Recovering data from alternative storage media devices

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Mike Fiato

Data recovery applications like our award-winning Data Rescue have more visibility and success stories recovering data from standard hard drives. However, Data Rescue can recover data from a variety of storage devices. If the storage device has a HFS+, NTFS or FAT partition within it, Data Rescue 3 can scan it and in many cases retrieve intact data successfully from them.

Here are 4 storage media types that are often overlooked for use with data recovery applications.

TV Media players / DVR’s that utilize HFS+, NTFS or FAT partitions
Flash Media: SD/micro, CF, USB, SONY Duo,
Optical media

External storage devices

: CD/DVD and floppy disks (requires making a .dmg file before scanning)
Voice Recorders

Three of the devices listed above can easily be connected and scanned with Data Rescue 3. They will show up in the Arena menu and can be selected as a standard device for deep scanning. Optical media must be converted into a .dmg file first and then the .dmg file can be scanned separately. Before you decide to format or throw away an old device that may have stored your pictures, movies , songs or documents, consider scanning it with Data Rescue 3 first.

What Makes Data Rescue 3 Different?
 The main objective of Data Rescue 3 is that the strategy for finding lost files is different and better from the strategies used by other tools. Not only will it find your data in situations where other tools fail, but it will also recover them in a much better condition, restoring icons, dates and even folder hierarchy.
Data Rescue is the only utility that focuses on data recovery as opposed to hard drive repair. Your entire hard drive is examined for file content. This is one of the reasons that Data Rescue is more successful than “repair” utilities on the market. The data on the drive is painstakingly evaluated and files are meticulously re-assembled and stored in a safe location. Either with intense manual evaluation, or with the help of powerful software tools, this is the process that data recovery professionals routinely use to restore their client’s data.

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Top Data Recovery software for the average user

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Mike Fiato

Prosoft Engineering Corporate Headquarters

Prosoft Engineering’s data recovery software “ Data Rescue 3 and Data Rescue PC3 “ allow you to recover your data without an engineering degree. Among the tons of software available for both Mac and PC platforms the question becomes, which one should you choose? It starts by analyzing the company behind the applications and the people that support it. Does the company offer phone support? How long ago was their first version released? Do they call it free but it’s really a demo version? Free is great but does it really recover data or is this just an SEO attempt to reel you in?

Over the last year I have seen a few trends among newcomers in the Data Recovery Software market. They offer no phone support and only offer an email address if you have a question or need assistance.  Prosoft utilizes a ticket tracking system to track the progress of our customer and to share the info with our Engineering department and other Support personnel, in case you call back and the original support member is busy with another customer. Our Technical Support Reps do not work out of their house, do the accounting or write the code for the software. They are full time staff members who work in our corporate headquarters in the California Bay Area (Livermore to be exact).  Our support team is available Monday through Friday a total of 45 hours of coverage. Some other teams may have more available hours but those are always an overseas phone or email service who are usually not very technical and are sometimes paid more to “answer” more support cases than to actually have those cases solved.

Another trend I see is the utilization of forums for Search Engine Optimization. You can spot this when the forum moderators makes a ton of posts but there are actually very few discussion topics, in a sense its one-way dialoging. I have no issue with gorilla marketing as long is there is some benefit for the customer. The last trend is fake reviews. Prosoft prides itsself with top rated Support and best in the business Data Recovery Engineers. Our reviews on Amazon.com, store.apple.com, macupdate.com and Cnet are legitimate.

Before you buy a data recovery application check our website, reviews, how-to guides, available live support personnel and building address. If you’re going to pay similar pricing to our data recovery applications, make sure you’re getting what we offer: 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year. Here is the a picture of our new facility. If you’re paying $10 less for your data recovery application and you can’t call someone or verify that they even have an actual building, you may want to ask why are they charging so much.

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Developing a plan to protect your digital assets

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Mike Fiato

Protect your digital assets

Everyday we seem to capture video from events, take pictures, and purchase all sorts of media. We store these digital files on our hard drives and rarely consider the consequences if one of our storage devices fail. This is why there is no better time than the present to develop a routine backup strategy and maintenance plan to protect your precious digital assets.

