So user can download the Macintosh data recovery software and get complete recovery manual of using the software easily without any technician help. Free Download. So to have a complete and safe recovery of lost, deleted and formatted data user are advised to buy stellar Phoenix Mac data recovery free in trial version. What is Stellar Phoenix Data Recovery for Mac? Stellar Phoenix Macintosh Data Recovery ($99) is a simple utility that offers file recovery options for drives and iPods, and provides several. Part 1: Free Download Stellar Phoenix Outlook PST Repair You will have to invest in an Outlook PST repair tool if you find that your PST files have become corrupt and are no longer accessible to you. There are several such tools available on the internet, which claim that they can repair outlook PST file. Oct 10, 2018 This software review has been created to explain what is Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery Professional software and provide you with a review on how this data recovery tool works. Stellar Phoenix, one of the leaders in data recovery programs out.
There are a variety of file recovery utilities for the Mac these days, some of which target specific media and file types, and others that are for more general uses. One I have mentioned in the past is Stellar Phoenix's Data Recovery for the Mac. Recently I decided to run the program through some basic tests to see if it performs as expected. The overall verdict is the program is not as stellar as I would have liked.
![]()
What is Stellar Phoenix Data Recovery for Mac?
Stellar Phoenix Macintosh Data Recovery ($99) is a simple utility that offers file recovery options for drives and iPods, and provides several routines by which to do so:
The interface for Stellar Phoenix is simple and Mac-like, but has a big drawback in that it cannot be resized despite having an active 'Zoom' button and a resizing tab. These options basically do not work; the window stays relatively small in size, which causes file name lists to be truncated, requiring a decent amount of scrolling if the list is large. Nevertheless, for data recovery these details do not matter too much as long as files can be recovered.
Testing setup
The idea for testing this program was to go as simple as possible and use some nonstandard but commonly used storage options as the testing media. I used a 2GB USB Flash drive and a 10GB iPod 3G running in 'Disk Mode' that were attached to my PowerMac G5 running OS X 10.5.8.
I initially formatted the drives by zeroing out all data on them, and then partitioned and formatted them to FAT and HFS+ (the most common formats used in OS X) and copied a single file to the drives (in this case I used a small 36KB PDF manual for my ToastMaster waffle iron).
To simulate scan and after churning through every unused block on the drive, the program unexpectedly quit (no error report; it just shut down). I relaunched it and tried again, and though successful in completing the scan, it could not recover the PDF file, and instead claimed no files were found.
The file recovery options in Stellar Phoenix showed better results with the iPod; however, they were inconsistent. On one attempt I was able to recover the file just fine using the Quick Recover routine, but upon reformatting the iPod and trying again with the same conditions, the program did not find the file with the Quick Recovery. I was able to locate the file when performing the more advanced 'Deleted File Recovery' option, but when I saved the file to my desktop or any other location it could not be opened by any program.
![]()
Unfortunately, I could not test the flash drive when formatted as a FAT volume, since the program would not recognize it as an available volume in the drive list; however, it did recognize the iPod when formatted as FAT, and upon scanning did find the lost PDF file.
When I tried to recover this file and save it to my desktop, the program would not save it to my selected destination. Upon eventually saving, the recovery process briefly showed a progress bar and a recovery folder called 'Root' appeared on my Desktop, but it was empty. Regardless of where I chose to save the file, the program just created an empty folder called 'Root'.
Is Stellar Data Recovery Legit
I was not able to recover my file using these routines on any of my drives.
Formatted Media Recovery Buy apple mac mini.
I next decided to test the program's capability to recover files that were on formatted volumes. Instead of merely deleting the file, I used Disk Utility to reformat the volume (without erasing free space).
I first tried this on my flash drive, but again did not get the results I wanted. The PDF file was located, but it was only 8KB and not the full 36KB of its original size. When I tried to recover it, the file did not save to the destination folder and instead just created an empty folder at the specified save location, similar to my previous experience with the 'File Recovery' routines.
I next tried running this routine on the iPod. The program finished its scan, but this time seemed to run into trouble, because it started displaying a number of items that were not on the drive. What appeared in the list of found items was a full OS X installation, complete with applications like Automator, Calculator, and Drive Genius (which I have installed on the boot drive of this computer). I assumed I must have selected the wrong drive, so I relaunched the program and ran the routine again, but with the same results.
Since there may have been an error with the drive or how it was mounted, I decided to reformat the iPod, set it up identically, and try this routine again, and this time (and also on subsequent attempts) Stellar Phoenix did not show my boot drive contents. However, it also was unable to recover the deleted PDF file. Whenever the 'Formatted Media' routine was run, the program would show drive structure files and other hidden files, but no deleted or missing files.
Perhaps the use of this scan routine is something other than file recovery, but the documentation leads one to believe it is to be used for recovering files from formatted partitions, and it did not do that. I was not able to recover my file using this routine.
Lost Volume Recovery
Next I decided to give the lost volume recovery routine a try. I partitioned the iPod into two HFS+ volumes, and then copied the PDF manual to the first partition. I then went to Disk Utility and removed the volume containing the PDF file so it was left as empty space.
Stellar Data Recovery Torrents
On launching Stellar Phoenix to see what could be recovered, I found the program could not run this routine on any external volumes. No flash drives or Firewire hard drives showed up in the device list to run the recovery routine on, which is a disappointment because external drives are most susceptible to corruption from being moved around, constantly mounted and unmounted, and being improperly disconnected from the computer.
Yet again I could not recover my file.
Alternate scan modes
The program does have a few other scanning options I decided to try, including an iPod recovery feature, a media recovery feature for finding music, videos, and photos, and a drive-imaging feature.
Final thoughts
I cannot claim I had a very positive experience with this product. There are some features of the program that are convenient, such as categorizing found files by type so you can more easily locate them, but, the recovery options are not very robust and I ran into numerous errors including crashes, the incapability to locate deleted files on a fairly simple setup, and the incapability to recover files when they were found. In addition, the program was not able to identify my iPod in its iPod Recovery routine.
Mac Data Recovery Free
Keep in mind that though my experiences with this program were not the best, there are some reviews of this software that praise it. I do not deny it has potential, but, from what I have seen, it definitely has some limitations and room for improvement.
I did use some older and non-standard hardware for these tests, and maybe the program was not built to handle external drives, but there is no mention of hardware limitations in the software's documentation and I would expect it to be able to access these volumes. Nevertheless, these test results are limited to the hardware I used, and the features that did not work for me might show different results when used in other setups.
Despite the negative initial experiences, I was able to finally recover files with Stellar Phoenix when creating an image of the drive. This is the preferred method of running data recovery, because it works with a copy instead of the drive itself, but it does require you to have adequate storage for the image file on another available volume.
Overall, when it finally worked the program worked well, so if you have a copy of this software available to you I would still recommend this utility as an option for people to consider, but it should not be your only data recovery option by any means. However, if you do not currently own a data recovery utility, then I suggest for now you look elsewhere for a more robust option.
Questions? Comments? Have a fix? Post them below or email us!
Be sure to check us out on Twitter and the CNET Mac forums. Comments are closed.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |