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.
v3.3 [Nov 28, 2013]
- Added "Extract but filter Mpg" for all files, not just MPEG1 filtering of DAT files on VCD. If you extract a VOB file from a DVD this way you end up with a perfect MPEG2 file.
- Detect Encrypted partitions on which no file-systems can be found (for instance encrypted with TrueCrypt).
- Implemented certain shell commands. Right mouse click on an optical drive will show "investigate with IsoBuster". IsoBuster is added to the list of programs that is available via "Open with".
Improvements:
- The toolbar installation is unchecked by default.
- FAT Improvement.
- Deal smarter with huge FATs, suppress warning message and don't load in memory all at once
- Better error display instead of the horrific and way too generic Borland C++ Builder 'EEFFACE' message for C++ exceptions
- Avoid Nikon NEF files being found as Kodak KDC files
- Suppress Windows 2000 dialog when there is no floppy in the drive and the drive is being scanned
- Implemented the ability to detect a floppy drive for what it really is even if there is no floppy in the drive. Before it was not possible to detect a floppy drive properly if it had no disk inside.
- Scan the full drive letter range A - Z in search of floppy drives, instead of just A and B, now that they can be detected more reliable
- Small speed improvements here and there, trying to serve results faster when and where possible.
- Improvements in finding the proper recordings' names on edited DVD-VR discs
- Improvements to deal with bad (non-windows compatible) file names
- Improvement in building FAT long file names from corrupted directory tables with wrong checksums
- Improvement to detect UDF on a CD-R with incorrect track layout
- Remove certain dialogs with questions during startup for very new users (no prior install), to not confuse them. Use the best Exploration settings instead
- Updated LibEWF support to libewf-20130416
- Show compressed folders blue in the Treeview (left pane), not just the ListView (right pane)
- Show encrypted files and folders green in both left and right pane
- Show encrypted partitions green in both left and right pane
- Show "Sparse" for LastLBA in case the object (or last extent) is Sparse
- Show an empty block and do not read block 0 in case the object is sparse during a SectorView
- When an NTFS extent is extracted on its own ([Professional] license) and when that extent is a compressed part of a compressed file, then it's decompressed on the fly as well
- Various other smaller GUI improvements
