DiskInternals Flash Recovery 2.6Free download Buy now

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DiskInternals Flash Recovery is the “first-aid” kit for every digital photographer. It recovers deleted photographs, corrupted and formatted memory cards. The interface is simple and easy-to-use even for a beginner PC user.

DiskInternals Flash Recovery 2.6
Author:DiskInternals Research
Language:English
Date:02/14/2006
Size:1367 kb
License:Demo
Price:$39.95
Platform:Win95
Win98
WinME
WinXP
WinNT 4.x
Windows2000
Windows2003
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Those dealing with personal computers have certainly experienced data loss at some point. Everything on this earth will sometime disappear – that’s a rule. Technical progress may evolve, but you can't stop the entropy and prevent the information tendency to chaos.

But don't worry – it's not as bad as it seems to be. Data recovery software exists, and it works perfectly in many cases! It’s the kind of software that can recover your lost documents, photographs and other data that seemed lost forever.

How is this even possible considering the ever-increasing world entropy? The point is that data is not actually erased when you press the “delete” button. It’s just marked as “deleted” so that the operating system can write new data on that space. Data recovery software uses, if used timely, can take the occasion to recover data marked as “deleted”. But there’s one important rule to follow: the least you access the disk that contains the deleted chunks, the higher are your chances to get your data back – safe and sound.

Reviewed today is a data recovery product called DiskInternals Flash Recovery. We’ll put it through our usual tests and see what it can do. The application reviewed was specially designed for recovering lost data from flash memory[?]. As the test have shown, it can cope quite well with hard drives, floppy disks, Zip disks, Jaz disks, microdrives, digital cameras, etc. However, the recovery of digital photos deleted from flash memory is the main purpose of this application.

Having your digital pictures accidentally deleted is easier than one might think. Turn off your camera or open battery compartment door while the camera is writing the pictures, and chances are that you’ll get a corrupted memory card. Your kid can delete all your photos or even format a flash card (even if the option is hidden deep in the menus, they’ll find it more easily than you do) - then DiskInternals Flash Recovery is exactly what you need!

The installer is small – just under 2 Mb. Installation is fast and easy. Start the program, and you’ll see the Recovery Wizard with a familiar Windows-style interface, telling all the things that this program can do and describing the recovery process.

On the next page of the Recovery Wizard you can choose the medium to recover photos from. If it is so bad that you cannot even see the medium listed there (e.g. it is not recognized or is inaccessible by Windows), then you’ll probably need a special tool from your Flash card manufacturer to restore the card (but, unfortunately, not the information there). But if you rule the physical damage out of the equation, you can choose the medium and go ahead.

From there on, pay close attention to the “Options” menu where you can set, err… options. A fresh setting here is an ability to chose between the quality and the speed of scanning your card – you can pick the “Fast” mode, that works, well, really fast, or the “Full” mode that means total scan of the entire drive, and that always finds all recoverable photos. From there you can also mount or create a Recovery Snapshot.

A Recovery Snapshot is a complete copy of your media that is stored in a file on your local hard disk. After you create a recovery snapshot you can experiment with recovering files as long as you want, trying different combinations of various options without risking to lose your data. After all, the actual data is not being modified, and you work with a copy stored in a recovery snapshot file. Creating a snapshot is fast, so fast that you can create a recovery snapshot from your card, clean the card and proceed with shooting photos in a matter of minutes, and spend the rest of your time restoring deleted photos from a snapshot.

Before recovering photos let the Recovery Wizard scan your memory card, so that it can find any pictures that are left in the memory of your storage device (it can be a real card or a virtual snapshot). The scanning process can last long depending on the volume of the storage medium. After the scanning process finishes, you’ll see images that can be recovered right away. It’s worth mentioning that DiskInternals Flash Recovery supports various RAW formats – Fuji’s .raf, Canon’s .crw, Nikon’s .nef, and many others. Furthermore, digital pictures in RAW format can be correctly displayed in a big preview window (even ACDSee 7 couldn’t view .nef files)

While reviewing the program, I performed a little test. I took some pictures, deleted them, shot some more, and deleted everything again, repeating the process several times. To my surprise, each and every digital picture was recoverable - even the oldest ones! Then I formatted the card and shot some more – and even after that I could recover the images that I shot before. The only thing that “helped” me really lose my digital pictures was the low-level format. Only after that DiskInternals Flash Recovery was at lost and couldn’t help it. This is not surprising because even a miracle couldn’t help here – all the information was erased and filled with zeroes.

A demo version of DiskInternals Flash Recovery allows viewing a photo to be recovered, but watermarks the preview with the “Unregistered Version” sign. If you can see a preview, you are sure to be able to recover the photo after you buy the product.

Well, here’s the summary of our semi-formal testing. The tested product can:

  • Recover Pictures deleted by accident
  • Recover Photos from the erased or formatted media
  • Preview recoverable images before purchasing the program
  • Restore Photos deleted from digital cameras.
  • Undelete Photos deleted from the Recycle Bin.
  • Create recovery snapshot files for logical drives.
  • Recovered files can be saved on any (including network) disks visible to the host operating system.

DiskInternals Flash Recovery supports most commonly used file systems (FAT12, FAT16, FAT32[?][?], NTFS[?][?]), can preview and recover JPEG, JPG, TIFF, BMP, PNG, GIF, TGA and other images (including various RAW formats), can create and read snapshots, but the main thing is – it can do all this just with a couple of mouse clicks and without any special recovery oriented knowledge or training! The interface is simple and easy-to-use even for a beginner PC user. The program recovers images from hard-drives, external drives, cameras and flash memory devices such as

  • SmartMedia
  • CompactFlash[?]
  • Memory Stick 
  • MicroDrive
  • xD Picture Card Flash Card
  • PC Card
  • Multimedia Card[?]
  • Secure Digital[?] Card
    and many others
The program costs only $39.95. It is a relatively low price for such kind of software. And it is worth it, especially if your photos represent some commercial value, not just memories. DiskInternals Flash Recovery is a recovery tool that every digital photographer should have handy. In conclusion, I wish that you never lose your data again! You’ll have an effective assistant that can help you, a “first aid kit” that comes to the rescue at the exact time when it’s needed.

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