Recovering Deleted Data - Testing
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My goal was to run each program through tests from simply deleting the files all the way to Department of Defense level formatting. The first test involved simply deleting the files; if the software passed that, I would overwrite half the data and see what I could recover. After that I rewrote all the data I was trying to recover. If the program passed that test, the next step involved formatting the drive.
But wait, there's more. For the programs that could still recover data after I formatted the drive, I challenged them next by writing 0s to the entire drive. If any programs could recover data at that level, I would delete the files in the same way as the Department of Defense. The files I'm trying to recover consist of MP3s, pictures, videos, and text documents. I feel that these types of files are the ones that need recovering most often. Now it is time to see how well these programs performed.
The first test was simply deleting the file, realizing that you still needed it and then trying to recover it. I have good news for you: every program tested was easily and quickly able to recover the data at this level. It was almost as if the data was never deleted.
The next test involved filling the hard drive up half way with new data. I was able to recover most of the data with all the programs. The only file I could not recover was a video file which made up about half of the hard drive space. I'm guessing that this part of the disk was rewritten.
I filled the drive completely for my next test. This made most of the files unrecoverable. I was able to recover a few files with Recover My Files, a few MP3 files and a couple of documents. None of the freeware programs were able to retrieve any data.
Next I formatted the drive and tried to recover data. None of the freeware programs could save a thing; PC Inspector Recovery did manage to see some files, but was unable to recover them. Recover My Files did successfully recover all but the big video file.
Finally I tried rewriting the whole disk with 0s. None of the programs tested could recover anything. I didn't bother to try the DoD level since it would achieve the same results.
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