choices, Data Recovery, File Repair, Software Updates, and Crisis Center.
The Crisis Center links you to Ontrack advanced services for data recovery, available either over the internet or by sending in a damaged drive to their recovery facility. Software Updates links you to the Ontrack website to check for updates to the ERL sofware, worth doing to have access to the latest in file recovery technology. File Repair allows to repair corrupted Word or Zip files, and previews the repair tools available on another of OnTrack's products, EasyRecovery FileRepair, which can be used to repair and restore all types Microsoft Office files (Outlook, Excel, Access, Powerpoint and Word) and Zip files.
The key choice though, is Data Recovery. Here you are offered five choices, Standard Recovery, Deleted Recovery, Format Recovery, Raw Recovery, and Emergency Diskette. Each of the Recovery options is non desctructive, it reads your drive for data, but does not modify the suspect drive, patition, disk or other type of media.
Deleted Recovery - This option allows you a fairly quick way to look for deleted files on any drive, partition, flash memory card, etc. ERL offers a "quick" scan and a "thorough" scan for deleted files. You can also apply filters to your searches, and only look for .jpg or .avi files, for example. I deleted several large and small files from my hard drive, a floppy disk, and a compact flash card. In the case of the files on the hard disk, I held down the SHIFT key as I deleted the files, to make sure they were not "stored" in the recycle bin. ERL was able to successfully recover any recently deleted file I tried to restore. ERL was pretty quick in recovering deleted files, it required only a couple of minutes to perform a quick scan of my hard drive, and files were recovered in only a few seconds. ERL does request you to save/recover files to a different directory, of your choice. ERL also will likely find files, or at least traces of files, that were deleted several weeks or months ago on your system. I found the success rate for recovering these files to be mixed. The longer its been since you deleted a file, the degree of fragmentation on your disk, and how much other data has been written to the disk since the deletion all contribute to whether or not you'll be able to recover a file.
Formatted Recovery - I was quite impressed with this option. I reinstalled an old 13gb hard drive on my computer, as a slave to the main C: drive. This drive still containing the original operating system, program files, multimedia files, and other data. I then formatted the 13gb hard drive from Windows Explorer, by right clicking on the drive and selecting "Format". After formatting, no files are visible on the drive from Windows Explorer. ERL scanned the drive in about 10 minutes, and I was then able to restore any 25 files that I needed. If I wanted to restore more files, I could rescan and recover more files (or buy the more expensive version of this software which allows you to recover unlimited files).
I also tried recovering data from formatted floppy disks, but was unsuccessful in all attempts. ERL could find no traces of files to recover on either quick or full formatted floppy disks.
Standard Recovery - More powerful, though slower than the previously mentioned options, Standard Recovery opens with a Tree view of your drive struction (drives and partitions), and a "pie chart" view of the selected drive, showing the partitions, relative sizes, sector numbers, file type (FAT, NTFS, etc) and other data. In this mode, ERL requires about 13 minutes to scan a 40mb partition on my computer. This is the right option for recovering data from systems where random data corruption, virus damage, damage during unexpected shutdowns, or problems with the operating system have caused data loss or even the loss of the operating system or the inability to boot up a system. Once scanning is complete, ERL provides a directory view of the files and folders it has found, where you can check which files you want to recover. ERL might find hundreds or thousands of files to try to recover, depending on how a system was used. ERL will tell you the file's name, size, date, and condition (ie how likely it will be able to recover the file fully), and show a standard Explorer view of the directories and folders available.
Raw Recovery Mode - In this mode, ERL will, according to OnTrack, read all sectors on the disk sequentially, looking for file head signatures. The Raw Recovery tool will typically recover small files that are stored in one cluster and larger files that are stored in consecutive clusters. Raw Recovery mode is the last resort option for file recovery, according to OnTrack. However, I tested this mode on a compactflash card and was able to recover several jpg image files that were more than two years old that did not show up with any of the other methods.
Emergency Diskette - If your system won't boot or if you need to recover files from a system that does not yet have ERL installed on it, using an ERL boot disk to try to recover the files is recommended. Installing ERL on a system with damaged or deleted files could overwrite some of the hidden data you hope to recover. When you first install ERL, users should create a boot disk using this option. ERL then formats a disk, installs a version of Caldera DOS as well as a DOS version of the ERL software, which provides the same options as the windows version, and a similar "look and feel".
Support and Other Comments
The OnTrack website offers email support, FAQ's, "white paper" reports on data recovery, and of course, many more data recovery options, more powerful and more expensive. The ERL free trial allows you to look for missing files on your system without paying for the software, but you won't be able to recover the files without buying ERL. The program's built in help files are very good, and the user interface is terrific, walking you through each step with clear instructions. The user interface is so good you may never use the help files.
If your system has suffered some sort of damage that has resulted in a loss of data, or if you have deleted files that can't be recovered, or even if you've mistakenly formatted a hard drive, ERL should be tried before you give up on the data. It provides a variety of tools for recovering your data that you can easily use at home.
If you interested in some of the more powerful version of OnTrack's sofware, I've listed a few of those versions below. There are many more programs and services and much better descriptions on OnTrack's website, I encourage you to go there for more information.
Download Pricing for Ontrack software
EasyRecovery™ Lite 6.0 - Individual Edition $90
Do-it-yourself data recovery with added repair capabilities for Microsoft® Word and Zip files. Recover up to 25 files per recovery session. Use to perform recoveries on 5 drives.
EasyRecovery™ DataRecovery 6.0 - Standard Edition $199
Do-it-yourself data recovery with added repair capabilities for Microsoft® Word and Zip files. Use to perform recoveries on 20 drives.
EasyRecovery™ DataRecovery 6.0 - Business Edition $319
Do-it-yourself data recovery with added repair capabilities for Microsoft® Word and Zip files. Use to perform recoveries on 50 drives.
EasyRecovery FileRepair™ 6.0 - Standard Edition $339
Do-it-yourself file repair software (all types of MS Office files and zip files). Use to repair files on 20 drives.
EasyRecovery™ Professional 6.0 - Standard Edition $499
Licensed for business and corporate use to internally perform recoveries (File Repair+Data recovery) on 20 drives.
Web site:
http://www.ontrack.com/
Recommended:
Yes
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