How Do I Recover Data from CD with Stellar Phoenix?

With time as CDs became available at cheaper rates, its demand increased substantially in the market. CDs used for various purposes in different fields with primary motto being storage of data of the various forms like videos, tons of photos, etc. Being delicate, they are susceptible to damage and data loss problem, which in return affects the performance.

Reasons Why CDs Data Become Unavailable

Here are Some Reasons and Situations Where User Lose His CD Data

Dust and External Environment: Many users tend to leave their CDs open after use. This is a very common scene in busy offices as well as at home. When CD has kept open for long, dust can accumulate on it. In fact, dust can actually collect on CDs in minutes, which risks its functionality and data loss. That is why, it is important to store CDs properly. There are various types of folders with soft covers are available in the market, which could be used for this purpose.

The plastic material used to make CDs is easily get affected by moisture. Hence, a cooler and less    humid environment is preferable for the storage of CDs.

Mishandling: While using a CD , you must be very careful with the way you handle it. Ideally, it should not insert in anything except the CD player or CD cover. Mishandling, carelessly keeping it on any space could cause scratches and result into scratches, which leads to data loss issue. Since the rear side of the CD is very polished, it is prone to scratches, even with the slightest contact. However, it is not just the rear side; scratches on either side of the CD can damage it. In fact, scratches on the label side could do more damage than the ones on the laser-reading side. There are software, which make are capable of making corrections while reading the CD but it is important to choose the right software for that.

Breaking: CDs are made of plastic; they are very thin and brittle. A CD can be damaged and result into loss of data if it is broken or there are substantial cracks in it.

Overuse: Good quality CDs won’t wear out even if you use it for a long time. Although the same cannot be said about low quality ones. The foil layer on them can wear out over time if the quality is poor.

As you can see from the points above, CDs are prone to lose of data. The data can be affected partially or completely depending upon the damage done. They are two way to tackle this problem - either by following the manual steps given below or through a third party software.

Manual Steps to Recover Data from CDs

Cleaning:  If the CD has some small scratches on it and you are facing issues while playing it, you can try cleaning the backside. Keep the CD in proper light and examine the damaged area. If the scratches are minor, you can recover data by simply cleaning it, which can be done by using a very soft cloth with water or electronic cleanser. If there are stains of some greasy substance, you can clean it with small amount of detergent or soap. You can also clean the CD with toothpaste or brass. Always make sure there are no fingerprints or marks left on the surface after cleaning.

Burning software: Few burning software, can continue reading the CD even after getting an error. This feature can definitely help in retrieving back your data, if the damage is only partial. Click Here to know more.

Using third party software

There are many tools available in market, which can help in data recovery from CDs. The most reliable tool for CD data recovery is Stellar Phoenix CD Data Recovery. It helps in recovering any form of inaccessible data from the CDs or even Blu-ray discs.

This software helps in data recovery of CDs burnt in Windows platform.  It also helps in recovering files, which were deleted accidentally. Sometimes, CD is not completely or properly burnt, Stellar Phoenix CD DVD Data Recovery can help recovering data in such cases too.

How to Recover Data from Virus Affected Hard Drives?

With increased use of Internet and advancement in technology, there has been a growing threat of virus software programs that disrupt the normal functioning of the system. The major threat from these virus programs to the data or information stored in the system. These viruses may affect user’s data or annoy them to steal and misuse their data or information from the storage device for wrong intentions. Sometimes it happens when bad bugs make the storage device in completely inaccessible and which may directly lead data loss. To secure your electronic devices from such viruses,’ it is always recommended having professional anti-virus software. However, if the bugs already affect the system, then a data recovery method is the best option to get your lost data back. Before starting the recovery process to get back the lost data from an bug affected Windows hard drives let’s know the main reasons for virus attack on electronic devices:

Not Using Anti-Virus: - Not using anti-virus software to protect the system online and offline becomes a serious mistake in the case of a virus attack. The user should always use trustworthy anti-virus Software. It is always suggested to go for the paid antivirus software rather than a free one. 

Aware While Accessing Spam Mails: - Opening spam emails and attachments are most common mistakes a computer usually makes which leads to malicious software being released into the system. It is strictly advised to take precautions while accessing spam mails or download such attachments at all. Turn on the scanning feature in the anti-virus software that scans any program before it runs on the system.

