Active@ LiveCD is a powerful set of tools that will help you in a number of data recovery and data security scenarios.
Active@ LiveCD combines a number of powerful tools that will enable you recover lost data, reset Windows passwords, make computer system backups and securely erase data.
Active@ LiveCD starts when you start your computer from a bootable CD/DVD/BD or USB Disk.
... you gain access to the drive's data on a physical level, and on a logical level, by passing the resident operating system.
What this allows you to do is to lock selected volumes for your exclusive use.
Locking a volume is important if you want to wipe the data residue from an unoccupied space on the drive, create a "clean" data backup or recover files or folders located on system volumes.
...the local hard drive volumes cannot be locked by the resident system.
The recovery operation must have exclusive access to the target location.
If a service or another application gains access to the target location, it might write over the files that you are trying to recover, rendering them un-recoverable.