How to Use FILERECOVERY Data Recovery Software

Before you start

If you are trying to recover data from removable media, you need to have the media in the drive before running FILERECOVERY® – the best Data recovery software.

Before running the program, make sure that you have administrator privileges.

On PC, you may need to right-click the program icon and Run As Administrator. On Mac, you will need to make sure your account has full Administrator privileges.

If you are recovering from a mobile device, such as a smartphone or a personal music device, make sure that it is connected and showing as a removable disk device before you run FILERECOVERY®.

Make sure that there is a disk in your system, or connected to your system, that has enough space to save the recovered data found during the recovery.

If you need to add additional storage space to the system, make sure to do this before you run FILERECOVERY®.

Please turn off all unnecessary applications and peripherals on the system, and disable all power-saving settings before you run FILERECOVERY®.  If you are on a laptop or other portable computer, make sure you have enough battery life to complete the operation. Connect to AC power if necessary to avoid interruptions in the recovery process.

The User Interface

The wizard-driven interface of FILERECOVERY® makes data recovery easy even for novice computer users. From the start, the interface will help you choose each step in the recovery process. Once you have selected your options, you are given an opportunity to change them before starting the recovery scanning process. Below, we will describe each interface screen in detail

When you first start FILERECOVERY®, you click Continue, and the interface will help you choose each step in the recovery process

Choosing your Media: The first step in the recovery process is choosing the media that you are trying to recover data from. FILERECOVERY® has this broken out into five categories of media: Hard Drives, Memory Devices, Optical Media, Multimedia/Mobile Devices, and RAID Systems.

  • Hard Drive: Internal hard disks and other mass storage devices such as external attached hard drives, SSD drives etc. NOTE: The disk device must be visible in the disk management utility on the system.
  • Memory Device: Thumb drives or other removable flash memory media such as SD, CF, etc, connected via USB, Firewire, or other media reader device. NOTE: The device must show as a removable disk, or a reader for the removable media must be used.
  • Optical Media: Recovers data from optical media such as CDR/RW, DVDR/RW, etc. NOTE: The device must show as optical media on the system.
  • Multimedia/Mobile Device: Digital camera, MP3 player, smartphone etc. NOTE: The device must show as a removable disk, or a reader for the removable media must be used
  • RAID System: Hardware or software controlled RAID0 and RAID5 systems. You can also use this option to reconstruct broken RAID systems for recovering data. Click here for more on RAID Reconstruction.

Selecting the Disk or Volume to Scan: On this screen, you select a disk or a volume that you want to recover data from. If your volume is not available, select the disk that did contain your volume. If you chose a RAID System in Step 1, you may also have the option to try to reconstruct a broken RAID.

The window will display a list of all accessible drives – both logical drives and physical drives – in your system

  • Disk: If you do not have a volume showing on your system, you choose the disk where the volume used to be, and then you can scan for lost volumes.
  • Volume: If the volume is already showing on the system, you can select and scan the volume for recovering lost or deleted files or folders.
  • RAID: Hardware or software-controlled RAID0 and RAID5 systems. You can also use this option to reconstruct broken RAID systems for recovering data. Click here for more on RAID Reconstruction.

Choosing the Recovery Scenario: Once you have chosen the disk or volume that you are going to recover data from, you will need to choose what kind of recovery you want to perform on the drive. Choose a recovery scenario that best fits your data loss problem.

At the bottom of the screen is a details option where you can limit the scan to certain file systems or a RAW file scan. RAW file scans examine the drive and try to locate files by file content and architecture. In cases where there are no other options for file system scanning, this can still recover usable data.

Sometimes, there can be thousands of orphaned items in a scan. In some scans, they are not useful data for the user, as the data is already corrupted (overwritten files). To help the user to reduce the amount of data/find his files easier, there is a Quick Scan option which is deactivated by default. In detail the quickscan does the following:- In the Deleted File Recovery Scan: currently without function / added for future purposes
– In the Formatted Media Recovery: FAT/NTFS volumes, orphaned items will not be scanned/created
– In the Search Lost Volumes Scan: will search only on cylinder boundaries (on Windows machines). This is where missing volume information is most likely located. This speeds up the scan. If the volume cannot be found then unchecking this will scan block by block for volume information.

  • Explore Volume: Explore a good volume in an explorer-like interface. Choose this option to recover data from a good volume. No scanning is involved.
  • Deleted File Recovery: Find accidentally deleted files or lost files by file contents. Choose this option, if you have deleted files from your recycle bin or if the formatted recovery cannot find your files. It scans unused blocks of a volume for file contents. On most file systems, it cannot recover the original file names.
  • Formatted Media Recovery: Recovers data from a formatted volume. It can also be used to recover lost files. This option takes more time in scanning but has better chances of recovery. It scans each and every block of a volume for lost file system structures.
  • Formatted Media Recovery: Recovers data from a formatted volume. It can also be used to recover lost files. This option takes more time in scanning but has better chances of recovery. It scans each and every block of a volume for lost file system structures.
  • Wipe Data: Securely deletes individual files or folders on a good volume so that they cannot be recovered anymore. WARNING: This data will no longer be recoverable after wiping. Be absolutely certain that you wish to eliminate this data from the system. Click here for more on wiping your data.

If you chose a disk instead of a volume in Step 2, then you will not have the option to Browse, since you are not choosing a volume that is showing on the system. You will be given the option to search that disk for lost volumes. This would be good for recovering volumes from a drive that has damaged file systems or deleted volumes. Again, you are given the option so limit the file systems you are searching for. Because this is a search for lost volumes, there is no RAW file system scan available.

When the scan for lost volumes is finished, you will be back at Step 2, where you are asked to select the volume to scan. If the program was able to locate a lost volume, then it will be displayed with a green icon.

Choose this drive and proceed as you would on a normal volume. You will be able to browse the volume, look for deleted files, and look for lost files. Then you can save them to another location on your system.

Checking Your Selected Options: Once you have chosen the disk or volume that you are going to recover data from, and choose the recovery method you are going to use, you will be given a preview of your choices. If you need to make any changes before starting the scan, you can click Go Back and change options on the previous screens. If you are satisfied with the options that you have chosen, click Continue to begin the scan for your lost data.

Scanning: Depending on the size of your disk the scan process can take several hours! You can also choose to view the log messages in the scanning window if you need to do any troubleshooting of the scan.

Saving Your Files: When the scan is finished, the data that was found will be displayed in a list of files and folders. In the example, you see that the deleted file scan found many files and they are displayed by the type of file. In most cases, deleted file data will not have the original file names as this is not typically recoverable.
If you’re looking for files created by Microsoft Office 2007/2010, look under Applications in a folder named “zip-msword”, “zip-mspowerpoint”, or “zip-msexcel” because Office 2007/2010 documents are actually ZIP archives.To save the data, you would select the files on the right side of the screen and click the save icon in the tool bar. To select multiple files either use the Shift key (to select several files in succession) or the Ctrl key (to select individual files) of your keyboard. If you wish to select all items in the file list, choose Select all from Edit menu.

Note: Most actions for recovering can be accessed from the popup menu. This appears if you right-click a selected file or directory.

A typical save dialog will be displayed, and you will be able to save your files into existing folders or create new ones.

Choose or create and choose the folder where you wish to save the data and click OK.

NOTE: Do not save files back to the same disk you are scanning. Always save the data to another location!