R-Studio Data Recovery Software 3.0 - User Guide and FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions - R-Studio Data Recovery Software

1. I lost my information. What are guidelines I should follow before and during restoring data?
   OS considers deleted files as just free space on the drive. With any write operations to that partition or disk, there is always the possibility of losing these files forever by overwriting them. Therefore, do not write anything to the data drive, do not run any disk utilities such as chkdsk and defragmenters and do not reboot the computer. Windows can spawn chkdsk during start-up procedure. To avoid write operations during restoring, do not restore files or write images into the drive that contains deleted files.
   
   You can also create an image of the drive with deleted files (from "Drive" menu select "Create Image File") and save one on another drive. This image can be later used instead of the original drive. That is the way to save the current state of the drive. All R-Studio family utilities (including Demos) support the creation and use of image files of the same format.
   
   
2. From which drives will R-Studio family utilities recover files?
   Under Windows NT, Windows 2000, or Windows XP operating systems R-Studio will recover files from all physical and logical drives, which are visible by OS. Under Windows 95, Windows 98 or Windows ME R-Studio will recover files from all logical drives visible by OS and from all physical drives, which are correctly accessible by Windows protected mode I/O subsystem. R-Studio network edition will also recover files from drives of remote computers if they are running R-Studio Agent or R-Studio Agent Emergency.
   
   
3. How can I use the network features of R-Studio Network Edition?
   In order to recover files on remote computers, the special service program R-Studio Agent should be installed on that computer. You may also use R-Studio Agent Emergency which boots from a single floppy and provides the same functions. These programs gives access to disks on remote computers therefore all network transfers are encrypted with strong crypto algorithms using a password supplied by the administrator.
   To access drives on a remote computer choose 'Connect to remote...' from the 'Drive' menu, then either select a computer from the list of computer, or enter the host name or IP address and password, which is set for R-Studio Agent on the remote computer. When the connection is established you will see all drives of the remote computer in 'Drives Windows' and you will be able to use them the same way as a local one.
   
   
4. Will R-Studio family utilities recover long file names? Will it recover localized names?
   On Windows NT, Windows 2000, or Windows XP operating systems R-Studio will recover files with file names to 32000 characters and restore original file names in any national encoding.
   Under Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows ME there is a 255 characters limit for size of full path for recovered files. Encoding of a file name is limited by the language currently set in Windows. Files with other characters encoding will also be restored, however the file name will be altered to fit the limitations of Windows.
   
   
5. Is it safe to use R-Studio? Can it destroy data on disk?
   R-Studio may write to disk only from hex editor (with enabled write) or when it is explicitly directed to save files on this disk. Therefore, you should be very carefully using hex editor. In all other modes and actions, R-Studio performs a read-only and never modifies data on partitions and drives directly.
   
   
6. I have scanned the drive, but contents of recovered files do not match original one. What can I do?
   If the file has the wrong contents there are two possible reasons for this situation; either the place, which the deleted file occupied, was overwritten permanently or the wrong Recognized partition was chosen for recovery.
   In order to find the correct partition please perform the following: Scan physical drive, which contains the deleted file (from 'Drive' menu select 'Scan').
   Explore all partitions found after scanning, then try to restore a file which size is greater than 2KB.
   If you find contents of the recovered file to match the original one, then use that partition for recovering.
   Absence of the partition means that file information was overwritten permanently.
   
   
7. What is the best way to recover files from hard drive with bad sectors?
   To get the best result, choose Create Image File command from Drive menu (or context menu) to copy the damaged data to another hard drive. You can create the Image of segments of the partition, Image of the whole partition, or even Image of the full hard drive.
   To adjust the number of attempts to read bad sectors, use I/O Tries in Drive Control properties. After the Image is created, you can open the Image using Open Image File command, and work with it as with original drive.
   
   
8. What if I apply the Restore command to the files not being deleted?
   In this case R-Studio will just copy these files. Their NTFS permissions may be disregarded by command. Even files locked by the system (such as registry hives or pagefile) can be copied. In a sense, R-Studio interface does not make a difference between existing, deleted, and lost files. It gives you an option to restore given file using all available information with simply 100% of success for existing files.