Agnivo Roy

Personal computers or PC’s as we call them have become an integral part of our daily lives and being widely used at homes, organizations, offices and where not. We are getting increasingly dependent on computers to store and manage various kinds of data and digital information in the form of “files” like documents, spreadsheets, movies, music, images, etc.

One of the most common computer components that stores all your data is the hard disk. Like all electronic devices, the hard disk might go bad and you end up tearing your hairs off fearing loss of data that is vital to you. Some might ask “Why didn’t you backed up the data regularly?” Though it’s a golden rule to take regular backups, in most cases it isn’t followed in practice due to various reasons and there are some cases where regular backups aren’t practicable.

Now let’s find out common causes of hard disk data loss.

• File-system corruption.
• Accidentally Formatting the HDD.
• Inadvertent deletion of files or folders.
• Hard disk (HDD) malfunction or crashing.
• Viruses or malwares affecting your file-system.
• Partitions or volumes corrupted, deleted or lost.
• Hard disk / partitions not being detected by OS.
• Someone hacked into or sabotaged your computer.

This is where data recovery and hard disk data recovery applications come handy; to try recover the most amount of data possible over to a new media, minimizing the probable loss of valuable or confidential data.

Today I’m reviewing a very popular and feature rich Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery Software (version 3) that has proven itself to be worthy over years with more than 1,00,000 satisfied customers from 137 countries!

Brand Image

Stellar has been providing data recovery related services and software since 1993. I have come across their solutions in the form of advertisements in popular IT magazines for many years. They have a solid reputation in the industry and have won many awards for data recovery and data management related software solutions worldwide.

They offer data recovery, data restore, data availability, data safety, file recover, email recovery as well as data erasing and shredding software solutions for various platforms like Windows, Linux, Mac, Unix and more. They’re a provider you can’t go wrong with.

Features

Below are concise features. Check detailed Stellar Phoenix features and screenshots.

• Read only operation on the affected media; fully safe.
• Standard and advanced scan methods to recover data better.
• Scan and recover lost logical drives, partitions, files and folders.
• Raw file recovery supporting over 300 popular file formats.
• Enhanced photo recovery for digital image files.
• Compressed file system recovery.
• Create sector-wise image for problematic media and easy restore later.
• File preview to check contents before recovery.
• Great intuitive and improved user interface.
• Multiple recovery and restore options.
• Live Updater to keep the program updated
• Save media scan to continue from there later.
• Supports FAT16, FAT32, VFAT, NTFS and NTFS5 file system.
• English, French, Italian, German, Spanish Language Support.

System Requirements / Installation

You can run Stellar Phoenix for Windows on almost any computer system in use today. Starting from Pentium class, any CPU will do. 128MB+ RAM is recommended and only 35MB free space needed for installation. Windows 2000/2003/XP and Vista OS supported.

The installation was intuitive and simple like all modern applications and was fast enough. Anyone can install the application without much effort.

Usability / Interface

The user interface is clean, well-designed and intuitive. Most users should have no problem navigating through it and finding the right options to work with. The fresh UI makes data recovery easier without requiring any technical knowledge. The toolbar with big buttons for Find File, File Mask and File Filter options to help you search, view and recover any specific file type. If you’re stuck, the help section is there for your rescue. Five different languages are also supported.

Performance / Data Recovery Test

Stellar Phoenix was able to recover most of the data I tested with. It could recover and restore many recently deleted files and folders on my HDD. Tested more with common file formats on different types of file-systems and got good results. I hooked up an old 20GB corrupted hard disk and it was able to list the lost partitions and recover a few of them (there was a physical defect on this HDD, so full recovery wasn’t possible). Overall, I was satisfied with the performance, recovery rate and accuracy.

Pricing / Licensing

You can download a trial or Stellar Phoenix Demo for free to scan inaccessible partitions, preview recoverable files with our integrated viewer and make a confident purchase decision. A 30 day money back guarantee is also offered.

Three types of licensing is available (Life-time) :

• Single User (Home User/SOHO Segment) – from $99
• Administrator License (Corporate/Government/Academic Segment User) – from $169
• Technician License (Data Recovery/Repair and Maintenance Companies) – from $299

Support / Updates

Users receive 24 hours (Monday to Friday) technical support over phone (US,UK,Germany,India). Also available are live chat, ticket and email based support. For businesses and serious data recovery needs, you can ask a data recovery expert to call you back.

The software has built in live updater to check and apply new updates as and when available from Stellar. Also, they offer upgrade option to old users who have licenses for depreciated versions of the programs.

Overall / Conclusion

The Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery Software lives up to it’s expectations and is stable, feature-rich, good value for money and functional enough for most data recovery needs. I hightly recommend this product and personally rate it 4.5 out of 5

Acknowledgement : Special thanks to Stellar Information Systems for honoring my request and providing a complimentary license helping to review this product better.

Fore more info visit Stellar Website at www.stellarinfo.com