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File Recovery, Wiping Data and Password Protection

Everyone has those days when they fail to pay attention to what they are doing and hit “yes” to the seemingly arbitrary dialog box. The files are deleted, gone forever. Maybe not, I have good news that there are several software products out there to help you recover deleted files. And for all you photographers out there, most of these products work on various media including compact flash and SD memory as well as hard drives.

Object Rescue offers three products geared toward various file types. The one I see used the most is Photo Rescue Pro.

Data Rescue a good all around solution that is cross platform for PC and MAC users.

Photos Recovery

Iolo Technologies offers Search and Recovery.

PC Tools has File Recover.

Runtime Software has GetDataBack.

GetData Software Development has Recover My Files


The bad news is that products like these have been around for years, just not highly publicly marketed. This is how so much data gets stolen or reutilized from computers that are given away, thrown away, stolen and/or sold. This is my plea for everyone to get a hard drive scrubber to help protect you from people looking for information when you throw a hard drive away or donate an older computer to your favorite charity.

Iolo Technologies offers Drive Scrubber

Acronis touts their Drive Cleanser

White Canyon has Wipe Drive

And last but not least… made for the legal world… there is Evidence Eliminator.


I’d also like to put in a plug for the new encryption products and password protection products on the market, which are becoming increasingly important for mobile computer users. The encryption products listed below are software solutions, but hard drive manufacturers are starting to offer encryption algorithms in some of their later model hard drives.

Password Depot

KeePass free and Open Source

Fiberlink

PGP - Pretty Good Privacy encryption

PointSec encryption

3 Responses to “File Recovery, Wiping Data and Password Protection”

  1. Jake Says:

    At this site you can compare data recovery quotes, I haven’t seen any other sites that does that, was very valuable in my case.

    http://www.datarecoverycompare.com

  2. George Says:

    Another photo recovery software available is DeleteFIX photo that can be downloaded for a free demonstration from:

  3. George Says:

    http://www.cimaware.com/main/products/deletefixphoto.php

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