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Abstradrome All Deals Software Utilities Recovery Software

HDD Regenerator

Restore Physically Damaged Hard Drives

$59.95

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Platforms: Windows XP, Vista, 7 (x32, x64)

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HDD Regenerator, Recovery Software Screenshot

If you're like me, you've had your share of dead hard drives in your lifetime. But did you throw them away? No, they're all sitting in a box in your closet, basement, or attic! You probably never imagined that there would be a day when you could actually bring those drives back to life. And yet, that day is today, with HDD Regenerator!

HDD Regenerator actually regenerates physically damaged hard drives! With an outstanding ability to detect and repair physically bad sectors on your drive's platter, HDD Regenerator will give you the power to restore dead drives to life and retrieve that data that you thought was lost forever. With HDD Regenerator, you will not experience any data loss, and the program actually makes unreadable data readable again!

Here's the best part - HDD Regenerator is file system-agnostic, meaning it completely ignores your hard drive's file system in favor of scanning the disk at the physical level. You can use HDD Regenerator with FAT, NTFS, unformatted disks, unpartitioned disks -- it simply doesn't matter. You can even create bootable flash and optical media discs to automatically start the regeneration process!

Review Written by Derek Lee

The Conversation

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Expand All Email Updates Load 8 Older Comments

John C. Excuse me, but where is the promised realtime monitor that has been prosmised for half a year ?

May 7 2011 at 12:47am Copy Link

Roberto im still in v.1.71.
can i see whats new in version 2011?
can i upgrade from 1.71 to 2011?
thanks in advance.. your software saved my hard disc two or three times already.

May 10 2011 at 1:36am Copy Link

jboothco Interesting... Don't know how good this is, but it will have to do some amazing things to beat Spinrite (GRC.COM) which has been around for years and is well perfected.

May 10 2011 at 4:27am Copy Link

Roberto John, spinrite is good too, but i think slower than hdd regenerator. spinrite try to recover the invalid sectors (and that takes more time). Hddregenerator is faster and effective but only remaps the invalid sectors.

May 10 2011 at 6:04am Copy Link

S B If HDD Regenerator works quickly it could be a boon and effective.

I used several editions of Spinrite many years ago, updating it with each new addition, but I've never been convinced that it really worked as well as advertised. Its creator, Steve Gibson is a good guy and is really a hero in many ways, though Spinrite's published technical details have always seemed like snake oil to me. Spinrite 6 may not have changed at all since its introduction almost seven years ago.

Spinrite 6 *does* fail on many bad drives because it takes *many* hours of continuous searching and reading and these drives (which sometimes must be refrigerated to be even be read) get too hot and become worse or fail completely.

I don't know about HDD Regenerator; it's claims certainly sound good, but its technical details seem sketchy to me. It does seem to work in the console mode, presumably outside the operating system, and that's a good sign.

May 12 2011 at 11:32am Copy Link

Max Murkel The program's description sounds promising. But who wants to buy a software when the author / vendor refuses to answer questions?

May 12 2011 at 8:38pm Copy Link

random user Spinrite bombs on HDD w/greater than 65535 cylinders which typically means any HDD greater than 500GB so I am looking for an alternative. Does this product have any such limitation?

May 13 2011 at 2:02am Copy Link

bob roos "Make unreadable data readable again." If it does not do data analysis like SpinRite how can it accomplish this?

My big objection to SpinRite was that after it spent all the time reading one sector it wrote it back to the dying drive! I wished one could "SpinRite" drive A and as it was recovering data write it to drive B so that IF drive A died from overuse you would still have some of your data anyway. Also I wish SpinRite would have skipped over bad sectors after X tries and gone on to the next copying as it went to drive B and then come back and work on the sectors that needed extra help to be read. That would give maximum data recovery.

Alas, SR didn't do that and I suspect this does not either.

May 13 2011 at 3:28am Copy Link

RM Halfway into the sale and still no developer response? Not a good sign, and what happens if you need product support after the fact? By the way was trying to look for tech reviews on this software but didn't come up with much info on how this product works except for this link. I assume the link refers to this product and might also be developer owned perhaps? Just wondering...

http://hddregenerator.net/

May 13 2011 at 5:18am Copy Link

Jerry S Like others, I am a long-time Spinrite user who is always open to new products in this area. However, the absence of the developer or his representative here is a gigantic red flag. So is the paucity of reviews, I found several at Cnet (http://cnet.co/kkYQXZ) and, overall, they are inconclusive. Some like it, some don't. No refund policy, not enough time to really test the apparently crippled demo and no developer presence? I'll pass on this one.

May 13 2011 at 5:54am Copy Link

random user The "Policy" tab on the right says:

"30 days return policy."

I had the same question. ;-)

May 13 2011 at 6:22am Copy Link

Jerry S Thanks, zyria. I obviously missed that provision when I looked at the policy last night. Thanks for catching it. I waver on this one, I truly do. Generally I don't mind taking a chance and blowing a few bucks on an unknown product. But if this product were truly "hot" or just plain useful, there would be (I think) more reviews out there. That the developer hasn't shown up to promote sales of their own product, though, is a real blanket on my interest, What ave you decided to do?