Virus Attack from Unsecured Websites: - Surfing unsecured website that exploits the vulnerabilities of the browser to download automatically and install an unwanted program. It may decoy the website surfer to install such software on a pretext of being a useful application. These malicious programs then cause havoc on the system and may steal the data as well before destroying it. However, most modern browsers warn users before loading such a website.

Lost data recovery using CHKDSK or TESTDSK utilities

CHKDSK utility is provided as a built-in feature of the Windows operating system. It can be used to check for bad sectors on the disk, repair the disk and recover lost data, which was not overwritten. 

How to use?

• Open the command prompt on the system.
• Enter chkdsk [/drive] [/r]

Here, the drive is the disk on which data recovery needs to be done, and r instructs the system to check for the bad sectors and recover any readable information available from them.

TESTDSK offers a graphical user interface to select quickly the corrupt drive and attempt data recovery. It provides an undelete option to recover the deleted or lost data from a different file system such as NTFS, FAT formatted drives. 

How to use?

• Downloading the Test Disk tool, install it.
• Open the software as an administrator.
• Select Advanced option.
• Select the drive that needs data recovery and choose Undelete. This starts the recovery process and lists all the available files that can be recovered.
• Select the files and press “c” to copy. Recover the data in another partition or external media if possible.
• Once recovery is complete, quit the application.

Note: Use of above utilities requires basic technical knowledge about the command line tools.

Try Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery

Use of command line utilities may not recover the data completely and requires a good understanding of working with command line tools. In addition, if a wrong command is executed or a right command is executed wrongly, it may cause unexpected damage to the system. If you don’t want to take any risks or you are not so technical to execute these commands then I will recommend you to use Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery – Home. It is very handy tool. Anyone can use it without any technical expertise.   

How to Fix Missing or Invalid Hard Disk Drive Error?

User can divide a physical drive into a number of partitions to store data in structured manner. Dividing the disk into specific size drive helps to avoid confusion and keeps the data organized. Disk drives are of three types- primary, extended and logical. It is not possible to have more than four primary drives. At one point, only one primary drive is active. Primary and extended drives cannot intersect each other. Extended drives are fourth, which subdivided into logical drives.

A partition table indicates how many drives a hard disk has; it holds all the information about the divided drives like their sizes, location, etc. It is 64 bytes long. Each partition table is limited to a maximum of four primary partitions. However, sometimes it happens when this partition table gets affected, and user faces an error message like invalid or missing drive.

Reasons for a missing or invalid Drive:

Virus Attack

This is one of the most common reason for hard drive data loss. There are some viruses, which damaged the partition table of hard disk drive. Virus issues can be avoided by keeping your anti-virus software updated.

Incorrect Shutdown

Abrupt shutdowns, due to power outages, could lead to loss of logical drives or damage to them.

Human Error

Accidental logical drive loss may happen if the user does not have accurate computer knowledge.

Hardware/Software troubles

A defective software installed on your system may leads to drive data loss.

Hardware issues like bad RAM or problems with the hard drive could cause drive errors.

How to Fix this?

You can fix error manually by using the following method:

• Remove all connected external devices.
• Restart your computer, and wait for the BIOS screen to be displayed
• Click on the F8 key, which will take you to the Advanced Boot Options.
• In the advanced options, choose ‘Repair your computer’. You will get Systems Recovery options.
• Click on command prompt and type bootrec/fixmbr
• Wait for process to complete
• If it does not work, you can try to type bootrec/fixboot in the command prompt

If the above steps do not work, then there is a major problem with the disk.

In this situation, you can try any software for recovery. Use a trusted software like Stellar Phoenix Free Data recovery, as a defective software could worsen the problem.

Short Description about Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery – Free Edition

You can retrieve your valuable data like images, files or documents using the Stellar Phoenix Free Data Recovery software. This software is easy to use and available at free of cost, it is a must have product if you are suffering from any kind data loss issue. 

This software has a user-friendly interface and is simple to use. Connect the hard drive to your computer. Install and run Stellar Phoenix Free Data Recovery. It will automatically detect the drive, just select the drive and start the scanning process. After the scan is completed, the recoverable files will be shown in software interface. Select the files that you want to recover and click on the ‘Save’ button to save the files at your desired location.

Note: Stellar Phoenix can help recover upto 1 GB data.

Top 5 Windows Free Data Recovery Software

This article brings you the best data recovery software for Windows which helps to recover your data from the failure hard drives at free of cost. Hard drives may fail due to any reason but getting your data back from that failed hard disk requires high technical skills and efforts, and these can be found in a data recovery software. Data recovery software now becomes the need of the users for easy and smooth recovery.

