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.
v4.0 [Jun 29, 2017]
- Huge changes to the GUI to keep up with current and newer OS.
- Added very powerful search functionality immediately accessible via the main window.
- Added pre-defined search queries. For instance search for pictures, video etc.
- Detect whether drives are added or removed from the system and automatically update the drive selection combobox without affecting the currently selected drive or image file.
- Automatic drive add or removal detection can be enabled / disabled in Options (On by default).
- Ability to show graphical represenation of good vs bad blocks on all objects, files, partitions, tracks etc via the Properties dialog.
- Good vs bad blocks are also shown in the Managed Image File Manager [Professional license]. Here it is possible to select a block or zoom into the block and auto-fill the Address and Blocks' fields to easily define what blocks need to be re-read etc.
- Added easy history browsing via the breadcrumbs control.
