First NTFS Recovery Tutorial

Installing First NTFS Recovery

Once you ruled out the possibilities of using the wrong Windows, wrong file system and the wrong storage media, you are ready to download and install 1st NTFS Recovery, if not - read program faq's. While you might have installed a handful of other programs, this is not the case with 1st NTFS Recovery or any other data recovery application if that matters.

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: Never download, save to, or install 1st NTFS Recovery or any other data recovery program onto the disk that contains corrupted data or deleted files to restore, or the damaged disk you are about to recover with 1st NTFS Recovery.

Once you've read through the important note, proceed with downloading and installing 1st NTFS Recovery.

Launching Data Recovery

Unlike the installation, there're no specific issues with launching 1st NTFS Recovery except that you'll have two choices of a user interface once you start the application. When you run 1st NTFS Recovery for the very first time, you'll see the Recovery Wizard, a convenient walk-through tool to help you with the recovery process. If you're not quite comfortable with the advanced settings, just leave it alone and use the Recovery Wizard to guide you through the recovery. If you know what every letter in "N.T.F.S." stands for, you may close the wizard and go on your own with somewhat greater flexibility and many more available options.

Run 1st NTFS Recovery.exe, and select "Help" - "About" to register the product if you have already purchased your copy. If you didn't place an order just yet, click "Help" - "About" - "Buy Now" to buy a proper registration code, and then click "Input Key". Alternatively, just click here to buy.

The Recovery Wizard

The Recovery Wizard guides you through the entire process of data recovery. It allows you to pick the drive to recover (Figure 1), displays real-time progress bar (Figure 2), and allows previewing (Figure 3) and selecting (Figure 4) files to recover. Once you're done, specify the final location to store the recovered files, and click Finish.

IMPORTANT: Never save any recovered files onto the working disk that you're recovering files from. Never use corrupted disks or any disks that you're about to recover with 1st NTFS Recovery to save the recovered files to. Use a different partition, a secondary hard drive, an external memory card or USB flash drive to keep your data. 1st NTFS Recovery allows you to burn your files onto a CD or DVD, which is a great way to avoid spoiling the damaged partitions while you're working with them.

Manual Data Recovery

If you want a little bit of extra control over the recovery process, close the Recovery Wizard and perform manual recovery by following simple step-by-step instructions.

• 1. On the main window, select the drive letter to recover. If the drive is corrupted to the degree there's no drive letter for the partition you're into, select the physical drives that contains the target partition. When you select a physical drive, you'll be prompted to scan the drive for any NTFS partitions.



• 2. If you worked with the physical drive, and some partitions were discovered after a comprehensive scan, select one now to go on with the recovery.



• 3. If you know exactly what operating system or what type of file system was used on the target partition, select it in the corresponding window.



• 4. You'll see a progress bar showing the real-time progress of the scan.



• 5. After the scan is complete, you'll see a list of files that 1st NTFS Recovery may be able to recover. To ensure correct recoverability, click a file to see a real-time pre-recovery preview.

Note: the live preview is available in the free version of 1st NTFS Recovery as well as the fully registered version. You can only preview digital pictures and office documents.





• 6. Once you select the files to recover and click Recover, the Export Wizard will pop up. Click through the Export Wizard and specify the location to store the files to.

IMPORTANT:Never save any recovered files onto the working disk that you're recovering files from. Never use corrupted disks or any disks that you're about to recover with 1st NTFS Recovery to save the recovered files to. Use a different partition, a secondary hard drive, an external memory card or USB flash drive to keep your data. 1st NTFS Recovery allows you to burn your files onto a CD or DVD, which is a great way to avoid spoiling the damaged partitions while you're working with them.





• 7. The "Recovered files" folder contains every file discovered with SmartSearch. The new SmartSearch technology scans your file system and learns about the files that were simply deleted. SmartSearch uses a list of file signatures to detect the beginning and end of recognized file types such as Microsoft Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, or JPEG pictures, more then 100 different types of files in total. This method works rock solid even if your hard drive is 9/10 dead, and its file system is completely non-existent! In that case, SmartSearch will simply scan and recover what's left of your disk and your data. This is similar to what the second class of data recovery products does. In this folder You'll see several folders that contain files of certain types. You can preview digital pictures and office documents before recovering them.