Data recovery should not be complicated. New undelete tools are being released to address the lack of usability of the old one. Featured today, Disk Recovery Wizard employs step-by-step user interface and offers data recovery in just a few clicks. But how does this modern tool fare in benchmark tests? Read our review to find out!
| Author: | WizardRecovery Company |
|---|---|
| Language: | English |
| Date: | 04/17/2010 |
| Size: | 4843 kb |
| License: | Shareware |
| Price: | $139.95 |
| Platform: | WinXP Windows2000 Windows2003 Windows Vista Windows 7 |
Disk Recovery Wizard: Wizard-Based Recovery
Thereís no lack of data recovery tools on the market. New ones are being released every other week, or so it appears. Disk Recovery Wizard is the newest addition to the league of data recovery tools that can restore lost data and fix damaged disks at the same time. How does it fare against the established competition? Read our test report to find out.
Background
Recovery-Review readers are well aware of the fact that there are many disk and data recovery tools around. Among those, there are many good tools and a few great ones. The better data recovery tools feature some sort of proprietary algorithms to gain access to data no matter whether or not its traces are left in the file system. This is usually done via some sort of signature scan, a feature that works similar to anti-virus products by analyzing every chunk of information read from the disk surface and sensing whether this or that block of data resembles a familiar file in a known format. If this is the case, the algorithm would further analyze information in order to determine the exact type and length of the file and possibly its other attributes.
Disk Recovery Wizard
Disk Recovery Wizard plays in the same league as previously reviewed data recovery tools. It does feature its own version of a signature-scan algorithm. Its version of a signature scan algorithm is called PowerSearch. The proprietary PowerSearch technology performs the most thorough analysis of the disk among all signature-scan algorithms tested by Recovery-Review. When testing Disk Recovery Wizard, we found no surprised in this respect. As expected, PowerSearch was able to locate all files we deleted from the test partition. It was able to reliably detect and restore files from a formatted flash card. All in all, a truly awesome performance here. Typical for this class of data recovery tools, more than 150 file formats are supported by the PowerSearch engine.
Disk Recovery Wizard: Usability
How can yet another player survive on the packed data recovery market? In a word: usability. What Disk Recovery Wizard offers ñ and other donít ñ is the user experience thatís hard to duplicate. Employing the simplest configuration and the easiest user interface in the form of a step-by-step wizard, Disk Recovery Wizard can be learned on the fly and used efficiently by even the least experienced users. The screen shot below illustrates the concept.
Typical for this class of data recovery tools, Disk Recovery Wizard comes with a set of viewers allowing the user to see what they are recovering. Pre-recovery preview allows WYSIWYG type operation on recoverable file. If a preview is displayed, the tool can recover the file. The preview comes handy when thereís more than one version of a document, or when a specific document has to be recovered. Typical for this class of tools, more than 150 formats are supported by the preview mechanism.
File Recovery: Supported Formats
Generic undelete tools can recover files of any type. Disk Recovery Wizard claims support of some 150 file formats (office documents, archives, multimedia, email and such). Whatís wrong here? Is the high-end data recovery tool inferior to the free counterparts? The trick here is how reliable the recovery can be. All generic data recovery tools can only recover files that are referenced from the file system; Disk Recovery Wizard can do that, too. However, Disk Recovery Wizard can go one step further to locate and successfully recover files that no longer appear in the file system by performing the full disk scan and matching information it reads against a database of supported formats. The database contains more than 150 entries, hence the seemingly small number of supported formats. For technical details, read our article on how the PowerSearch algorithm works.
Disk Recovery Wizard: The Disk Recovery
Exactly as the name implies, Disk Recovery Wizard is able to unformat and repair corrupted partitions, disks, and flash memory[?] cards. No surprises here; performance is easily on par with established tools on the market, no doubt thanks to the use of the PowerSearch engine. Whatís important here is that Disk Recovery Wizard enables even the least experienced users to carry on the recovery completely on themselves, without encountering a steep learning curve or bumping into cumbersome questions.
Conclusion
Disk Recovery Wizard is a strong contender. Being packed with features, the product is easy enough to be used by the least experienced computer users. Featuring stable recovery results thanks to the use of technologies licensed from renowned players on the data recovery arena, Disk Recovery Wizard adds usability and simplicity thatís simply not there with the bigger tools. The price is slightly more attractive, too. All in all, a great value.
The best of Unformat software:
- DiskInternals Partition Recovery 2.5
- NTFS Data Recovery 4.1.1.0
- DiskInternals Raid Recovery 1.0
- Partition Table Doctor 3.5
- HDD Recovery Pro 2.3
- SoftAmbulance Partition Doctor 1.8
- EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard 4.3.6
- DiskInternals FAT Recovery 2.8
- DiskInternals NTFS Recovery 2.7
