I have a laptop of my business partner and I am looking to get some of the important business documents and contacts from it. I don’t know what operating system I will be dealing with. Due to some problem, the laptop has not been used since a very long time. There is a chance that it might  be having  FAT32 file system. I have decided to rip the hard disk out, and connect it as an external drive to my computer and run the recovery software, to retrieve the files. Which of your data recovery software can help me?

FAT32 is the file system utilized in some of the older versions of Microsoft Windows Operating System. It is the default file system on Windows 98. FAT32 is an improvement from the original FAT file system, since it uses more bits to identify each cluster on the disk. A fat 32 volume is limited to a size of 32 GB, and an individual file cannot be larger than 4 GB. Fat 32 describes how the data is stored on a hard drive.

Most Windows XP and Vista systems nowadays use the NTFS file system, as it has additional features, absent in the FAT file system . However, there are some older systems, that still make use of the FAT file system.You can easily recover these old files, by using REMO Recover (Windows) Pro Edition.

REMO Recover (Windows) Pro Edition software, lets you recover files from a  FAT32 drive, with ease. The software also lets you create a disk image, and later recover data from the disk image, so that byte by byte information is saved. Try it Now!

REMO Recover (Windows) Pro Edition is compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 2003, Windows 2008 and Windows 7. It lets you recover data from both  FAT and NTFS file systems.

Note: Make sure you do not install the software onto the drive  from which you are trying to recover the data. Install the software onto another healthy PC, and  connect the FAT32 drive to it as a slave.  Run the software on that PC, to recover data from the laptop.

Recovery after Installation

After the software is installed, follow the instructions given below to recover the files:

Step 1: Run REMO Recover (Windows) Pro Edition software by double clicking the  desktop icon, or by selecting the icon from the Programs list in the Start Menu. This will launch the application Main window, as shown  in Figure a.

Figure a: Main window

Step 2:Click on the Recover-Advanced button. A window pops up as shown in Figure b. Click on the FAT Partition Recovery button, to proceed to the next step.

Figure b: FAT Partition Recovery Selection

Step 3:As soon as you click the FAT Partition Recovery button, a new window pops up as shown in Figure c. Click on the Wizard button, present on the upper left hand corner of the window. The Wizard is launched, as shown in Figure c.

Figure c: Wizard window

Step 4: Select Recover your data option and click on the Next button. Select the physical drive from which data needs to be recovered, and click on the Next button to continue, as shown in figure d. Select the processing mode to process the drive.

The software provides two processing modes.

• Display default partitions- This option displays the partitions already present on the hard drive.

• Search for lost partitions- This option displays the lost or corrupted partitions of that hard drive, which are not listed in the Display default partitions option.

Note: By default, the processing mode is set to Display default partition(s). If you do not find the partition(s) you are looking for, in the default list, then, you can search for lost partitions, by clicking the Search for lost partition(s) radio button.

Figure d: Select physical drive

Step 5: The application now analyzes the drive, and lists all the found partitions in a table format, as shown in Figure e.

Figure e: Found partitions

Select a partition for processing, and click on the Finish button. The application processes the partition and displays the found files and folders in a tree structure as shown in Figure e.

Figure f: Found files and folders

The next step is to save the files you have found. The application lets you save the scan information. You can open the scan info file whenever required, using the open scan information option in File menu and recover data to desired destination drive.

You can also preview the files before recovery. Simply double click the file in the tree to  preview it.
Step 6: To save the recovered file, select the file and click the Save button in the tools menu. You can also save data of an entire tree/selected tree, to any desired location, by clicking the Save all button.

As you select the files to be recovered and right click, a pop up menu is displayed to select the Save option. Select Save option and also select the destination drive, where you wish to save the recovered data, and click the OK button.(see figure g).

Figure g: Select destination drive

All the files will be saved at the selected destination drive of your choice. You can now access them like before.

Important: Do not save the file(s) to the same location from which you are recovering the data, as this may lead to permanent data loss.

Note: The Save option is not available in the demo version.You can only preview the file(s) in the demo version, but not save them. You need to buy the full version of the software to activate the Save option.

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