Damaged file recovery that actually works.

JFileRecovery is a tool that lets you recover files from corrupted media, mainly CDs and DVDs and in less frequent instances, hard disks and flash drives.

The principle on which it works is, when a file is reported as corrupt by the system it is likely that just small part(s) of it are actually damaged. JFileRecovery lets you recover the undamaged portions of the file and optionally retry recovering the damaged portions. It lets you set the size of data blocks it tries to recover, so you can start by setting a larger block size and then if block x is damaged and unrecoverable you can reduce the block size and rescan block x so you can recover any part of it that may be undamaged. It is even possible to eject a disk, clean it, pop it back in and continue scanning with a different block size. You can also set the error timeouts, the time before the software gives up on a block. Because of these caveats JFileRecovery works best with multimedia files... photos, videos, music. The author recommends you avoid using it on executable files.

JFileRecovery is freeware and has a very easy to use, no-nonsense interface. It is a Java app and you'll need Java installed on your machine to run it.

JFileRecovery Home (has a detailed explanation of what the software does)

Standalone Download [39 KB]

Webstart JFileRecovery (launch directly)