IsoBuster is intended to rescue files lost due to multiple causes, like accidental deletion, corrupted partition and virus attacks. The program supports practically any type of storage device, including optical discs, memory cards, USB drives and hard disks. Likewise, it can open an impressive list of image file extensions. It is good news that it supports not only Windows file systems (FAT and NTFS) but others as well.
The program does an excellent job of extracting contents from optical discs that are not in an optimum state. This includes playing audio from damaged analog CDs. Moreover, it has the advantage of supporting managed image files, which eliminates the necessity of extracting all the contents of a disc. The tool can also perform surface scans and mark defective blocks, which can later be filled manually.
All in all, IsoBuster provides an effective way to recover lost data irrespective of the original storage device and file system. In this respect, the program is more powerful than others. In my opinion, its main weakness is still its interface, which makes it inappropriate for inexperienced users. Moreover, I think that the tool would be complete if it allowed backing up partitions as ISO files, something that is possible with other data recoverers. The product is shareware and can be evaluated at no cost. However, some of its features are restricted, such as recovering files and viewing a sector.
v2.8 [May 17, 2010]
Changes:
- A great deal of new extensions were added to the signature detection which happens during a search for missing files and folders. Besides a large number of various files, picture formats and multimedia files there's now also accurate detection of documents such as: *.wpd, *.sdw, *.odt, *.sxw, *.sxc, *.sxi, *.sxm, *.std, *.ott, *.ots, *.ods, *.odb, *.odg, *.odf, *.odp, *.wb2, *.nsf, *.max and most Office document formats, such as *.doc, *.docx, *.xls, *.xlsx, *.ppt, *.pptx, *mdb, *.pst, *.pub, *.vsd, *.rtf, *.db, *.one, *.wri, *.msi
- Command line support has been enhanced with a large number of new parameters and combinations. Besides initiating "/scan" and extracting the files found based on their signature "sig:" there is now also the possibility to extract "all:" tracks / sessions / file systems, dynamically change the names of the extract-to files or folders, export file-lists ("/tree") based on a number of parameters/ tokens etc.
Improvements:
- UDF scan for missing files improvements, so that in case of many references to VAT tables not the same sectors are read again and again, and so that duplicate UDF FS are not listed anymore
- Updated EWF support to the latest and greatest status of the LibEWF project
- Ability to "OK to all" on Windows IO errors during extraction to avoid X amount of such dialogs when multiple files are processed
- Always display a message after a forced online check, even if it is the most recent version, and even if the user set not to display beta or final version warnings
- The cue file full path was displayed in the Save Dialog control instead of only the filename.
- Ability to build lists, showing the extents of fragmented files. [Business] feature.
- Various other GUI improvements
Fixes:
- Small issue that caused some DVD IBP/IBQ images to be recognised as CD, so that they could not be completed anymore, etc.
