FAQ

This document provides answers to frequently asked questions about Recover4all.

1. Does this program require installation?

No. It can be run directly from any disk e.g. from a USB drive. Data recovery software that requires installation does often not make much sense, because installing a program can overwrite deleted files on the computer. Recover4all will not save files to your computer, only your recovered files. Recover4all does not include itself to the Start Menu, Desktop or Systray. It will not save files to your system folder. It will not ask you to install a search bar in your browser. It will not enforce an evaluation period by saving secret data to your computer.

Please note that running any program under Windows can overwrite deleted files on the system drive (usually C:). Your Internet Browser will for instance save data to your computer. Even if you run no program at all, Windows will constantly save data to the system drive. It is not recommended to surf on the Internet and/or install e.g. data recovery programs for evaluation to your computer, if you want to recover files from the system drive.

Data recovery software that requires installation should only be used, if it has already been installed on a computer as a precautionary measure. If no data recovery software has yet been installed and you want to recover deleted files, you must make sure that the data recovery software is not installing itself on the drive with the deleted files.

2. Where are my deleted files?

Recover4all lists deleted files in the folder from which they were deleted. Of course you will look there first. But if you can not find them there, there is still a chance that they will show up in a blue folder. Those folders contain files that could not be assigned a position in the existing file system. So if you can not find your files in yellow or green folders, look for them in possibly listed blue folders.

3. Can I recover to the same drive where the deleted files are?

No. Recover4all does deliberately not allow to recover files to the same drive, because the deleted files could be overwritten.

4. Where can I recover my files?

You can for instance recover to an attached USB drive. You can also recover to network drives which are mapped to drive letters.

5. My recovered files do not open.

Files that can not be opened are corrupted. The deleted files have either already been overwritten to some extent with other files or they could not be correctly reassembled.

Though Recover4all displays recovery chances to the best of its knowledge, even green files with “good” recovery chances can turn out to be corrupted. Example: file A is deleted and overwritten with file B. Recover4all will display file A as a red (overwritten) file. But if file B is later also deleted and overwritten, Recover4all will not find file B that overwrote file A. Recover4all will then show file A as a green (not overwritten) file.

If the corrupted files that do not open were documents, you can sometimes recover some plain text from them. Open them in a text editor or better a hex editor. Every file will open in a hex editor.

For very precious files that turned out to be corrupted after recovery, recovery in a data recovery laboratory can be an option.