Video files can be very large and easily fragmented. Large drives filled primarily with video content should be backed up regularly and defraged to optimize video playback and editing performance. If you utilize iPhoto, your digital images should reside on at least two hard drives for safe keeping. Users with extensive iTunes libraries should backup daily to preserve playlists, artists, album artwork and detailed cataloging.

Drive Genius 3 is a great way to defrag your Mac, monitor hard drive performance and perform routine maintenance like sparing bad blocks, repartitioning and reallocating volumes for changing storage needs. If you use large external storage devices like multi-terabyte drives on a daily or weekly basis for your workflow, I encourage you to match your device of choice with another drive to back up to on a regular basis. Drive Genius 3 includes a cloning tool which serves as a great method to create disk images and device-to-device clone backups. Protect your creativity, work, pictures and events in time with care by using Drive Genius 3 along with a backup strategy. Developing and following a good maintenance and backup plan eliminates the need for data recovery efforts and increases the shelf life of your digital assets.

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Best Practices before using Drive Genius 3

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Mike Fiato

Data Backup 3 Bootable Clone Instructions

Prosft Engineerng offers Drive Genius 3 as a way for any Mac computer user to maintain, monitor and manage your hard drives. However, risks factors do exist when using any hard drive utility like Drive Genius, Apple’s Disk Utility or any other hard drive utility that makes significant changes to your file system. Per Apple’s recommendation when using Disk Utility, it is highly advised to make a bootable backup before making any file system changes.
Drive Genius is an award-winning, effective way to defrag, repartition and repair your drive/volumes. However, it is possible for unforeseen file system corruption, third party application interference, power-outages, system instability and user error to cause data loss in rare situations. This is why experienced Mac users know to always backup before performing any of the tasks mentioned as a precaution and as an ongoing routine before making these changes.
Drive Genius users should use a backup application and perform a complete backup of the entire system before using Drive Genius. We recommend a clone or bootable backup for easy rollback options. A clone backup allows you to restore your complete operating system, applications and personal data. You can use Apples Time Machine , Drive Genius’s Duplicate tool or Data Backup 3 for free from our website. After your backup is complete, we encourage you to do a boot test as verification.
You should also back up your entire system before:
Installing a Mac OS X software update
Using migration assistant
Upgrading your operating system.
Formatting any drive.
Using Drive Genius 3 or any other hard drive utility, including Apple’s Disk utility.

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Drive Genius 3 is a great tool to clone your Mac and VMware drive

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Mike Fiato

Drive Genius 3 Duplicate Feature

Drive Genius 3 is widely known for its defragging and repair tools, but it has a great clone tool built in called “ Duplicate “. This is extremely useful for VMware or Parallels users to have the ability to make an exact copy of their boot drive. The advantage with Drive Genius 3 is it’s ability to clone a Mac with Apple’s “Bootcamp” or VMware. Typically you would have to use a separate clone tool for either a Mac or Windows specifically for each partition.

With an extra hard drive or a larger storage device, a user could create multiple disk images of complete installs of Mac OS X and Windows operating systems. If you wanted to upgrade to a larger hard drive these disk images could be used to archive complete workstations in digital form and be restored over andover again. This gives users a great deal of flexibility to create bootable backups and save valuable time in reloading operating systems, plugins, applications, and plugins.

The “Duplicate” tool can also be used to make disk images of your flash drives, external drives. This is one of many tools included with Drive Genius 3 and a complete list of all the features can be found here. Keep in mind that an alternative startup disk is required to boot from for most of the tools like repartition, repair, duplicate and scanning for bad blocks.

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Data Rescue 3’s advanced clone tool

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Mike Fiato
Data Recovery Macintosh

Data Rescue 3 Clone Window

When choosing a data recovery application it’s a good idea to use one that has advanced tools for a variety of scenarios and great technical support. Computer Hard Drive Data Recovery can be complex depending on your situation and stressful if the data is the only copy that exists. Many hard drive recovery software applications on the market make all sorts of claims and offer very attractive pricing. However, as always, you get what you pay for.

