There are additional difficulties associated with the transition of many companies to work remotely because of Coronavirus. It would be ideal if the employee had his/her own laptop in the office, which makes it easy to then work remotely.
But what if the person had a desktop PC or a mixed weekly schedule between the office and home? This would create a needs for a second laptop or PC at home, and there could be problems.
What if the home PC does not have programs that you need for work? They would need to be installed, and these programs can cost quite a bit per license, given the potential number of PCs in a company.
Besides, it is okay only if your home computer has enough storage space to install the said programs. If not, you will need to install another hard drive, which also adds cost and complexity.
Another problem may be that you need to work on your home PC for many hours a day. The probability of failure of the hard drive itself or some of its segments then increases many times. And now, if something happened, and almost all users are afraid of that, the hard drive could become unavailable, or files could be inaccessible.
Experts, which can be called “masters” or “hackers,” could extract files from broken or damaged hard drives, and do so without fail. But even files recovered from failed storage devices can still be corrupted and the program would not be able to open them. Now the file content itself needs to be recovered, or corrected.
The Recovery Toolbox Company (https://recoverytoolbox.com/) has been dealing with file corruption since 2003, that is why it has extensive experience with this complicated task and deals with the most commonly used file types worldwide.
The best way to know about a company is to communicate with its CEO and get first-hand answers to your questions. Let us introduce him:
Victor BOBROV, CEO of Recovery Toolbox, answers questions.
Victor BOBROV, CEO of Recovery Toolbox
Does your company recover files from a corrupted or damaged hard drive?
No, our company has a slightly different specialization. When recovering data from bad HDDs, half of the work is restoring the physical data carrier, so a “healthy donor” is needed, and the other half is software solutions for extracting data from a “repaired” device.
How effective are your programs for recovering damaged files after they have been extracted from a “dead” hard drive?
The answer is the description above: If the disk recovery software worked well, our programs could work productively. But sometimes we are so horrified by the state of the recovered files that we just shrug our shoulders.
Is it possible to take advantage of the free/trial versions of your programs for some time to evaluate them?
Each program or online recovery service has a page with a preview of the recovered data, which is a viewer of the damaged files. It is always free, and most users use it. For example, just to view a drawing of AutoCAD or CorelDraw, you need to have a version of the corresponding application installed.
An official license is costly. Besides, our demos are free, and they can be used for an unlimited number and lengths of uses. As in the joke about the queue: “I’ll just ask.” And with us: “I’ll just have a look.”
Can you recover the file if the client had the wrong version of the software at home, and this file became “cracked”?
Our programs are compatible with a large number of file versions, which is the result of many years of work in this very specialized sector of the market. We read and restore all existing versions, but we hide all this complexity, so the user will only deal with the minimalistic and straightforward interface of programs and services.
Can I send a file to your company to investigate the possibility of repairing it?
An integral part of our daily work is providing this type of service. If the user has problems, then we try to solve them. If the data is confidential, and this is a frequent occurrence, then we sign the NDA. Thanks to such daily work, it is possible to improve the quality of programs and stay in the market.
Sometimes files get corrupted when the power has turned off unexpectedly. Can your programs suffer from this kind of damage?
Sudden loss of power is the most common cause of file corruption. Our users leave their data corruption stories at this address, which is merely a long script, which should not be run in order not to lose your data.
How can I extend the purchased program?
About half of our programs have lifetime licenses. For the second half, the cost of renewal is 30-50% of the cost of a full license. All purchases and renewals can be made online.
How many paid programs do you have, and how many free ones?
We have 28 paid programs and three free tools.
Can I recover a password for an email account on an Exchange Server?
You can recover a great many things. The password for the Exchange Server mail account is usually absent, as authentication occurs through the Windows Domain Controller during the standard Windows login. So, you really need a Windows password.
We do not have such a program in the arsenal. But our friends at “Elcomsoft” have. Contact them.
Is it possible to recover a lost Outlook password?
There is such a possibility. Our Recovery Toolbox can make a recovery for Outlook Password (https://outlookpassword.recoverytoolbox.com/).
Is it possible to repair an MS SQL Server database consisting of several source data files?
Yes, of course. This type of repair is a widespread situation.
To recover large databases, the MS SQL Server requires a significant amount of RAM. How is it possible to estimate the necessary size of Physical Memory for database recovery?
We have very experienced programmers, and our programs are optimized to work not just with large but enormous amounts of data. But if we are talking about recovering MDF/NDF files for Microsoft SQL Server databases, then there is not much RAM used there. We do not even come close to the limitations of memory usage for 32-bit applications.
We have only one program in 32-bit and 64-bit versions, which is the Recovery Toolbox for Outlook. The need for a 64-bit version is associated with the existence of Microsoft Outlook’s 64-bit version in which the restored data is saved. And if the user has 64-bit Outlook, then 64-bit Recovery Toolbox for Outlook is accordingly launched.
It happens very rarely when several hard drives are in a shallow RAID-array, and suddenly two of them “die” at once. Can you help in this case?
Unfortunately, we do not have RAID-array recovery tools.
Your site is prompted to a “broken” file to repair it immediately. Recovering files through an online service costs $10 per 1 GB of source file size. But if the file turns out to be very small, do you get paid for it, or is there a size for which it is free?
We could have created a cost of $10 per file; it is simple and straightforward. However, sometimes users send huge files, and their recovery requires extensive resources. Therefore, it is not possible to make a recovery cheaper because it often exceeds the cost.
In which year did your company begin to work in the Recovery Toolbox market, and how many employees currently work in it?
Our company was founded back in 2003. Now we have nine people employees, and almost all work remotely.
Do you get in touch with the developers of the programs your company is treating?
No, our attempts to contact Microsoft and Adobe were unsuccessful, so we do not try to communicate with them any longer.
Who does your company consider its competitors in the recovery market?
We have three serious competitors: Office Recovery – USA, DataNumen – China, and Stellar – India. Also, there are a dozen small competitor companies with 3-5-7 file recovery programs.
What part of your financial component do foreign clients outside Russia bring?
Our foreign clients outside of Russia make up between 95-97% of our financial component, and everything corresponds to the share of GDP in the world separation.
On what new recovery programs is your company currently working?
The emphasis in our work is shifting towards work on SaaS (Software as a Service). So, the user can recover any file from any device online. It is easier and cheaper for users because there is no need to install programs on a computer.
The latest solution from Recovery Toolbox allows online recovery of damaged files from any device and any operating system of the following types:
- Adobe Acrobat / Reader (* .pdf files)
- Adobe Illustrator (* .ai files)
- Adobe Photoshop (* .pst files)
- AutoCAD (* .dwg files)
- CorelDraw (* .cdr files)
- IBM Lotus Notes (* .nsf files)
- Microsoft Access (* .mdb, * .accdb files)
- Microsoft Excel (* .xls, * .xlt, * .xlsx, * .xlsm, * .xltm, * .xltx and * .xlam files)
- Microsoft Exchange Server (* .edb files)
- Microsoft FoxPro / dBase IV / Clipper / DBF (* .dbf files)
- Microsoft OneNote (*. onenote, * .one files)
- Microsoft Outlook (* .pst, * .ost files)
- Microsoft Outlook Express (* .dbx files)
- Microsoft PowerPoint (* .ppt, * .pptx files)
- Microsoft Project (* .mpp files)
- Microsoft SQL Server (* .mdf, * .ndf files)
- Microsoft Word (* .doc, * .docx, * .dot, * .dotx, * .rtf files)
- MySQL databases
- Windows Address Book (* .wab files)
- Windows registry
- WinRAR archive (* .rar files)
- WinZIP archive (* .zip files)