[X4U] Disk Utilities Question (Prosoft software)

[Randy B.Singer]

John Richardson said:

>Data Rescue II seems to be their "disk recovery" product.
>
>Any comments, good or bad?


There are three products for OS X that can recover lost files:

VirtualLab 
http://www.binarybiz.com/vlab/mac.html 

FileSalvage 
http://www.subrosasoft.com

Data Rescue 
http://lookleap.com/prosofteng.com/a1

Under OS X, when a file is trashed, the file itself isn't deleted, but 
all identifying information *is* instantly deleted.  The space that the 
file occupies is immediately made available for the system to write new 
data to.

Until recently, Data Rescue was the least useful of these three 
utilities.  It was useful for restoring a drive that was accidentally 
reformatted, but it was of no use whatsoever in recovering files that you 
had accidentially trashed.

The reason for this is that for such a utility to be able to recover a 
trashed file, it has to be able to recognize a file type by the data that 
is left after the file has been trashed.  That's not easy, and a program 
has to be designed to look for the identifiers for all of the potential 
file types it might encounter.

So, recovery software is only as good as the number of different types of 
files it can identify and then recover.  Recently Data Rescue has been 
updated to be able to locate a number of file types: However, the other 
two choices, above, seem to be able to identify more.  Judging on 
feedback I've received, I would probably rank them in the order that they 
appear above.  But, depending on what programs you use, one might be as 
good as the other.

VirtualLab has an excellent user interface and features.




Randy B. Singer
Co-Author of: The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th and 6th editions)

ROUTINE OS X MAINTENANCE
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html