Below I Have Explained the Most Recommended Software for Windows Data Recovery.  

Recuva: 

I believe you are not surprised when you see the Recuva on the top in the software recommendation list. This software has a number of amazing features which influence to keep this tool on the top. Let me tell you its features to know the highlights of this software and these are:

• Fast Scanning Process
• Can Scan Highly Loaded hard drives
• It has two versions such as normal and portable version. The normal version can be installed on the computer and system whereas the portable version only can install on the external or USB drive.

Stellar Phoenix Free Data Recovery Software:

This software is launched by Stellar with the advance technology which helps to recover data from the extremely damaged hard drive at free of cost. It has a well versed and easy to use user interface which can be easily navigated by non-technical users. This software runs on all Windows versions and can easily extract data from the internal as well as external hard drives. Its scanning process is quite slow, but it can read the bad sectors of the hard drives and retrieve data from them. This tool provides many features for recovering data from different sources such as hard drives, CD/DVD’s, Email Clients. It has a bunch of outstanding features which allows the user to get their lost data back.

TestDisk: 

TestDisk is an another free software, which works through the command prompt. It also works well to recover data from the hard drives, but it is little technical too. To run this data recovery software one should have the expertise. Though the software is not recommended for the non-technical users, this is the only limitation of this software. Otherwise, the tool gives 100% recovery result.

PhotoRec: 

PhtoRec software recover lost files so quickly. Firstly, it tries to find the data cluster size and check the file system whether it is corrupted or not. When it determines that the file system is not damaged, then the value can be read from the superblock or volume boot record. If the PhotoRec finds the file system corrupted then it reads the media, sector by sector for searching the first ten files and take huge time for scanning the drive. This software wok to recover only media files successfully and not for the other data type recovery.

Undelete 360: 

Undeleted 360 is another best data recovery software which helps to recover deleted data from the hard drive. It provides an outstanding way to retrieve data from the inaccessible hard disk. This software recovers data from formatted, logical failure and other factors affected hard drive. This file recovery software scans the hard disk for recovering lost files and shows them for preview in the software interface with the overwritten file status. The return percentage of this data recovery is not so good, and that’s why it is in the number five position.

Conclusion: These all free data recovery tools are useful for recovering lost data from the hard drives. The user can choose any of them for recovering their lost data, but if they are looking for a feature-rich tool which can work to recover their data from multiple drives and email clients, then Stellar Phoenix is the best choice for them.

How to Recover Data Lost During Cut and Paste?

While transferring my 2GB worth of data from my 2TB external hard drive to my computer system via cut and paste method, somehow, the external hard disk got crashed, and the transferring process has been stopped. I tried to reconnect my external hard drive into the system but found no data in it. The system recognizes the drive; only the data is invisible. Don’t know how to deal with this situation?

Losing your valuable data during cut and paste method is very common situation faced by users every day. And of course, this is not easy for ordinary users to deal with this data loss issue. When users come across such situation, then they should take some precautions to prevent permanent data loss.

Firstly, the user needs to aware of the data overwriting issue. To avoid such problem, a user should be mindful of the fact that if he put anything on the drive from which he wanted to recover his lost data, it may overwrite empty space and the probability of data recovery becomes zero.

How to Safely Recover Lost Data from the External Hard Drive?

Firstly, you can check the recycle bin of Windows to see if the missing files are available there for restoration. However, in data loss case because of cut and paste method, there are very less chances of finding your files in recycle bin. If you don’t find your files in the recycle bin, then move to the next solution. 

You need to go for the professional data recovery software before the situation turns to worst. Data recovery software is the safest solution for the lost data recovery from external or internal hard drives. You only need to download the data recovery software on your system and connect the external hard disk for recovering your lost data. Don’t download the data recovery software when the external hard drive is connected to your system as it may cause data overwritten issue. First, remove your hard drive in which you want to perform the recovery process and then download the data recovery software.

To know the detailed recovery process of Stellar Phoenix Windows data recovery software, please click on Get Deleted data back with Windows data recovery software. 

Conclusion: - The shortcut key like cut and paste is the most useable key which is used by all computer users. And this may sometimes cause data loss issue. But now, with the help of data recovery software of Stellar Phoenix, a user can quickly and easily deal with this problematic situation.  

