First Look: Data Rescue II hard disk recovery

No matter how careful or experienced you may be, you will lose files eventually, either by accident or through a hard disk failure. When you lose files through an accident, such as deleting a file by mistake, you can often retrieve that file by dragging it out of the Trash. However, if you lose a file through a hard disk failure, your files are usually gone for good unless you have a special data recovery program like Data Rescue II from Prosoft Engineering.

Unlike traditional hard disk diagnostic tools that try to repair damaged hard disks by physically manipulating a hard disk's contents, Data Rescue II takes a different approach. The program can either clone your entire hard disk to another hard disk, or temporarily copy a hard disk to another one. That way the program never risks altering the original data, which could cause further data loss.

To recover data from a hard disk, you just need to install Data Rescue II on a Macintosh and plug an ailing hard disk into your computer through a USB or Firewire cable. In many cases, the Finder may not even recognize the hard disk as valid, but Data Rescue II can still find and access the hard disk anyway. This feature alone separates Data Rescue II from other hard disk diagnostic programs and virtually guarantees that you'll be able to access any hard disk no matter how badly damaged it may be.