Best 2018 Data Recovery Software
We’ve all been there. You spent two hours working on a very important project and your computer crashes! A wave of nausea overcomes you when you realize that your files have been lost. In the past, you would have to take your computer to a professional. He would keep your computer for several days before rendering a verdict on whether he was able to recover even some of your lost files.
These days recovering files is a whole different story. Not only do you not have to give up your computer for several days, but you can recover the lost files yourself. There are many data recovery software programs on the market. Some are really good and very user-friendly while others are not. Look at several data recovery programs and rated them based on ease of use, effectiveness of recovering lost files, and availability of help/support. While the focus of our review was windows software, we did note that three of the programs rated in our top ten offered other platform options. R-Studio, Disk Doctors, and Quick Recovery offer data recovery software for MAC and Linux as well as Windows.
Our top three picks were Digital Rescue Premium, Advanced Disk Recovery, and Recover My Files. Each program received very high marks for ease of use. Recover My Files came in third because it is a little pricier than the others and its speed of recovering files is slower.
Our fourth pick, EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard, gives users the opportunity to recover drive partitions. It lost points for not providing a contact number as part of its help/support. It is also slower and more expensive than our top two picks.
Our fifth and sixth picks, Total Recall and Handy Recovery, fell short in different areas. Total Recall ranked higher than Handy Recovery because it is more effective. However, both programs lost points for help/support.
Both Windows Data Recovery and R-Studio, our seventh and eighth picks, did not fare as well as other programs we reviewed in the area of user-friendliness. R-Studio’s user interface can be a little difficult to navigate. Windows Data Recovery can also be confusing, but its biggest drawback is its price.
Quick Recovery and Data Recovery Pro, our ninth and tenth picks, both offer effective recovery tools, but not much else. If you are looking for extra features, these might not be the programs for you. Their relatively low price does make them worth looking at.
Almost every program we reviewed offers a free download so you can try out the software. You are allowed to recover a limited number of files (the amount depends of the program), before having to purchase the software. These ten data recovery programs are worth looking over.
A big mistake here is to look only at the price of data recovery software programs and then choose the one that is the cheapest. While this may save you some money, it will not usually result in you saving a lot of your data. Remember, it is all about recovering lost data and so you need to conduct just a bit of research here.
A great place to start your research is online, but if you simply conduct an online search for the top recovery software programs, you will likely have your head spin with the many results you will be looking at. However, there are three software programs in particular that are always at the top of everyone’s list when it comes to recovery and these three superstars are:
- Runtime Data Recovery Software: Runtime has a large selection of different data recovery applications to recover deleted files that can be purchased depending on the specific problem you are having with your computer. This is helpful as some data recovery software will only work with certain problems, were as Runtime breaks down the most common problems by application and offers up solutions all at varying prices.
- DT Utilities Digital Rescue: Digital Rescue is another data recover software program that allows you do-it-yourself recovery in the event of computer problems. Using an easy to install ‘smart wizard’ you can easily search for and retrieve missing or damaged data files in no time at all.
- Ontrack Data Recovery: Ontrack offers you the ability to manage your data and keep it safe in the event that something goes wrong. This type of data recovery software is best used while your computer is running properly, but if something should go wrong, then you have peace of mind knowing that you should be able to successfully recover most, or all, of your files with great ease.
