I know it was mentioned here previously, but my search skills fail me today. Im not looking for something to do magic, just something that works relatively well NTFS and all that.
I've only used OnTrack's Easy Recovery Pro before, but it seems like a pretty powerful recovery tool. They also offer hardware recovery services should you really need to recover data that the software won't do.
Always in my mind; WinHex. That program is absolutely astounding and allows you to do things that really are magnificent!
My personal favourite: DriveSnapshot Tiny, little ~250k .EXE but does all it needs, create images, restore images, mount images as virt. drive and works with all recent Windows versions. Also can do it's job while the OS in running (i.e. dump the OS partition from the OS running). // EDIT Default is a GUI like one knows from Win' apps, but can also be used in batch files, controlled by cmdline params.
Well, I thought we were talking file recovery software. If we are talking disk imaging, then I'd go with Clonezilla. It's based on open source software and works great with everything.
"Now, I wonder if there's an app that can restore data from stuff like deleted partitions?" Plenty. Winhex can, using a file-header search of the whole drive.
Personal preference. What's better out of ***********, ibuprofen and aspirin? They all do (or don't do!) the same thing - if one worked and the others didn't, only that would be sold. It's totally down to the individual. I use the active@ range, don't much like Easy Recovery. That said, I've tried several and they all basically do the same thing.
SystemRescueCD is the best solution in term of free software, variety of tools, performances. Couldn't get better results even with commercial tools. The only counterpart is that you will need to learn a bit of linux way of working + a second workstation for intenet google help while recovering data. ddrescue command rules
