Once again, I must thank r-tools technology for their wonderful (in features and price) product, R-Studio.

I was trying out one of those SD slots that a lot of new computers have and mistakenly made the assumption that I could just yank the SD card out (which you can do with a USB device on Windows XP) without “safely removing” it. Unfortunately, doing so seriously jacks the filesystem on the SD card, or at least the partition table. Unfortunately, this meant that I lost all the pictures I took over Christmas. Bummer, but not something to get too distraught over…my brother, sister, and father all had a Pentax camera at hand during the week as well.

But this morning, I finally remembered I wanted to try doing a little data recovery. After spending half-an-hour finding my old registration key and the install files, I loaded up R-Studio, scanned the disk and amazingly two partitions showed up - one jacked up, and the other the original, valid partition! A right-click and Recover All Files later and I had my pictures back, properly dated and everything! Although they haven’t updated their software in years, it is well worth the $180 I paid for their top-of-the-line version that can even recover files on a remote computer.

Note: R-TT also just released a new firewall product, R-Firewall! I’ll have to test it out and see if it’s any good. I’m always on the hunt for good personal firewalls. My current personal favorite…Kerio.