One hidden gem included with Data Rescue 3 is its advanced cloning tool. The ability to clone a non-mounting macintosh hard drive is one of the most important tools of data recovery. Cloning a failing or corrupt drive is crucial to the process, and in a sense it buys you insurance should something go wrong. If your hard drive fails during a scan or before the data has been recovered you could be left with no choice than to invest in a physical recovery service like our sister company, The Data Rescue Center.

The Clone feature in Data Rescue 3 has been developed over years of testing to account for failing, corrupt hard drives with bad blocks. In addition it has the ability to clone from the reverse or forward orientations. This is especially handy when the beginning portion of the drive can’t be read. The reverse clone setting can overcome hard drive corruption when a standard straight copy device clone might fail.

When shopping for a Data Recovery software application for the Mac , I encourage you to not waste time with the low-cost, low-performing software titles that are out there, available on the internet. Not only can they waste time with zero to little results, but they can also cause more issues if there is no readily available support team to help you along the way. In many cases involving overseas software companies, the companies are able to put fake award logos on their website, claim a money-back-guarantee (which they don’t honor), but you find out later that it’s all a hoax, and somewhat difficult to get your money back. These companies can produce a very nice website and with the fake award logos, you’d think “Wow, this looks great!” but upon further inspection, you find out that the company never won the awards and they don’t really stand behind the produc . If your data is important to you, invest in a company that supports their products with full technical support based in their headquarters and is reachable by phone Monday through Friday, 52 weeks a year. Prosoft Engineering and Data Rescue 3 have been the market leader for computer recovery software for over 10 years, and have been in business since 1985.

With our free Macintosh Hard drive recovery software demo, you can download, clone and scan your drive for free before you even buy it.

The Data Rescue 3 demo can be found here and we now offer how-to guides for most scenarios.

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When To Use The Repair Feature in Drive Genius 3

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Mike Fiato

The Repair feature in Drive Genius 3 is an excellent tool for verifying and repairing most kinds of logical hard drive faults. It analyzes the volume for a general overview and can repair or rebuild the volume. In addition, it can be used to fix Mac OS X file permissions on your startup volume. We recommend running Repair when you see excessive system crashes and periodically for unusual minor faults. Before using the Repair feature we always recommend doing a clone backup or using Time Machine first, before proceeding.

The five functions available to help you fix your hard drive are:

Drive Genius 3 Repair Window

Verify: Runs a general scan over the volume to detect any errors.

Repair: Checks the volume for any errors, and attempts to repair them if they are found.

Rebuild: This will rebuild the portion of the drive (known as the Catalog B-Tree) that contains information
pertaining to the location of all the files on the volume.

Repair Permissions: Correct the ownership and permissions according to Apple specifications.

Verify Preferences: Searches for possible errors with preference files.

A very important factor to consider is if your volume or drive is unbootable. If you do not have a backup of your files or applicatoins, we recommend cloning the drive first. Since repairing the drive does include moving files, it’s crucial to have a backup before starting the repair/rebuild process. Just in case it cannot be repaired you will have an exact copy to recover your files from.

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SoundBunny lets you control the volume level of any and all open applications on your Mac!

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Mike Fiato

Independent sound control for you Mac.

Today Prosft Engineering launches “Sound Bunny” an independent application volume control utility. This new application is user friendly and it virtually applies to almost everything you open. Here’s how it works, say your listening to Pandora or watching a DVD movie but don’t want your ichat or mail notifications chiming in at the same volume level. Its a snap with Sound Bunny, just adjust the volume for any application that shows up in the main window. Each application will have its own volume slider bar with a mute option. This is a first for the Mac , there is no other software currently available that allows this much total control of all your open application audio outputs.

SoundBunny's main window

This is Sound Bunny’s main window, here you can control all your applications independently by dragging each slider to your own individual setting. By customizing your individual applications one could setup Sound Bunny for specific applications to be louder and override the main audio app to alert your when a post-processing feature of another app is finished. This makes Sound Bunny extremely useful and the user configurability is endless.

