Before you start data recovery

1. Think about how to connect the drives to your computer. If you need to recover data from an external hard drive, then everything is simple - connect the drive as you usually do. But in the case of data recovery, for example from a multi-disk NAS device, connecting disks becomes quite a difficult task. Sometimes you need to buy additional devices such as USB-to-SATA adapters or disk stations.
2. Think about where you will copy the recovered data. If you need to recover a couple of files, then there will be no difficulties. But if the volume of recovered data is estimated in terabytes, then you need to prepare the device for copying in advance and decide how you will connect it to the computer.
3. If you suspect that the disk is “not healthy,” do not be lazy and run one of the programs to detect the state of the disk. You can find good free software on the Internet. It does not take a lot of time. If the software says that the disk is indeed unhealthy, then do not run data recovery on it, but make a disk image file and use it to recover data. You can make a disk image in the demo version of the ReclaiMe File Recovery software. Detailed instructions on creating a disk image can be found on this page.

How to recover data

1. Connect the device from which you want to recover data to a computer running Windows. In the case of a NAS device or RAID, you have to connect all disks separately to the computer at the same time.
2. Download, install and run ReclaiMe File Recovery.
3. Select the required device and click Start .

4. Wait until you receive a message that “Initial scan is completed” and start checking the recovered data. If the recovery is successful, then files such as pictures, PDF files, videos, music should be displayed in the usual way in the Preview window. Other file types such as exe, psd and others are displayed in hexadecimal view.

5. If the files are displayed correctly in Preview and the size of the recovered files is as expected, then you may not continue scanning, because most likely all the files have already been recovered at this point. Otherwise, click Resume to continue scanning.
6. Buy the required version of the ReclaiMe license key and copy the recovered data to a previously prepared device. If you are recovering data from a Windows device, then you need the Standard version, in the case of Linux and MacOS – Ultimate. Take into account that the license key for ReclaiMe software is lifetime, you will be able to use it even after several years, and even on another computer.

This tutorial includes basic steps for working with the software. However, there are some specifics to recover data from different devices. Below is a list of tutorials for different devices and also ReclaiMe manual.

Also, please, visit the section on our website Knowledge base, where all the information about data recovery is collected.