95% effective recovery procedure for a system drive
This procedure allows a small amount of data to be written to the system drive. It is not as safe as the best procedure for a system drive. However, it takes much less work and can be conveniently followed by novice PC users. The procedure requires four steps as follows:
Step 1: Protect the source drive.
To stop data from being writen to the system drive, do the following:
- Immediately turn off Windows® Automatic Updates (in Control Panel) which may download large amount of data onto your computer.
- Stop using the computer for any activities other than running File Scavenger® to recover data. Stop all email and Internet browsing activities immediately as they may create many new files on the system drive.
- Stop all background programs such as instant messaging, backup, virus protection, local drive search engines, etc.
- Do not download or install any software on this computer including File Scavenger®.
- Disable all shared folders on this drive.
- Do not burn data to CD or DVD drives.
Step 2: Install File Scavenger®.
To avoid overwriting lost data do not download and install File Scavenger® directly on the computer holding the lost data. Use a second computer to download the program files from our web site and save them to a portable storage device such as a memory stick, floppy disk, CD or DVD. The files to download are:
Insert the device in the computer holding the lost data and use Windows Explorer to locate the program file filescav.exe. Double click on it to start File Scavenger.
If you do not have a second computer and must use the computer holding the lost data for downloading, some data will be written onto the system drive, thus slightly reducing the chances of a successful recovery. You can minimize the amount written by running File Scavenger® directly from our web site. Click Start, Run, and type the following command:
http://www.quetek.com/bin/filescav.exe
On Windows® Vista there is not a Run command but you can click Start and type the command in the Search box.
While using the program in this mode, no program help information is available.
Step 3: Purchase a license.
When recovering files from a system drive, avoid using the computer holding the lost data to purchase a license. (It is safe to do so when recovering files from a data drive.)
If you need a Professional-Use license, you can purchase a license in Step 2. Download and save the license file issued to you onto the portable storage device in the same folder as the program files.
For a Personal-Use license, run File Scavenger® on the computer holding lost data and click Help, Licenses, Personal-Use license to display the Registration Code. Then use the second computer to purchase a matching license key through the QueTek web site.
You can also use File Scavenger in demo mode to determine if data can be recovered. In demo mode you can recover files smaller than 64 kilobytes. You can also display a picture file (BMP, JPG, TIF, PNG, etc.) of any size in preview mode by right-clicking on in and click Preview.
Step 4: Search and Recover.
Select a drive to search. Select a disk number (such as Disk 1) if there is no drive letter or if the drive has been deleted, resized, unsuccessfully merged or otherwise lost.
A Quick Search usually works well for searching a deleted or mildly corrupt drive, recovering accidentally deleted files or and for reconstructing a broken RAID or spanned volume. Use a Long Search to recover a reformatted drive, a badly corrupted volume or when a Quick Search is not effective. A Quick Search takes a few minutes to complete compared to a Long Search which may take several minutes to a few hours.
Recovered data must be saved to a drive other than the one holding the lost data. If the computer only has one drive, use a shared network folder on another computer, memory stick or external USB drive. Generally data cannot be saved directly to a CD or DVD drive because they require a staging folder on the system drive.
If you must save recovered data back to the same drive, you are taking the risk of losing some or all of the lost data permanently with no chance of recovery. The risk depends on the size of the files and the amount of free disk space. For example, if the disk has 40 GB of free space and 2 MB of data is being saved, the risk is very low. But if you are saving 1 GB of data over 2 GB of free space, it is almost certain that much of the lost data will be overwritten, resulting in corrupted recovered files.
Step 5: Validate results.
Open recovered files in their respective program for validation. Do not dispose of or reformat the source disk before all data has been recovered and validated.
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