DiskDigger
Lost your files? Dig them up!
This is the home page of DiskDigger -- an all-in-one undelete and recover utility that's simple, straightforward, easy to use, and most importantly, free! See the FAQ for more information, or continue reading below.
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What is DiskDigger?
DiskDigger can recover files from any type of media that your computer can read. This includes USB flash drives, memory cards (SD, CompactFlash, Memory Stick, etc), and of course your hard drive. The types of files that it recovers include photos, videos, music, documents, and many other formats.
DiskDigger can even scan reformatted or badly formatted disks (disks to which Windows can't assign a drive letter), and even disks with bad sectors. It bypasses the Windows file system drivers and scans your disk directly. It has its own built-in support for the following file systems: FAT12 (floppy disks), FAT16 (older memory cards), FAT32 (newer memory cards and hard disks), NTFS (newer hard disks), and exFAT (Microsoft's new successor to FAT32).
DiskDigger is also very compact and portable. The entire program is a single executable file that you can run from anywhere. There's nothing to "install," and the program doesn't leave any trace of having been run.
You may find DiskDigger useful if...
- you deleted one or more photos from a memory card by accident, and want them restored.
- you deleted one or more photos from a memory card on purpose, but now want them restored.
- you deleted some documents from your USB flash drive, and want to recover them.
- you came across an old hard drive of yours (or someone else's) that's been reformatted, and would like to see what its previous contents were.
- you've "securely wiped" your media, and want to make sure that your media has actually been wiped correctly.
- you're just curious about what old deleted files are still present on your memory cards or hard drives.
DiskDigger is also a work in progress. This means that new features will be added very frequently, including support for more file formats, more configuration options, etc., so check back for updates.
How does it work?
DiskDigger has two modes of operation which you can select when scanning your media for deleted files:
- Scan the file system for deleted files (dig deep). This scans the file system that is present on your media, searching for deleted file entries. Supported file systems are FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, exFAT, and NTFS. The advantages of this are:
- Very fast
- Recovers all file types
- Recovers file names
And the disadvantages are:
- Doesn't support all possible file systems (see above for supported file systems)
- Doesn't scan entire disk (only scans what the file system is aware of) - Scan the disk surface for traces of lost files (dig deeper). This thoroughly scans every sector of your media, searching for traces of known file types. The advantages of this are:
- Scans entire disk
- Goes underneath the file system, therefore independent of file system
And the disadvantages are:
- Slower (sometimes much slower) than the first method
- Doesn't recover file names or fragmented files
- Only supports certain file types
- Finds 'existing' files as well as deleted files
What isn't DiskDigger?
It's not magic. It can't recover any arbitrary file from any amount of time in the past. When trying to recover lost files, you should be realistic. In a real-world situation, you'll have a good chance of recovering your files only if they were deleted very recently. The more you keep using your disk to work with new files, the slimmer your chance of recovering deleted files. Of course it's always worth a try.
It is not a "repair" utility. It cannot repair a broken memory card or disk. DiskDigger is a strictly "read-only" tool, and never changes the contents of the media you scan. It will, of course, scan unformatted (or badly formatted) media, but it won't attempt to fix the formatting of the media.
Features:
- DiskDigger scans for many different types of files, including photos, videos, music files, and documents, and displays what it finds as it scans in real time.
- You can preview most of the files found by DiskDigger without having to save them to a different location first. More than that, you can preview files while DiskDigger continues scanning!
- DiskDigger scans any type of media that is readable by your computer, including USB flash drives, memory cards (SD, CompactFlash, Memory Stick, etc), and your hard drive(s).
- It can undelete files from all types of FAT partitions (including the new exFAT file system), as well as NTFS.
- It can go underneath the file system to scan for traces and remnants of lost files.
- DiskDigger does everything in memory, meaning that it never writes any temporary files to your disk or other media (unless you choose to save files that it recovers).
- Since DiskDigger is a completely self-contained program, it leaves no trace on the computer where it is run. It does not save any settings to the registry. There is nothing to "install," and the entire program is a single executable file.
- For advanced users, DiskDigger allows scanning disk image files.
How to Use
I hope that using DiskDigger should be intuitive enough for most people to use without a written guide (if it's not, let me know how I can make it better). However, if necessary, you can check out this excellent step-by-step guide from TechRepublic.
