July 16, 2008 Archives

I created an ISO image this morning of a CD for a friend, burnt it and then deleted the ISO. However, it transpired that the CD wouldn't read and I couldn't extract the data back off it.

A quick browse of the internet and I discovered NTFS Undelete, a free and open source solution that allows you to recover deleted files. I downloaded it, ran it and told it I was looking for a deleted *.ISO file and it soon found the file I needed. A couple of clicks later and I had the ISO file back and could burn it again at a lower speed.

OfficeRecovery.com offer a similar free product called Free Undelete, that caters for FAT16 and FAT32 file systems alongside support for NTFS. I haven't tried it but it appears to offer very similar functionality to NTFS Undelete.

GetDataBack for NTFS and FAT, from Runtime Software, is another package that I have successfully used in the past to recover accidentally deleted data. Although, unlike the other two, this is not free software.