YoungDaniel
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Cheaper of free alternatives to stellar phoenix ntfs?
I have 2 hard drives that are not working properly. One is listed as unformated, the other is not initiated. I downloaded the shareware version of stellar phoenix ntfs and it has found all my information on the drives. I'm not in a position to spend the $100 right now though and was hoping someone could recomend an alternative that works the same way but for less money. Thank you in advance.
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Hello,
I got the same problem with 'RAW convertion' (that is what silly XP says) when upgrading my daughter's PC from Win2k Pro SP4 to XP Pro SP2. Upgrading I write: should not that give a better system? The two external HDs (one 160 GB LaCie Ferrari with USB2, and one 200 GB Western Digital with firewire) that both worked well before the upgrade (I did a clean one) suddenly got file system errors. I tried to fix it with the ordinary tool (chkdsk /f /r) but just landed in the frustrating 'Format ?' and 'RAW' messages. And no other computer could read the externals anymore. One of the disks had media files on it that I really wanted to save.
Among four tested programs for file recovery from the web, I found only one being able to manage perfect file restoration after the "RAW crash" (Windows called it error free in the disk management tool, PT and MBR were also found ok but MFT was damaged according to chkdsk that could not fix the disk then):
* Magic Recovery Professional at www.software-recovery.com *
Two of them, PC Inspector (freeware) and Recover My files in no way did all the work I needed. Why I do not know, I am just considering time effort and output, and the special problem I had myself. Stellar Phoenix NTFS File Recovery Software did better but did not show the content of saveable files in the straight Explorer way and also listed some older Windows OS stuff (the HD was earlier a system disk before being used as an external HD). When recovering my files, they got very reduced in size and were not readable. I complained and they sent me some new program files to overwrite the old ones. Then the recovered files were kept correct in size and worked but I did no longer see many of the files earlier seen and could not recover them. Besides, all these programmes needed many hours for reading the disk. MagicRecovery did that instantly.
MagicRecovery costs 130 USD but was really worth it (it can be used again). It can manage many kinds of file restorations. It took no time at all to read the disk content (102 GB of media files), showing the files exactly like Explorer did when the disk was working before the crash. Saving the content to my own PC took the same time as copying files in all other cases. All files were fully restored and can be used as earlier without any problems! I really recommend this program to all other users, since the others only got halfway through with and thus were useless (on top demanding 3 hours or more of reading from the HD etc. etc.).
Considering the above described and far from perfect performance of Stellar Phoenix, with the same costly price as MagicRecovery, I cannot recommend anyone to buy it. Stellar also has an inconvenient registration checking function, meaning that you will have to contact them to get the program working after new or reinstallations and backup recoveries. Moreover, with such a strict licencing policy, a program can only be used in one computer which is not affordable for a private user having a lot of programs and one or more other computers as well. At least not when the prices reach the 100 USD level.
Best regards
Staffan
A Swedish computer freak
I got the same problem with 'RAW convertion' (that is what silly XP says) when upgrading my daughter's PC from Win2k Pro SP4 to XP Pro SP2. Upgrading I write: should not that give a better system? The two external HDs (one 160 GB LaCie Ferrari with USB2, and one 200 GB Western Digital with firewire) that both worked well before the upgrade (I did a clean one) suddenly got file system errors. I tried to fix it with the ordinary tool (chkdsk /f /r) but just landed in the frustrating 'Format ?' and 'RAW' messages. And no other computer could read the externals anymore. One of the disks had media files on it that I really wanted to save.
Among four tested programs for file recovery from the web, I found only one being able to manage perfect file restoration after the "RAW crash" (Windows called it error free in the disk management tool, PT and MBR were also found ok but MFT was damaged according to chkdsk that could not fix the disk then):
* Magic Recovery Professional at www.software-recovery.com *
Two of them, PC Inspector (freeware) and Recover My files in no way did all the work I needed. Why I do not know, I am just considering time effort and output, and the special problem I had myself. Stellar Phoenix NTFS File Recovery Software did better but did not show the content of saveable files in the straight Explorer way and also listed some older Windows OS stuff (the HD was earlier a system disk before being used as an external HD). When recovering my files, they got very reduced in size and were not readable. I complained and they sent me some new program files to overwrite the old ones. Then the recovered files were kept correct in size and worked but I did no longer see many of the files earlier seen and could not recover them. Besides, all these programmes needed many hours for reading the disk. MagicRecovery did that instantly.
MagicRecovery costs 130 USD but was really worth it (it can be used again). It can manage many kinds of file restorations. It took no time at all to read the disk content (102 GB of media files), showing the files exactly like Explorer did when the disk was working before the crash. Saving the content to my own PC took the same time as copying files in all other cases. All files were fully restored and can be used as earlier without any problems! I really recommend this program to all other users, since the others only got halfway through with and thus were useless (on top demanding 3 hours or more of reading from the HD etc. etc.).
Considering the above described and far from perfect performance of Stellar Phoenix, with the same costly price as MagicRecovery, I cannot recommend anyone to buy it. Stellar also has an inconvenient registration checking function, meaning that you will have to contact them to get the program working after new or reinstallations and backup recoveries. Moreover, with such a strict licencing policy, a program can only be used in one computer which is not affordable for a private user having a lot of programs and one or more other computers as well. At least not when the prices reach the 100 USD level.
Best regards
Staffan
A Swedish computer freak
YoungDaniel,
No comment has been added to this question in more than 21 days, so it is now classified as abandoned..
I will leave the following recommendation for this question in the Cleanup topic area:
Accept: Tolomir
Any objections should be posted here in the next 4 days. After that time, the question will be closed.
Rindi
EE Cleanup Volunteer
No comment has been added to this question in more than 21 days, so it is now classified as abandoned..
I will leave the following recommendation for this question in the Cleanup topic area:
Accept: Tolomir
Any objections should be posted here in the next 4 days. After that time, the question will be closed.
Rindi
EE Cleanup Volunteer
http://www.handyarchive.com/free/recovery/ recovery soft
http://www.winternals.com/products/recoverymanager/requesteval.asp recovery CD
http://www.fdepot.com/recovery.asp