Installation instructions?

[Dayvidpriddy]

Where are the installation instructions at on this website? Mose recovery programs require that the software not be installed on the same drive that the lost/deleted files were on as well as not recovering files to the same drive that they are being recovered from. I don't see any installation instructions anywhere for this. If you are not following these two rules period, your recovery attempts will fail! I have searched all over this site and do not see any installation instructions at all. Pretty shocking...

[Augeas]

You have a point, of sorts, but it is hardly shocking. I think you're barking up the wrong tree.

 

If you want to recover a file and don't have Recuva installed, then just looking at the Piriform docs will be overwriting data on the disk. Posting to this forum will overwrite data on the disk. Doing anything on a pc, even booting it up, will overwrite data on the disk. Leave your pc running without touching it and prefetch will do it's mini-defrag, sys restore will create 50 to 500 mb restore points daily, virus databases will update, and all this activity will be logged.

 

It would be wise to include a comment in the docs to the extent that installation and recovery should be run on another volume, and perhaps a pop-up box to say the same when installing Recuva. But I dare say that the vast majority of users have only one pc, and will continue to use it, if only to browse the docs even if they download to a flash drive. Furthermore I would also say that the vast majority of users do not have, and are not expected to have, the depth of knowledge to realise that using their pc, and downloading and installing software, is endangering their chances of recovery.

 

If Recuva is already installed then most of these comments still apply, people will use their pc's, either through necessity or lack of knowledge. A Recuva tutorial could describe the basics of data recovery, although only a percentage of users would read it prior to a real recovery need.

 

I think that the point is that Recuva is not a forensic data recovery tool, but a very useful utility for general users. No forensic recovery process would use a Windows application to recover data. Forensic recovery procedures would immediately isolate the hard drive. Recuva doesn't do that. (I'm using forensic to describe serious data recovery.)

 

As for installation instructions, just double-click and Bob's your uncle.

[Andavari]

The concept of doing a full restoration outside of Windows is valid if for example using something via BartPE. However like Augeas has pointed out most end-users aren't even going to go through the trouble of worrying about the installation process. Even if the portable version was used there's still going to be temporary files used to download it to a USB Thumb Drive, etc. I think it's also somewhat expecting too much to expect the ability to recover everything, due to the facts again that Augeas has pointed out since data is always being written to the hard disk.

 

So nothing to really complain about in my opinion if trying to recover files while Windows is running and writing data - possibly making it impossible to achieve 100% recovery. That's why having a good regular backup strategy is essential for critical data that must never be lost.