ADRC Data Recovery Tools

5.0 stars

"The five stars is for the pay version of the program, not the free edition"

April 17, 2008  |   By Havistus

Version: ADRC Data Recovery Tools 1

Pros

The plus version of the program is exceptional and EXTEMELY cheap. I was surprised by the efficeincy, speed, interface, and all around operability of the program. I lost 17 Gigs of music, and through trial and error, as well as trying out different programs stumbled upon this program... I tried it to no avail (the free edition). I promptly paid my $6.00 or so and upgraded to the ADRC plus.

Had I not accidently corrupted a greater portion of my deleted data through negligence and ignorance, I would have completely retrieved every last little byte!! A note of caution that I overlooked, when you go to undelete stuff make sure you have a folder elsewhere than the target of the search, it creates a new folder where ever you specify (also I'd advise using another drive for the install and data recovery just to ensure success).

Also, the plus edition has a small file size for quicker download speed, and is well worth the money invested, especially since more expensive programs I've tried failed to find everything/anything. ADRC plus finds EVERYTHING that is retrievable, it also helps maintain the filepath's established if you request it.

Cons

This is the free edition, not plus... although you can get the other program through a link on this app.

Don't waste your harddrive space with the free edition unless you understand the program completely. I downloaded the free program and couldn't do anything aside from save a data recovery log.

An annoyance for the plus edition is more of a generality than a glitch. When windows perm deletes something, it doesn't truly delete it. Instead it strips all file-paths associated with the data and "forgets" that it's there. Upon recovery a random and unique alphanumeric sequence is established with a random dot something designator at the end... that can lead windows to assume that the file is something else if the designator turns out to be a recognized program i.e. .xml, .dll so forth and so on. It can be a really arduous task reassigning 10k plus song files as either .mp3/.ra/.wma/.avi. That's what I had to do, but I do not know for certain if there is a way around it. Either way: 9/10ths of the files I retrieved and reassigned as .music formats played correctly and without errors. Although, if a file is corrupted, it's corrupted, and the plus edition of this program does little to help it out (of course I don't know of a program that can, though i imagine there has to be one).

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2.0 stars

"Easy to install and use. Did not recover failed NTFS partition."

April 6, 2007  |   By dctech777

Version: ADRC Data Recovery Tools 1

Pros

Easy to install and use.

Cons

Did not recover failed NTFS partition.

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4.0 stars

"This program saved us!"

December 2, 2006  |   By officegurl313

Version: ADRC Data Recovery Tools 1

Pros

This program help me bring back almost all my work pictures when the were accdently deleted. It saved me from having to go and try and recreate the photos.

Cons

Not all my pictures were readable after they were restored.

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5.0 stars

"Can't expect anything more for free!"

July 31, 2006  |   By ImpalaMan

Version: ADRC Data Recovery Tools 1

Pros

It works. The only thing I have officially tried it on at the time of this review was a Sony digital camera. It uses Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo. 28 pictures and 2 MPEG videos were accidentally deleted. I don't have a card reader, I just had the USB cable connecting the PC to the camera. Having the camera set to emulate a Mass Storage device when plugged into a PC, I used this Freeware Program to check for deleted files, and it recovered 27 of the 28 pictures without flaws, and both MPEG videos without flaws. The only reason the 1 picture was unrecoverable was probalby because the data was already overwritten. I have not yet tried to use it on an NTFS file system, FAT32, or FAT12 file system. I beleive the digital camera used FAT16, which is all I have tested it on. Also, it is a standalone EXE file, and is only 128KB...small enough to carry even on a floppy disk, or transfer over extremely slow networks, even though the license states that you should not be distributed. But I suppose it's okay if you are just emailing it to yourself or putting on a floppy disk to use on your other computer that has no internet connection available.

Cons

Very limited help. When you launch the program, it automatically launches a browser instance to their website, directly to page with instructions for use and breif description of different functions. Clicking Help>Help on the menu system launches the same thing, there is no internal help that I could find. Also be sure to read the license (another browser launch), Help>License.

The user interface is slightly confusing. The Tools menu should probably have each item with a radio button, or should have arranged the UI using tabs instead. But it's not hard to figure out. I reccomend if at all possible to practice using it on another computer before attempting to recover any data, just to be sure you know how to use it correctly.

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