What to Look for in a Data Recovery Software

The best data recovery software offers a generous feature set, is easy enough for a novice to use, is extremely effective at retrieving lost data, offers a wide-range of search options and plenty of help support from the manufacturer. Below are the criteria TopTenREVIEWS used to evaluate data recovery software.

• Feature set

  Exceptional data recovery software provides you with several data recovery tools, including the ability to recover data from multiple sources, including:

  • Data deleted from the recycle bin
  • Data lost from damaged files
  • Data lost due to virus attacks
  • Data lost due to power outages
  • Data lost from partially deleted hard drives
  • Data lost from disks with bad sectors
  Any data recovery program worth its salt will support a wide array of drives—external drives, removable media, serial ATAs, RAIDs, SCSIs, IDEs—and should also support a wide range of file systems.
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• Ease of Use/Installation

  The best data recovery software is easy to use. Novices should be able to easily install and quickly learn how to use data recovery software without spending too much time in the help section.

• Data Recovery Effectiveness

  In a nutshell, data recovery software that doesn't do a good job recovering data is pointless. Today's data recovery programs should quickly find and restore data without problems.

• Search Capabilities

  Data recovery software should offer a wide selection of search tools, allowing you to find lost data by name, date created or extension.

• Help/Documentation

  Due to its technical nature, data recovery software should come with a large number of help support tools including FAQs, help manuals and contact information for the manufacturer's technical support.

Because we all use computers, losing data is something we'll all go through at one time or another. Now, thanks to the latest in data recovery software, data loss can be turned from a terrible tragedy into the most minor of mishaps.