The user control in Sound Bunny is a great addition to your Mac OS X version and at $10.00 its priced just right. Try the demo today and see what you been missing in Apple’s “ System Preferences “ for years. Remember to restart your Mac after installation, Sound Bunny requires a restart to work properly.

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Data Rescue 3 & Drive Genius 3 How to Guides can be accessed on your iPhone

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Mike Fiato

How-to Guides on your iPad or iPhone

Over the last few months Prosoft has added a number of “ How-to guides for Data Rescue 3 and Drive Genius 3. These streamlined guides pinpoint one function at a time and make it very easy for a new user to start a recovery project or defrag a hard drive within minutes of installing the applications. You can also access these “ How-to guides” on your iPhone or iPad, making them extremely useful and accessible.

Data Rescue 3 and Drive Genius 3 are very powerful utilities for the Mac platform. Like most utilities there is a learning curve to these types of applications. The “ How-to guides “ empower an user to go straight to the features that they need and follow along with confidence, in a step by step approach with screen shots. Users do not have to learn all of the features at once or upfront. Just choose a task , and follow the simplified steps.

Using hard drive utilities for data recovery or maintenance can be a little intimidating for many users. If you have never a used data recovery application or a hard drive utility these DIY “ how-to guides” will help speed up the process and take the guess work out. This is another example of how Prosoft Engineering strives to stay ahead of our competition, listen to what our customer needs are, and provide the best Technical Support for the Mac hard drive utilities sector.

You can view Prosoft’s How-to Guides here:

Data Rescue 3 How-to Guide:
 Drive Genius 3 How-to Guide:

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Should I Use a Hard Drive Utility For a Non-Mounting Hard Drive?

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Mike Fiato

Common Mac Startup Problems

If you have a non-mounting drive, you have a few options of how to deal with that drive. This article will help you evaluate your particular situation and allow you to make a more informed decision on what plan of action to take.

I have spoken to many end users and PC repair shop technicians who ask me, “Will Drive Genius 3 mount my non-mounting drive and recover my files?”

Every scenario is indeed different and every hard drive directory is it’s own unique entity. When a drive is not mounting, there are usually errors or issues in the directory which is causing it to not mount (this is assuming the drive shows up in Disk Utility, and that it not a drive suffering from any physical issues).

If your drive does show up in Disk Utility, but is not mounting, then there are typically two types of actions you can take:

1) Recovery– This is the safest bet when it comes to dealing with a corrupted directory for a drive that won’t mount. Use a hard drive recovery software tool like Data Rescue 3 to scan that non-mounting drive and recover any/all files over to a 2nd drive. Data Rescue 3 will NOT write to the drive it is scanning, which means it cannot cause any further issue with that drive in question. This is crucial if the data on that drive is not backed up anywhere else..

2) Repair– This is a more risky way of dealing with a corrupted directory. If you have a backup of all the data on the drive, then it is ok to try to repair the drive directory.
If you do not have a backup, then you stand the risk that if the repair fails, you could be damaging your original directory structure which can be a severe problem. When you are dealing with thousands of files that have a specific name and folder structure, you will want to preserve it if you can.

One safeguard to do before you attempt to repair a non-mounting drive that is not backed up is to make a clone of the non-mounting drive. This ensures that you have a separate copy of the original drive should something go wrong with the repair attempt. However, most backup software will not be able to clone the drive since it is not mounting. In this scenario, we recommend using the Clone feature in Data Rescue 3 (you can even use just the demo of Data Rescue 3 as that will allow you to clone). Data Rescue 3 is a powerful software tool that will allow you to clone drives that are not mounting on the desktop (but are showing up in Disk Utility). By having this clone backup, you are taking the necessary precautions before attempting a directory repair.

If you take this approach each time you’re dealing with a questionable drive you will minimize data loss. This leads to the final point: It is always a good idea to have more than one tool in your software binder. There is not just one application for every condition. Consider using Data Rescue 3 and Drive Genius 3 along with a spare drive, the next time you’re in a pinch.

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