Best Free Data Recovery Software of 2021
In this post, we will review Stellar Data Recovery – Free Edition software. It is a DIY software that can recover all kinds of data from Windows PCs, laptops, and storage media drives.
Stellar Data Recovery Free Edition Review
Stellar Data Recovery Free Edition is a popular data recovery software, which comes with an interactive user-interface, a huge file-type library, and advanced data recovery features. This do-it-yourself (DIY) software supports recovery of all kinds of data, including documents, email data files, videos, photos, etc. The software supports recovery in all data loss scenarios, such as formatting, corruption, or even malware-attacks.
Stellar Data Recovery Free Edition: Features
This easy-to-use software is available for both – Windows and Mac OS. It enables you to recover lost or deleted data and comes with a suite of advanced data recovery features.
| Recover Any type of Data | Preview Data Before Recovery |
| Recover any data, such as documents, videos, emails, photos, audio, and more. | Preview the files before recovering them under Tree View, File Type, and Deleted List panes. |
| Retrieves from All Windows and Mac OS Devices & Drives | Recover Data Under Various Scenarios |
| Recover data from Windows, Mac, and other storage drives, such as HDD, SSD, USB drives, SD card, Micro SD card, CF card, etc. | Retrieve data lost due to accidental deletion, formatting, corruption, or malware infection. |
User-Interface & Functionality
This software is easy-to-download and will take only a few minutes to install it on your PCs and laptops. The user-interface is quite simple. Users can easily navigate around the software and explore the features to restore data. The initial dashboard gives you a choice to select the type of data you want to recover and choose the location from which you lost the data.
Once the type of data and location is selected from which you want to restore data, you may run the scanning process and then select the files from the scanned results to recover. You may also run a custom scan to look for specific files and folders, speeding up the file recovery process.
Performance & Efficiency
Stellar Data Recovery Free Edition offers you two scanning modes, i.e. Quick Scan and Deep Scan. The Quick Scan lets you scan the drive/location for data recovery in accidental deletion, formatting, malware-attack, etc. The Deep Scan enables you to run a Deep Scan, which is highly effective for file recovery in severe cases, such as deleted or missing partitions, crashed hard drive, etc.
The software can restore different kinds of data simultaneously. You can also Preview the files displayed in the scanned results under three different panes, i.e., ‘Tree View, File Type, and Deleted List formats’.
Plans & Pricing
Stellar Data Recovery Free Edition is available to download for both Windows and Mac OS. You can download the software from the official site to recover data. However, it recovers data only up to 1 GB. To recover unlimited data, you may try the paid versions, i.e., Standard, Professional, Premium, Technician, and Toolkit.
The Standard version is available for $49.00/year and Professional version is available for $79.99/year. Both these versions allow data recovery from formatted, corrupted, and encrypted drives. These versions enable you to save the scanning information and resume recovery at a later stage.
However, the Professional version also provides you with several advanced features, such as Disk Image Recovery, Drive Monitoring, Save & Scan Information, Bootable Media Recovery, etc.
Stellar Data Recovery Premium ($99.99 per year) consists of all the features that come with the Pro version. Along with that, it can also repair corrupted or damaged photos and videos. The Technician ($199 per year) and Toolkit Version ($299 per year) offer more high-end functionalities like RAID recovery and Virtual Machine Recovery, etc.
Pros:
- Simple and intuitive user-interface
- Recovers all types of data
- Preview file option available
- ‘Add file’ feature, supporting all file formats
- Restored data from formatted and corrupted drives
Cons:
- No support for corrupt file repair
- Features like Bootable Media Recovery, Encrypted Drive Recovery, Disk Imaging, Drive Monitoring & Cloning, RAID recovery, Virtual Drive recovery, etc. are available with paid versions only.
Final Verdict
Keeping all the software features and efficiency into consideration, we would say that it is an excellent choice to look for free data recovery software. This software can efficiently extract data from Windows and storage drives, such as HDDs, SSDs, USB Drives, and more. It is also available for Mac systems. As far as the software’s intuitive user-interface, performance, interactive UI, and data recovery capabilities are concerned, we would give this software a thumbs up!
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