Yes, it certainly is a travesty to have your data
accidentally deleted, particularly if you have a pressing project you’re
working on and time is of the essence. With file recovery, time is not your
friend, and you need a tool that can recover your documents as fully as
possible. There are many contenders in this space, but there are only a few
apps that seem to actually work and not spout off fake results and recovery
metrics. Today, we will look at File
Scavenger 4.1 from QueTek Consulting.

Recover deleted files

Product Information

  • Title: File
    Scavenger 4.1
  • Company: QueTek
    Consulting Corporation
  • Product URL: http://www.quetek.com/prod02.htm
  • Supported OS:
    Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7 and 8.
  • Price: $49.95 for
    personal edition / $89 for personal edition with RAID reconstruction /
    $185 for professional edition

As far as file recovery programs go, File Scavenger 4.1
comes with a rather impressive array of features. For instance, not only are
you able to process scans and dumps on Windows-based file systems like NTFS and
FAT32, but you are also able to touch disks formatted for Linux, BSD and Mac OS
X. There is also largely improved 4K sector support, compared to previous
releases, as well as ability to read and write to dynamic volumes.

The installer gives you a choice to run or
install

Highlights

When I fired up File Scavenger’s installer application for
the first time, I was given the option to either install the software to disk
or run straight away. Obviously, in the case of a delicate operation such as
recovery, installing the program is likely to cause more harm than good to any
deleted files that exist on the hard drive. Such an option is welcome. Of
course, you will need to provide your license code every time you use this
option; so it’s best to keep your registration information handy if you want to
actually restore any data.

With the interface displayed in all of its shining glory, I
found everything to be rather straightforward. For my tests, a JPEG file that I
had saved to the documents folder was deleted as well as a text file. I chose
the C: drive and performed a full scan in order to pick up every last deleted
file I could, hopefully without any falling through the cracks. Impressively
enough, File Scavenger found all kinds of deleted data that ranged from the
present to nearly two weeks ago in age. I localized my search and, sure enough,
my text file and JPEG image were within the file list.

File Scavenger gets to the point and leaves
no stone un-turned

Now although the text file came back to life without
incident, the image in question didn’t quite make it. I went into the preview
mode to check the file before restoring and I saw a light pink distortion all
over the image. It appeared as if nearly all the color was stripped out. I’m
not entirely sure why a file that was deleted just mere moments ago looked like
a wreck, but I could at least make out the details. Oddly enough, older images
that were deleted did come back just fine, which leads me to believe that
ultimately, your mileage may vary.

As one can see, the results might not be
favorable, even for files deleted moments earlier

Something that I found quite interesting that doesn’t seem
to be present in most other file recovery applications I have sampled to date
is a feature for recovering files from a broken RAID array. Simply click the
“Advanced Volumes” button and you are presented with a window that grants
you the ability to restructure a spanned or striped volume (RAID 0 and RAID 5
configurations supported) as well as pull from any parity information stored on
volumes in order to enhance recovery procedures. Unfortunately, as I did not have
a RAID array in my test environment, this feature mainly went unused.

Bottom line

For the asking price of $49.95 (and $89 for the ability to
reconstruct RAID sets), the treasure-trove of features that File Scavenger
contains is impressive. The support for different disk layouts and file systems
in particular grants this utility an edge over other Windows-based file
recovery suites. If you are willing to spend a bit, you are likely not to be
disappointed.

As a final note, the cheaper versions of this app are
designed to be actively tied to one machine per license. However, the
professional license, which is offered at a rather pricey $185, is tied to the
registrant rather than to a machine, allowing you to use one copy to support
any complement of machines within a business. For some, the extra coin in
exchange for added flexibility might be worth it in the end.

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