Recover Accidentally Deleted Files with Active@ File Recovery
Whenever one deleted a file it is sent to Recycle bin. Recycle bin from where it can be easily restored But what if you delete it from recycle bin also and what to recover it?? Or you are one of those lazy people like me who just press shift+delete key to permanently delete the file 
Active@ File Recovery comes handy at that time. It can recover accidentally deleted files. Files that have been damaged due to formatting or virus attacks etc. It can also recover lost partitions.
But how a file deleted can be recovered?? From Wikipeida
When a file is deleted, its directory entry remains stored on the disk, slightly renamed in a way that marks the entry as available for use by newly created files thereafter. Most of its name, its time stamp, file length and — most importantly - starting location on the disk, remains unchanged in the directory entry. The list of disk sectors (clusters, to be more specific) occupied by the file will be erased , however, marking those sectors available for use by other files created or modified thereafter.
When an undeletion attempt is made, the following conditions must be met for a successful recovery of the file:
- The entry of the deleted file must still exist in the directory, meaning that it must not yet be overwritten by a new file (or folder) that has been created in the same directory. Whether this is the case can fairly easily be detected by checking whether the remaining name of the file to be undeleted is still present in the directory.
- The sectors formerly used by the deleted file must not be overwritten yet by other files. This can fairly well be verified by checking that the sectors are not marked as used in the File Allocation Table. However, if, in the meantime, a new file had been written to, using those sectors, and then deleted again, freeing those sectors again, this can not be detected automatically by the undeletion program. This means that an undeletion operation, even if appearing successful, might fail because the recovered file contains different data.
- The file must not have been fragmented, meaning that the sectors its data occupied on the disk must have all been in one uninterrupted sequence. Whether this was the case or not may or may not be detectable by the undeletion program (it depends on the arrangement of other files on the disk).
If the undeletion program can not detect clear signs of the above requirements not being met, it will restore the directory entry as being in use and mark all consecutive sectors (clusters), beginning with the one as recorded in the old directory entry, as used in the File Allocation Table. It is then up to the user to open the recovered file and to verify that it really still contains the complete data of the formerly deleted file.
If the data of the recovered file is not correct, parts of the file may still be stored in other sectors of the disk, but recovery of those is not possible by automatic processes but only by manual examination of each (unused) block of the disk. This is, however, usually hardly feasible and can only be performed by specialists that have very good knowledge of both the disk structure and the data being searched.
So if your file meets the following requirements it is possible to recover it Hurray!!! 
I downloaded and used the Demo version of the software and here is what i felt about it.
Installation was a breeze and within seconds could be used the Active@ File Recovery.
The interface is divided into 3 parts and looks like windows explorer.
- The first part shows the hierarchy of the local system devices listing all partitions and optical drives.
- The second column shows your Optical Drive, Floppy drive and Hard Disk Drive without partitions
- The third column shows Events its date and some text related to it.
Their are two ways to recover files viz.
Quick Scan: This option quickly scans your hard drive partitions fore deleted files and folders. When I scanned my partitions which are each ~20gb it took me less than a minute to scan each partition. Pretty fast indeed.
Super Scan: Super Scan can be used to recover deleted or damaged partition or logical drive. Super Scan reads each disk sector and looks for not only the boot sector, but also tries to reconstruct the drive structure, based on residual clues to the drive’s system structures that remain on the disk surface. This is a very slow process and it usually gives much better results than QuickScan. When Super Scanfinds data and the deleted or damaged file or folder is not fragmented, the SuperScan process can detect files by matching template patterns to the found data.- RAID Reassembly: RAID ( Redundant Array of Independent Disks) can fail due to many reasons. More on RAID and its failure here. One can combine together a disk that was previously used as a part of a RAID system in a temporal (virtual) disk array. With this virtual configuration, one is able to perform all drive file recovery manipulations as though it is regular drive. This is a really good feature of the software.
Another feature to mention about is Creating a Disk Image. This could help you to recover files at some other time or if something wrong happens while recovering the files which make you lose the contents of the file being recover.
Our Rating:
Ease of use
Performance
Value For Money
Features
Overall Rating
For: Offers a variety of features, really fast scanning.
Against: Paid considering there are lots free softwares, Demo version limits file recovery to 65KB
Our Verdict: Active@ File Recovery has lots of features and is great if you intend to use it for your company/organisation so that you can recover those important documents & also they have a customer service helpline.But if you intend to recover files that are not so important and for home use you can try free alternatives.
Active@ File Recovery for windows has the following versions viz.
- Demo
- Stabdard
- Professional
- Enterprise
A tabular information about it has been given beneath:-
Disclamer: The Preceding post is a paid review. I just looked and used the features and wrote about it. I don’t take guarantee of the product/service. If you don’t like it please leave a comment.
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