Installing the application is a piece of cake. The
only thing that you must remember is not to install GetDataBack on the
drive you want to recover. It is recommended that you perform the
installation on another computer (problem-free) and attach the "sick"
drive as a slave. If you do not have the possibility of attaching the
drive to another computer (e.g. hard drive of a laptop) you can run
GetDataBack from a WinPE boot CD-ROM or install it on the healthy drive.
A very important aspect in recovering your files with GetDataBack is not to write more files on the drive you are attempting to rescue. After you lose data, the OS sees the space previously occupied by your files as free and can overwrite the lost files.
The interface is user-friendly so you won't have to bother with deciphering the terminology. After installing the software, there are three easy steps you have to make (the hard work will be done by the software).
First of all you have to acknowledge you made a mistake. Just kidding. Here you have to specify the data loss scenario, i.e. Choose from the four options you have: Systematic file system damage (format or fdisk), Sustained file system damage (you have installed a new operating system), Recovering deleted files and the default settings (use this if you do not know what happened).
That was providing the software with the task it has to accomplish. Next, the application will scan the system for drives. After finding the drives, you have to select the drive you want to recover. If you are an expert and do not want to lose too much time with the software's scanning for the data on the selected drive, you can always select scanning only a part of the drive. But in this case you have to have some knowledge on sectors.
In the Options menu>Recovery you can make the settings for bad sector strategy (skip block or retry each sector), deleted file recovery (allow duplicate file names) and file system identification. I only mentioned the most important options. In the Environment menu (also in Options) you can define the path for the save directory and the temporary directory. This is useful after recovering the lost data.
After scanning the drive for files we proceed to step two, where GetDataBack will show you the file systems it has found (do not confuse this with the files on the drive). If there is more than one entry, choose the first one as it is by default the most accurate. I recommend checking Show recommended on the right bottom part of the window so that you won't be confused by the other entries.
Click Next for the third and final step. Now you can see all the files (including the recovered ones) GetDataBack has found on the drive. The screen is similar to Windows Explorer. In my case all the recovered files were at the bottom of the file tree.
The recovered files will be shown crossed by a line. That makes the difference between the files you have on the drive and those you have lost and are trying to recover. This way you'll spot the lost data easier.
The software comes equipped with a search tool in case you don't find the data you are looking for in the file tree. Recovering your deleted/lost files is easy: right-click on the directory you want to recover and click copy.
A little warning: do not copy the recovered data on the bad drive. Select another location to save them. And be sure the data is recoverable by testing some of the files. Try to open some small text files. If they open and show the expected content proceed to writing them on a healthy drive.
A very important aspect in recovering your files with GetDataBack is not to write more files on the drive you are attempting to rescue. After you lose data, the OS sees the space previously occupied by your files as free and can overwrite the lost files.
The interface is user-friendly so you won't have to bother with deciphering the terminology. After installing the software, there are three easy steps you have to make (the hard work will be done by the software).
First of all you have to acknowledge you made a mistake. Just kidding. Here you have to specify the data loss scenario, i.e. Choose from the four options you have: Systematic file system damage (format or fdisk), Sustained file system damage (you have installed a new operating system), Recovering deleted files and the default settings (use this if you do not know what happened).
That was providing the software with the task it has to accomplish. Next, the application will scan the system for drives. After finding the drives, you have to select the drive you want to recover. If you are an expert and do not want to lose too much time with the software's scanning for the data on the selected drive, you can always select scanning only a part of the drive. But in this case you have to have some knowledge on sectors.
In the Options menu>Recovery you can make the settings for bad sector strategy (skip block or retry each sector), deleted file recovery (allow duplicate file names) and file system identification. I only mentioned the most important options. In the Environment menu (also in Options) you can define the path for the save directory and the temporary directory. This is useful after recovering the lost data.
After scanning the drive for files we proceed to step two, where GetDataBack will show you the file systems it has found (do not confuse this with the files on the drive). If there is more than one entry, choose the first one as it is by default the most accurate. I recommend checking Show recommended on the right bottom part of the window so that you won't be confused by the other entries.
Click Next for the third and final step. Now you can see all the files (including the recovered ones) GetDataBack has found on the drive. The screen is similar to Windows Explorer. In my case all the recovered files were at the bottom of the file tree.
The recovered files will be shown crossed by a line. That makes the difference between the files you have on the drive and those you have lost and are trying to recover. This way you'll spot the lost data easier.
The software comes equipped with a search tool in case you don't find the data you are looking for in the file tree. Recovering your deleted/lost files is easy: right-click on the directory you want to recover and click copy.
A little warning: do not copy the recovered data on the bad drive. Select another location to save them. And be sure the data is recoverable by testing some of the files. Try to open some small text files. If they open and show the expected content proceed to writing them on a healthy drive.
