a review by Tom Piper
Failure of any digital data volume can be catastrophic, with loss of time, effort and money . . . its not a matter of "IF", but rather 'WHEN"! Backups are essential, but they can fail as well. To address this issue, I've previously written reviews about CD/DVD recovery in November 2011 (applejac/cd-dvd-recovery) and photo recovery in December 2013 (applejac/photo-recovery). Now, its time to review a great product that universally recovers data from most any digital volume.
Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery - Professional is a utility which, in the words of their website, "has many options to cater critical data loss situations. Issues such as (but not limited to) lost partitions or Time Machine drives, corrupted BootCamp Partition, or lost data on encrypted drives will no longer worry you, as Mac Data Recovery has all capabilities to recover your data from any kind of data loss situation."
Specifically, on the Macintosh computer, if my lost data is not yet written over, this software will scan my storage device and locate recognizable file structures that can be fully restored. All popular photo, video, and audio files are supported natively (more formats can be easily added to the list). This utility includes a feature called Can't Find Volume which recovers lost data from severely damaged or corrupt hard drives or volumes, as well as a deleted BootCamp Partition. In case a drive is heavily corrupted, the Deep Scan feature will take more time, but scans the drive sector-by-sector to recover all the data.
Although the Mac Data Recovery software works only on Mac computers, it can access and recover data from many storage device formats including HFS, HFS+, FAT, ex-FAT, or NTFS file systems. If the data is encrypted, simply enter the drive’s password to access the recovery options for that drive. The usual method is to use the Recover Everything, but if I already know which file type I need to recover, I can select documents, emails, video, audio files, or photos to make the recovery process faster, which I can then preview files before saving. Another feature I really like, if I've thrown something away, is the ability to still recover that file, even if I've emptied the Trash folder.
As I have often preached, we know that the most reliable protection against data loss is data backup where Time Machine is considered the most popular method for my computer. But, a Time Machine backup drive can also get corrupted at any given time. As an added benefit, this software supports Time Machine-designated drives and restores data from them.
Fortunately, the Mac Data Recovery software’s graphical user interface is simple and easy to navigate for me, or virtually any user. Choosing what types of files to look for is simple and straight-forward because all are shown immediately upon opening the utility (a click on any will turn on/off). A click on Next shows all connected volumes, any of which can be selected with another click, then tapping on the Scan button starts the process automatically. A visual progress report provides immediate feedback of percentage scanned, status, size of files found, time elapsed, and time left. My scan of a 750GB SSD volume was done in less than 4 minutes, the result showing all recoverable folders and files (a checkbox next to each allows me to decide which ones to recover).
When needed, I can even customize how the scan results are displayed. Beyond that, I can also prevent data loss before it happens by using Create Image which compresses all the data on my hard drive into a ".dmg" file. This image file can then be opened later to restore these files and folders. As can be seen from my brief recap of features, this is a powerful program which is a valuable new addition to my toolbox of important utilities. If data protection is equally essential to you, this tool can be greatly beneficial to you too.
Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery - Professional can be purchased for $99 from stellarinfo.com/data-recovery-mac (a free trial download is available to preview recovered files before buying). For a limited time, a special Apple user group member worldwide offer is also available using the coupon code (DS-20MacAg) which takes $20 off this great product (valid until April 30, 2018).