May 13 2011 at 6:50am Copy Link

Tazzie I have Hard Disk Sentinel, and it really gives a lot of good info that you would expect from HDD Regenerator. Plus, the developer is very responsive ... read the comments section for the BDJ page for HDS. It seems they may behaving another BDJ special in the future. I'm not sure if it does all that HDD claims to, but it may be something to look at:

http://www.bitsdujour.com...fessional/

http://www.bitsdujour.com...y-license/

May 13 2011 at 11:27am Copy Link

bob roos HDS does not do recovery. But the developer seems very responsive and it would not surprise me to see that in a future product. It is a good fit. The HDS developer was here answering questions throughout the day even though he was 5 or 6 hours ahead of time in the US. That is the kind of interest I think we have come to expect from BDJ offer developers. :)

May 13 2011 at 11:34am Copy Link

Hazen Hoffpauir I had some interest in this software, but this lack of response by the author has cooled that.

May 13 2011 at 11:44am Copy Link

Tazzie Same here .... I like Hard Disk Sentinel, and thought maybe HDD could fill in what it lacks. Just too many negatives here to give me hope, so maybe we should "gang up" on poor Janos from HDS and encourage him to think strongly about expanding the functionality of HDS.

May 13 2011 at 11:56am Copy Link

Francis Pillow I'm not having any luck with the purchase. Get some eSellerate error on the web page. Recently upgraded to IE9

May 13 2011 at 4:13pm Copy Link

Royce Englehart Went ahead and got this, but with a lot of reservation. Does have a 30 day return policy and I used PayPal (wellll... maybe that isn't any real guarantee either, but it felt better than using my plastic). Now I'll run the doggey doo-doo out of it and see what falls out. Buddy of mine has Spinrite and is always bragging about it so will be interesting to put HDD R against it and see how it fares.

Too bad about the lack of response from the developer, definitely not a good sign. I hope his support is better than that, and even more I hope I don't have to find out.

May 13 2011 at 4:33pm Copy Link

Jerry S Interesting, isn't it, how many of us expect a developer to be here to answer questions about their product. I have a strong interest in products like this and $35 isn't all that much. But if the developer has so little interest in us as prospective customers before making the sale, what will become of us after the sale? Even with the 30 day refund policy, it isn't worth the potential aggravation. The folks at Bitsdujour can use this as a case example when they're training vendors how to deal with the opportunity presented here. The flip side would be folks like those from ThoughtOffice who smother us in pre-sale help and support. Too bad for the developer of HDD Regenerator who has apparently shot himself in the foot here.

May 13 2011 at 4:36pm Copy Link

random user Sorry for the delay in responding Jerry. I decided not to pull the trigger since I just don't want to deal with a return and I could not have my concern answered about the ability of this software to handle HDD greater than 65535 cylinders. I have a dead drive right here on which I could easily use it, but as with the other posters, the lack of author participation has left me less than enthused to purchase.

May 14 2011 at 9:07am Copy Link

Jerry S Zyria, thanks for the follow up. I can relate completely to not buying in order to avoid the potential hassle of a return. The idea of the product is extremely appealing, but the lack of the publisher's presence doesn't augur well for the prospects of tech support. In my business, I use a huge number of drives. Right now I have a stack of in-warranty, but dead drives which I cannot return for replacement because they have client data on them. I do have a specialized system for data recovery, but I thought HDD Regenerator might be a helpful in-between tool.

May 14 2011 at 10:34am Copy Link

ben gd This looks like a good software I will consider buying

http://hddregenerator.org/

Apr 12 2012 at 3:46pm Copy Link

taysir nadi i was using this product and the electricity go's after that when it comes back i connect the hard disk to the computer the hard disk dosent come on my computer and nothing coming up how can i get back my data?

Sep 13 2012 at 2:29am Copy Link

Spectrum Research Pretty old posts here, so for readers from this date forward check out the company's main site at : http://hddregenerator.net

May 4 2013 at 12:08am Copy Link

JesusInsideMe Really amazing software, my HD was repaired properly with this great one, this is highly recommended, God bless u, bye.

May 25 2013 at 5:00am Copy Link

S B Sounds like snake oil to me.

Lots of fluffy, magic sales words, but here is the most "detailed" explanation of what it does (from http://hddregenerator.org):

"HDD Regenerator works through the use of a special algorithm to do a complete restoration of these incorrectly magnetized parts of the disk surface. It regenerates the bad sectors through a reversal process that makes it usable and readable again."

(yes, a very "special algorithm", wow!)

Tazzie: Yes, Hard Disk Sentinel (H.D.S. Hungary) and HDD Regenerator (Abstradrome, Dimitriy Primochenko, Baku, Azerbaijan) are from very different companies.

Jul 10 2013 at 7:15am Copy Link

Pat ONeil I'll stick with Spinrite.

Jul 25 2013 at 9:17am Copy Link