A Data Recovery Software

We were pro­vid­ed with the soft­ware EaseUS Data Recov­ery Wiz­ard, which allows us to test how well a data recov­ery works.

For the test, we cre­at­ed four dif­fer­ent sce­nar­ios that the soft­ware had to mas­ter. First, we test­ed an SD card for lost data, then an exter­nal USB hard dri­ve, a USB stick, and final­ly an unpar­ti­tioned SATA hard dri­ve.

A dam­aged hard disk was unfor­tu­nate­ly not avail­able to us for this test, so we can­not make a state­ment about how the soft­ware deals with disks in which sec­tors of the disk are dam­aged.

First Task: SD card

First a sim­ple task. A 16 GB SD card, which was used in var­i­ous dig­i­tal cam­eras. This card was for­mat­ted by the cam­era every time the cam­era was changed. Usu­al­ly, how­ev­er, in fast mode.

The scan of the 16 GB card took a good 30 min­utes and the Data Recov­ery Wiz­ard found a total of 677 files. The blue progress bar at the bot­tom of the screen indi­cates the esti­mat­ed remain­ing time.

The files found are dis­played in dif­fer­ent direc­to­ries. At the same time, they are sort­ed the­mat­i­cal­ly, so that tem­po­rary files and image files can be eas­i­ly dis­tin­guished from each oth­er. This shows that (as expect­ed) for­mat­ting an SD card does not delete all files, but still leaves frag­ments from the oth­er cam­era.

Now for the excit­ing ques­tion. Which file could be restored?

Now you sim­ply select the files you want to restore. If the soft­ware has doubts and found the infor­ma­tion incom­plete, it will issue a warn­ing.

If you ignore the warn­ing, the soft­ware tries to recov­er the data as best it can. In this case all pho­tos could be recov­ered. In our case the most pho­tos could be recov­ered com­plete­ly and loss­less.

Addition: delete secure

We have secure­ly delet­ed the remain­ing data via anoth­er addi­tion­al pro­gram. This is done by delet­ing the files at least sev­en times and over­writ­ing the stor­age loca­tion. As expect­ed, the soft­ware could not detect these files after a new scan, but it could detect the frag­ments of pre­vi­ous saves.

So the SD card was safe­ly for­mat­ted in a next step. Although the Data Recov­ery Wiz­ard still detect­ed 117 files with a total size of one megabyte, it was unable to recov­er any of them. In addi­tion, they were only tem­po­rary files. So it should be that secure­ly delet­ed and/or for­mat­ted media are also for a data recov­ery soft­ware a blank sheet.

Second task: external hard disk

The next test will be a lit­tle more chal­leng­ing. We checked an old­er exter­nal ter­abyte hard disk used as a back­up. Here, we had to find delet­ed data, because the disk is stored in the cab­i­net after quick for­mat­ting.

Now the first sur­prise, because the scan stopped and the disk could not be read. Even con­nect­ing it again did not help in this case. The mes­sage “Error when read­ing the recov­ery hard disk” was dis­played. The rec­om­mend­ed recon­nec­tion was also unsuc­cess­ful and we were always con­front­ed with the same error mes­sage.

The files found were dis­played, but not a sin­gle one could be recov­ered.

Second try

After the disk at the USB 3.0 ports was not rec­og­nized cor­rect­ly, we start­ed a new attempt at a USB 2.0 port. And sur­prise: sud­den­ly the scan worked. A total of 22,593 files were found, most of which could now be restored. Of course, we could only check this ran­dom­ly.

Third task: The old usb stick

Anoth­er clas­sic. Out of the jum­ble of USB sticks lying around, we grabbed a giga­byte stick that dates back to times when this was a big USB stick. The scan was done quite quick­ly and an amaz­ing num­ber of old­er files could be dis­cov­ered and restored.

Fourth task: The deleted partition of an internal hard disk

The fourth task was an old­er SATA disk, which we con­nect­ed to a USB port via a USB-SATA adapter. This was an old­er inter­nal disk on which we delet­ed the par­ti­tion.

