Downloads

If you've ever inserted a CD, floppy, Zip disk, or thumb drive only to have Windows cough up an error message telling you it isn't there, isn't formatted, or some such, you'll appreciate BadCopy Pro. Despite a name that's easy to misinterpret, this is recovery software. Yet unlike some programs that label themselves as such, it will also recover data from corrupted or accidentally formatted media.

It's difficult to completely evaluate the effectiveness of recovery software in a short period of time--there are simply too many scenarios, including physical damage, that are hard to recreate. That said, BadCopy Pro did recover files on a deliberately reformatted thumb drive and floppies. The software doesnat work with hard drives, so look to something like R-Studio for that purpose. This may actually be the company's way of saying the program can't deal with the NTFS file system (most removable media is formatted with the older FAT or non-proprietary UDF file system); it wouldn't recognize a thumb drive I'd formatted in NTFS but did find data on a FAT32 USB hard drive.

The beauty of Bad Copy Pro, along with every other piece of recovery software I'm aware of, is that you can see if it solves your data recovery problem before you buy. Simply install the demo and run it on the offending piece of media. If it finds the files you want to recover, then fork over the money to enable the save feature.

--Jon L. Jacobi