iCare Data Recovery Pro-24hour Giveaway

iCare have a 24 hour promo for their excellent data recovery utility.

I've used this software numerous times to good effect.

http://www.icare-recovery.com/data-recovery-professional.html

 

Has anyone used this program who would like to comment on it? Any reviews?

thanks

 

I just cleaned 'securely' a flash drive. Icare found everything.

 

Thats not possible! From cleaning securely I assume you overwrote each sector at least once? iCare or any other recovery software should not be able to recover files after that.

 

I think your right too. I just changed cleaners. And will erase the flash drive again and see what happens this time.

 

oh-oh. Downloaded Eraser. Cleaned the flash drive with Gutman 35 passes.

Ran iCare and all the files were again recovered. So is iCare Recovery excellent or are secure-delete software programs BS?

Nominate another cleaner and I'll test again.

 

I missed it.

 

You raised a valid point. I have never actually checked whether the securely delete program I was using was actually securely deleting the files or not. So, I just ran a test on my usb drive by copying a folder with 2 word docs and a pdf file and then securely deleting with BCWipe, set to "one random pass only". Then I used iCare on it, using both "Advanced File recovery" and "Deep scan recovery" options. iCare could not even find the name of the folder let alone recover or display any files in it. So, BCWipe does work as advertised. Why don't you trial it and see whether it works for you or not.

I was however quite impressed with iCare. It could not recover the securely deleted folder but it did find a lot of other files that I had simply deleted from the usb flash drive previously. The one or two files I recovered for testing could not open properly, one was a video clip and one was a pdf. However I was amazed that both were listed correctly with correct extensions and file sizes even though it had been a month since I deleted them and I have used the usb drive extensively since then. I will keep iCare for emergencies.

 

O.K. I was concerned that maybe using a FAT32 flash was the problem. So grabbed an old 80Gb HDD and plugged it in as testing HDD. I formatted it then scrubbed it with free Eraser 6.0.9.

What a useless tool Eraser is. Everything was recovered.

 

How many Passes did you use with Eraser?

 

Gutman - 35 passes. And the PC was groaning under the weight.

 

Did you check the content of the "recovered" files ?

 

I looked at my old photos. That was enough for me. I didn't explore further. I downloaded a trial of Evidence Eliminator. I'll let you know what happens.

 

That's strange, because on all PC where I tried, Eraser did fully erase beyond recovery. I'll check again !!

 

After secure eraser the recovery software should not be able to even display the file names.

Check by using the peter gutman method. There might be a bug in Eraser when using that particular method. I will probably check this tonight when I have time.

 

BTW, recent version of RECUVA propose to fully erase deleted files, maybe you could try that and see if the result is the same.

 

Easeus also has some recovery programs that get good reviews.

 

This looks like a thread that bears watching.

 

I d/loaded a trial of Evidence Eliminator & the files are gone. So I assume something must be wrong with eraser 6.0.9's gutman option. Maybe it doesn't like my XP v3 or something is amiss in my OS?

 

Anyone going to tell the folks that produce Eraser?

 

35 Passes? OMG!

 

Erasing USB key Drives

 

Ah-ha !!

Mr. Brian has solved the dilemma. USB flash drives are a different 'kettle of fish'.
For flash drives anyway.

http://bbs.heidi.ie/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1568

But this is just adding to my Wilders Syndrome malaise. Now I'm gonna have to sample encryption. Somewhere I haven't been before. There goes the weekend.

But that doesn't explain why the 80Gb HDD didn't clean. I will email them just in case they have the problem rather than just here in my PC.

 

I use encryption on several of my USB drives with TrueCrypt. Only took me a short while to get them up and running with encryption. If I can do it, anyone can...so don't worry about the weekend.

 

This makes sense, but when I tested BCWipe on my usb flash drive, it securely erased the particular folder in such a way that iCare could not even recover its name. So, how was this possible given that usb flash drives do not permit secure eraser as explained on the linked forum?