Loko’s Domain You live and learn. At any rate, you live.

When it comes to data recovery, I have had a really high success rate. Unless there is catastrophic physical damage or internal mechanical failures, I can retrieve data.

Last night, my brother came over in a panic with his Rebel XTi in hand. His pictures on his flash media card were no more, no matter what he tried. I've never come across flash media that I could not retrieve data from, so we go into my office and throw the card into my media reader. I have a library of recovery software to try.

I tried GetDataBack FAT. I received nothing. I tried Recuva, different options hoping for different results. Nothing. Roadkil's Unstoppable Copier. Nothing. Pandora Recovery. Nothing. File Recovery 4. Same. Avira UnErase Personal. No surprise. This went on until late in the evening as I tore through the internet looking for recovery software that could show some immediate results.

Well, I thought about giving up when I Googled for another piece of freeware I've never had the absolute pleasure of using before.

PC INSPECTOR™ Smart Recovery 4.5

After all I thought was lost, when "all" is about 1,600 images since our dad's 50th birthday, this software immediately began to show results. I selected which directory to save the pictures into and it went to work. After 20 minutes of scanning 1/4 the 2GB card, I saw many thumbnails of pictures free of corruption in the directory. I could even open them, look at them, save them, and edit them.

This is the first software I've ever used that not only was free, but absolutely incredibly thorough, quick, and shows results within five minutes instead of waiting idly by for unpredictable results. Also, this software actually had Canon's CR2 RAW file format, among other RAW formats, listed in the drop down menu. You can select which format to recover and then click Start. Easy as that.

PC Inspector Smart Recovery 4.5 receives my highest recommendation for recovery software. I have not tried PC Inspector File Recovery, which is also freeware, but I'm already positive that it is legendary.