In vol­ume man­age­ment, such a disk is dis­played as fol­lows. The par­ti­tion is not assigned, but was rec­og­nized by the oper­at­ing sys­tem. So if you acci­den­tal­ly delet­ed the par­ti­tion of a hard disk and lat­er find out that it was the wrong disk, you would be con­front­ed with such a sce­nario.

Adver­tise­ment

An unpar­ti­tioned hard disk is marked orange in the Data Recov­ery Wiz­ard scan win­dow. The scan took a rel­a­tive­ly short time. The scan was sup­posed to run overnight, but was already com­plet­ed after a good hour.

This hard disk con­tained a Win­dows oper­at­ing sys­tem which was used for data recov­ery in 2011. At that time the note­book of an friend had bro­ken and we had actu­al­ly been able to boot the note­book with an Ubun­tu Lin­ux. This allowed us to access the data and trans­fer it to this hard dri­ve.

It’s amaz­ing what data could be recov­ered. The soft­ware even found data from 2008. It was an old­er MP3 col­lec­tion that has been on anoth­er medi­um for a long time. But also many pho­tos and doc­u­ments could be restored.

Espe­cial­ly with this hard disk, the pos­si­bil­i­ty to dis­play the found doc­u­ments the­mat­i­cal­ly attract­ed our atten­tion. The pho­tos are sort­ed accord­ing to the cam­era man­u­fac­tur­ers and the doc­u­ments accord­ing to their for­mat. The music and video files are sort­ed by artist.

This is a very use­ful option if you don’t want to restore every­thing all the time, but want to search for spe­cif­ic data, such as the lost diplo­ma the­sis or the lost pho­to album.

Fazit

Any­one who deals a lit­tle with the stor­age of data will know that often not the data or stor­age loca­tions them­selves, but only the tables of con­tents of the data car­ri­ers are changed. There­fore, it is not sur­pris­ing that the data recov­ery soft­ware works very well with files that have been delet­ed by mis­take. The same applies to the delet­ed par­ti­tion, although it is amaz­ing how much data can still be recov­ered from such an old disk.

The soft­ware EaseUS Data Recov­ery Wiz­ard did quite well in our lit­tle test and only showed a weak­ness once. How­ev­er, we have not been able to con­front the soft­ware with phys­i­cal­ly defec­tive stor­age media, which is prob­a­bly the most dif­fi­cult thing for such data recov­ery soft­ware.

Nev­er­the­less, we were quite impressed with the per­for­mance. Just the abil­i­ty to save pho­tos from a mem­o­ry card that was acci­den­tal­ly for­mat­ted in a cam­era can be worth its weight in gold.

This soft­ware was pro­vid­ed to me by the man­u­fac­tur­er EaseUS for this test. The man­u­fac­tur­er had no influ­ence on the way the soft­ware was test­ed, nor on how this arti­cle was writ­ten. The scren­shots were all tak­en on your own com­put­er dur­ing the test phase. The links to Ama­zon are pro­vid­ed with so-called affil­i­ate links. This means that with a pur­chase via one of these links, I receive a small com­mis­sion from Ama­zon. This has no effect on the price.

Adver­tise­ment
The free­ware “EaseUS Data Recov­ery Wiz­ard Free” can be down­loaded from the manufacturer’s home­page. With this free­ware you can down­load data up to 500 MB with­out restric­tion and up to 2 GB with one restric­tion. The restric­tion is that you have to click on a share but­ton. Whether the soft­ware was then real­ly adver­tised on the social net­works will not be fol­lowed up.

The free­ware is free of adware and com­par­a­tive­ly secure against manip­u­la­tion, as it can only be down­loaded from the provider’s serv­er.

Cur­rent­ly, the Pro ver­sion with­out size lim­i­ta­tion and life­long updates costs 66.96 euros (oth­er­wise 84.95 euros).