ICare Data Recovery is a free and commercial recovery program for the Windows operating system that you can use to recovery files or entire partitions.
If you have every accidentally lost data that you needed at a later point in time you know that data recovery is one of the options to recover data. The only other option are data backups but only if they have been created regularly and if the files that need to be accessed have been included.
Data can become inaccessible because of several reasons: it can be that you deleted the data accidentally, that a partition or hard drive has been formatted. or that partition headers became corrupt so that the operating system cannot read file information anymore. Then there is the chance that a malware attack may corrupt or encrypt data to make it inaccessible as well.
iCare Data Recovery
The recovery software iCare Data Recovery provides a solution for all three scenarios. It can be used to recover formatted drives and partitions including external storage devices like flash cards (for instance to recover deleted photos from the digital camera’s flash card), ipods and basically any storage device that can be connected to a PC.
The second option of the file recovery software is the ability to restore partitions which have become corrupt and therefor unreadable by the operating system.
Data recovery options are provided as well. It is possible to restore deleted files, and to run a deep scan recovery.
Note: The free version of the application is good for recovering up to 1 Gigabyte of data.
As far as features are concerned, here is a quick rundown:
- All levels of Hardware RAID supported.
- Advanced and unique deep searching and scanning algorithm that recover lost files in seconds
- Recover formatted sd card, hard drive partitions, ipod etc.
- Recover files from RAW drives or file system; You do not have to convert file system back to FAT/NTFS
- Recover photos, documents, video, music and emails.
- Preview lost photos, office files before buy.
The data recovery software is relatively easy to use: It links to its three main tools in the interface on startup. The first enables you to restore individual files by selecting a partition or drive on the system, the second to run a deep scan of the system which can be useful if the first option did not find the files that you need to recover, and the third an option to restore a partition.
Newer versions of the application list what each of the available tools are designed to do, but inexperienced users may still have troubles using the program regardless of that.
The developer’s website offers a tutorial for some usage scenarios which is a recommended read for users who want to know more about the software’s capabilities.
The site lists the following tutorials at the time of writing this article:
- How to run a partition recovery: deleted partition by mistake, bad partition table, partition lost without a reason, partition or drive not detected by PC.
- How to recover deleted files: restore files that were removed using Shift-Delete, from an emptied recylce bin, or if a partition is inaccessible but visible in Disk Management.
- How to use the deep scan recovery tool: helps with data loss after system crashes, bad MBR, partition table or boot sector, bad file allocation table, software failures, RAID array damages, RAW drives, and drives that are seemingly not formatted.
- Format Recovery: explains how to deal with formatting issues such as accidentally formated partitions, or restore operations on mobile devices.
Positive
- Can recover partitions, formatted drives and recover files
- Can recover files from Raw partitions
- Full hardware raid support
Negative
- Does not recover all partitions or drives connected to a system
- Free version limited to 1 GB of data.
Verdict
ICare Data Recovery Software is a sophisticated file, partition and drive recovery software for the Windows operating system.
The functionality that the program offers is excellent but it is let down somewhat by the 1 Gigabyte limit of the free version.
This impacts the actual recovery process only though and not the searching for files which means that you can use the program to find out if it is capable of recovery files or partitions, and if it is, decide on whether a purchase of the commercial version makes sense.