There is no charge, but the support for demo users is limited.
It depends on how the partition was lost, and if the Master File Table (MFT) was corrupted when the partition info was damaged. Also, if the partition was quick formatted, the original data may show but will not be recovered when the partition is. In that case (quick format on a partition) we recommend using file recovery. It will recover the files to another, healthy partition.
If the MBR needs to be recovered the program will tell you (disk needs to be initialized) and it has the ability to initialize a drive (tools-> fix mbr).
The MBR contains the partition info, not the boot sectors.
When a partition is recovered by either dos or windows the names of the files will be unchanged, assuming the Master File Table was not damaged.
Yes, again assuming the MFT is healthy. Sometimes it is damaged in a slight way that we do not see, but windows does. If the files are not visible after recovering (which happens a small portion of the time) and they were visible to partition recovery, sometimes running chkdsk on the volume will fix it. In general, if ONLY the partition info was damaged, and the file structure was not corrupted, the entire file structure will be recovered.
It is always a good idea to back up the files, but there is no yes or no answer for that question. The software does not know what caused the problem and can not stop it from happening again. If it was a one time thing it will not make a difference.
There is no advantage. The boot cd is for computers that can not boot into windows.
The windows version can do pretty much anything the dos version can. The dos version is not used much now that we have the bootable windows version. The dos version can ve used on older computers that can not boot into windows. Not a lot of people use the dos version but we keep it around for the few that need it.
I do not know. I do not use them.
No. File recovery may be able to recover the data, but partition recovery can not help if a drive has been formatted. (Sometimes it can help if the drive was fat32 and formatted NTFS and vice versa, but it can not help if the disk has been formatted, quick or full, using the same file system). Partition recovery only recovers the partition information, and formatting overwrites file system info (file tables used / unused space etc).
Partition recovery for windows runs on windows 7. The dos version may not run.
The utility runs in windows and has no size limit. The dos one only writes to fat drives so it splits the disk into smaller chunks, as fat32 has a file size limit. The dos version can image a 100 gig drive, but you will have 50 2 gig files. The windows version can either make it a single file or split it into smaller files. If you were saving the image to a fat 32 drive, even with the windows version you would need to split the file into chunks due to the fat32 file size limit.
When you same the MBR it does not save the list from the scans. It only saves what is in the MBR.