Though character-based, TestDisk and PhotoRec are just as easy to use as a GUI-based program. Being portable also makes these utilities suitable for inclusion on boot discs. Simply drag the files around on your flash drive and run them from there. This may be a bit confusing for users used to installing, but it makes the apps portable, which is far more important to the techier types who are the intended audience. You simply unzip the archive to the location from which you want to run it. Running TestDisk and PhotoRec in a DOS box under Windows, there’s no mouse control–but cursoring through the programs is just as easy.You don’t install TestDisk and PhotoRec. All this is done at low level, below the operating system. Both free programs run in a DOS box or from a command line and test, report on, fix common disk boot problems, and recover files from damaged hard drives. If you’re a fan of character-based interfaces–such as DOS–and free data recovery, you’re going to love TestDisk and its companion utility, PhotoRec (a brother program included in the TestDisk download).

Testdisk review