How to Use Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery Software

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery - Home is a secure and easy to use lost data recovery software. This software works efficiently to extract deleted or lost files from various types of storage devices such as USB drive, Flash Drive, SSD, HDD. etc. If you are trying this data recovery software for the first time and wondering how it works? What art the recovering steps? Then, just go through this tutorial to get your data back with just simple steps.

Step1 : Download the Stellar Phoenix Windows data recovery – Home software on your computer system.  Remember, don’t download this data software on the hard drive from which you want to recover your data as it may overwrite that drive. For example, if you want to recover your data from the external hard drive, then install this software on your computer system hard disk instead of the same external hard drive or Vice a Versa.

Step2:  Assuming, you want to recover data from computer’s internal hard drive and have installed this data recovery software on another drive. Now, Open the software interface and select the drive listed in displayed screen.

Step3: Choose the Scan type option, the software gives two type of scanning options such as “Normal” and “Advanced”. You can choose any of them as per your desire.

Step4: Once you choose the scan type and clicked on “Scan Now” button, software will start the scanning process and gave you preview of your lost files available for recovery.

Step5: Check the unchecked boxes next to the files and folders which you want to recover and click on the recovery button available on the below right corner of the software.

Step6: After clicking on recovery button, you will receive a pop-up Window asking for the location to save those recovered files and folders. Just choose the desired location and save your records.

Once software completes the data saving process, you can check your files at same location you had chosen.

Conclusion: The data recovery steps of Stellar Phoenix Windows data recovery software are so easy to execute. Even if you are not a technical user, still you can recover your lost data with this easy to use data recovery software.

How to Fix Damaged External Hard Drive without Formatting It

Today morning, I have received a very annoying message "Unallocated Drive, Do You Want to Format It?”. I didn’t format the external hard drive as there were many important files including thousands of pictures, the best collection of my favorite songs and movies. Is there any trustworthy damaged external hard drive recovery solution available, that I can use to fix the damaged hard drive error without format? I really want my data back.

When your external or internal hard drive is corrupted or damaged due to certain reasons such as unallocated file system, virus, etc., then, your data in that hard drive will usually become unreachable. And, when you tried to access it on your computer system, Windows will remind you that the hard disk is not accessible because the file system or directory is corrupted. At this point of time, you can try two hard drive recovery solutions, such as using chkdsk command or using a third-party Windows data recovery software to fix the drive and recover lost data. Before moving to recovery section, one thing you should note is to stop using the damaged hard drive, until you fully get your data back, otherwise, you will experience the permanent data recovery failure.

Use chkdsk to recognize and fix the hard drive issue without data loss.

"CHKDSK" command is users first choice for repairing the damaged hard drive and recover inaccessible data. It does not require hard drive formatting and allows you to fix a corrupted hard drive without data loss. Now let’s look how it works for repairing damaged hard drive (I'm using Windows 7 for this demonstration)

1. Plug in your External hard drive to your computer system.
2. Just go to the start menu, type in "cmd" in a search bar, hit enter and then you can see cmd

Window, which allows you to fix your corrupted external hard drive without formatting it.

3. Type in "chkdsk X (external hard drive letter): /F (F stands for Fix error)"

After, finishing all the hard drive fixing steps, Windows operating system will check and fix the file system of the hard drive It usually takes several minutes. After that, if you see the Windows successfully made corrections to the file system in the command window, then congratulations! The damaged hard drive is successfully fixed, and you can access your data with ease. If not, you should try a third-party data recovery software to repair the damaged drive and get back your data.

Use Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery Tool to recover data from damaged External Hard Drive

Stellar data recovery software is a proficient data recovery tool which can be used to recover data from inaccessible or formatted hard drives. It supports to extract data from laptop’s or computers hard drives, recover formatted drives data and all storage media like CF cards, SD card, etc. With its powerful data recovery technique and user-friendly interface, it is the best option to recover your inaccessible data from damaged hard drive. After recovering all your important data, you can format your external hard drive to fix the damaged hard drive error.

Conclusion: Before going for the full version for a real damaged external hard drive data recovery, you can first use the free trial version to scan the hard disk and check what files format the software can recover. For a gradually tutorial, please follow this Get Deleted Data Back with Windows Data Recovery Software tutorial. If you don’t get a happy result, just don’t pay for it! You have nothing to lose. But if it works, you will recover your valuable data. So, try it without hesitation whenever you come in data loss situation or face damaged hard drive issue...