Keeping Up
Suggestions? Comments? Questions? Send them here!
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Revision History
Version 0.8.3 (download this version)
- Added support for .WPD (WordPerfect) file format.
Version 0.8.2 (download this version)
- Improved error handling and saving of large files.
Version 0.8.1 (download this version)
- Improved detection of disk drives. Added logical disk drives for scanning.
- Added ability to select a disk image file for scanning.
Version 0.8.0 (download this version)
- Added functionality to actually undelete files from FAT and NTFS file systems.
- Updated manifest file to automatically ask for admin privileges.
Version 0.6.3 (download this version)
- Added support for Rich Text Format (RTF).
Version 0.6.2 (download this version)
- Added progress indicator when saving multiple files.
Version 0.6.1 (download this version)
- Added support for saving multiple files at a time.
- Added "select all" right-click menu option.
- Fewer false positives for MOV files.
Version 0.6.0 (download this version)
- Initial release to the Web.
May 3rd, 2010 at 4:10 am
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May 3rd, 2010 at 8:32 am
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May 5th, 2010 at 4:46 am
Thanks for sharing with us your knowlegment. You have saved my photos from my trip. Regards from Spain.
May 5th, 2010 at 10:09 am
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May 8th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
I was so glad that I found this website and I did restore all the deleted pics but there was one problem... they wouldnt show! I tried opening the images in different programs but I either get an X sign or a 'No preview available' what can I do? plz help..
P.S. the files were deleted from my blackberry 9700 and I deleted them recently
May 9th, 2010 at 2:54 am
Your software was able to deep scan photos from a erased camera memory chip, of my elderly aunt who was crying today because her cat died and she had no recent photos. She knew some cat pictures were erased on the chip, and your software was tried first and did a perfect job and a few good pictures of her dead cat were in the chip and many other pictures. Thank you for letting me make her a little happier.
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May 10th, 2010 at 1:59 am
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May 10th, 2010 at 2:17 am
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May 10th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
I'm getting "External exception EEFACE" when I try to recover images from SD card. Any idea?
Thanks
May 11th, 2010 at 12:22 pm
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May 12th, 2010 at 4:08 am
I have tried 3 other applications to recover photos from my sons camera card.
1 could not find any files.
1 found files but they where not viewable
1 crashed
Your program found 528 photos and only two of them where corrupted.
My son told the camera software to download the photos and then delete them, he bumped the camera shortly after it started and disconnected the camera lead. When he plugged it back in there where no photos visible.
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May 14th, 2010 at 5:07 pm
I'm just running DiskDugger in "dig deeper" mode on a 16 GB flash card, let's see what it can do for me. other tools have failed, this one looks good so far.
Two things would make a nice add on:
- sort by colums in the search results
- automatically save each found deleted file, so that the card does not have to be read twice or even three times
Thanks guy for this fine piece of software!
May 15th, 2010 at 3:20 am
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May 17th, 2010 at 2:10 pm
This program helped recover prom pictures off SD card. Great work.
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May 18th, 2010 at 9:12 am
Recovering cameraws SD card was a no brainer, no installation required. thats how software should be done, very well done.
May 20th, 2010 at 11:54 pm
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May 21st, 2010 at 3:03 pm
I was flabbergasted (thrilled) it worked so well!! So simple and easy to use. It performedd where others had failed. Thank you very much indeed.
May 25th, 2010 at 3:32 am
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May 26th, 2010 at 3:46 am
I'm on vacation with my family, and have been taking hundreds of pictures. Tonight, 203 pictures that were taken today got accidentally wiped from my computer and I couldn't recover them anywhere. Desperatly searching through internet suggestions, I came across DiskDigger. I found all my photos from today, as well as some photos I was missing before! DiskDigger saved the vacation album and my rear end from being chewed off by my family. Thanks, DiskDigger!!
May 30th, 2010 at 12:51 am
I just-about had a heart-atack and broke down in tears, when my cam decided to delete all my pics from over the last three years, off the SD-card. OMFG I am totally amazed, ""Diskdigger got them all back"" THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH!!!! [Dmitry] you will never know just how much I am thankfull for people like you and for programs this, and again OMFG WOW!!
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March 10th, 2011 at 9:59 am
Is it somewhat possible to use it to recover other file types?
I need to recover some html and php files off a crashed disk :/ Thanks
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