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File Recovery

Online Data Recovery Service

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User's Guide

An Efficient Data Recovery Tool

Active@ File Recovery is a powerful software utility, designed to restore accidentally deleted files and directories.

It allows you to recover files that have been deleted from the Recycle Bin, as well as those deleted after avoiding the Recycle Bin (e.g. Shift-Delete).

Active@ File Recovery can be installed on and run from a USB stick, so that the risk of overwriting your data is minimized.

Active@ File Recovery Professional is an enhanced version of Active@ File Recovery software that includes Active@ Partition Recovery for Windows that can detect and restore accidentally deleted partitions (volumes, drives) on Hard Disk Drives, external USB drives, and memory cards (SunDisk, MemoryStick, CompactFlash, etc...).

Active@ File Recovery will help you to restore data residing on hard drives or floppy drives formatted in any of the following file systems:

  • FAT12
  • FAT16
  • FAT32
  • NTFS
  • NTFS5
  • NTFS + EFS

What Happened to my Data?

When a file is written to a hard drive, two separate systems come into play:

  1. A record of the file is kept in the Root Table or Master File Table (MFT).
  2. Data is written to physical hard drive addresses. The physical addresses are labeled as 'occupied'. These addresses are called clusters.

When a file is deleted from a hard drive, the same two systems are notified:

  1. The file record in the Root Table or MFT indicates the file has been deleted.
  2. Clusters are labeled as 'unoccupied'. The data is not removed.

In the event of an accidental file deletion we strongly recommend that you perform the recovery operation as soon as possible. If any new files are written to the same drive, there is a chance that the file-writing process may allocate data to these clusters.

The free evaluation version has full functionality of all features with a limitation only on maximum size of the file being restored.

Important!

PROTECT THE DRIVE LOCATION WHERE YOU HAVE ACCIDENTALLY DELETED FILE.

Any program that writes data to the disk, even the installation of data recovery software can spoil your sensitive data.

DO NOT RECOVER DATA ONTO THE SAME DRIVE THAT YOU FOUND ERASED DATA!

While saving recovered data onto the same drive where sensitive data was located, you can spoil the process of recovering by overwriting table records for this and other deleted entries. It is better to save data onto another logical, removable, network or floppy drive.

IF YOU HAVE AN EXTRA HARD DRIVE, OR OTHER LOGICAL DRIVES THAT ARE BIG ENOUGH, CREATE A DISK IMAGE

A Disk Image is a single-file mirror copy of the contents of your logical drive. Backing up the contents of the whole drive - including deleted data - is a good safety precaution in case of failed recovery. Before you start recovering deleted files, create a Disk Image for this drive.

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