Whether you lost data from an internal or external hard drive, a Windows Boot Camp partition, or an Apple Time Capsule, Stellar Mac Data Recovery helps you recover it. With various scans and full file signature support, this data recovery program scans hard drives, recovers lost partitions, and retrieves documents, photos, and music. In this review of Stellar Data Recovery, we’ve explored every aspect of one of the best data recovery programs in the world. In short, Stellar Data Recovery allows users to recover deleted, lost, and unavailable items from a hard drive, USB flash drive, or almost any other storage device. It is also prevalent and comes with several high-end tools.
Features
Stellar Data Recovery is available for both Windows and Mac operating systems as one of the top disk data recovery tools includes powerful features to improve the user experience. For beginners, Stellar Data Recovery allows you to recover all file formats, including custom formats. Data can be retrieved from a computer hard drive, external drive, memory card, flash drive, and optical media such as CDs and DVDs.
Besides, Stellar Data Recovery works with both unbootable and encrypted drives. RAID and virtual drives are also supported, and the software can even repair damaged photos and video files.
Setup and installation
Installing Stellar Data Recovery on a laptop only took us a few minutes. You can choose what type of files (photo, video, etc.) you want to recover on the first user dashboard. This is useful if you are looking for a specific file or type of file. You can also select which drive and location to browse to streamline the process further.
There are now many advanced options that can be optimized to optimize performance. For example, you can decide exactly what file extensions you are looking for. New file types can be added as required, and Safe Mode can be enabled if you are concerned about security. For higher value plans, more advanced tools are available.
Performance and efficiency
We tried Stellar Data Recovery on a laptop with 8GB RAM and a 1TB standard hard drive. A quick scan of the hard drive took less than four minutes. However, we used 200 MB RAM and about 75% CPU. This high CPU usage is not new for data recovery software, so we recommend using this type of software with other resource-intensive applications. The quick scan recovered everything we expected, but a deep scan function is also available.
This consumed significantly more RAM and a similar amount of CPU and took over 12 hours. However, considerably more data was retrieved – 125 GB compared to 88 GB with a quick scan. Recovering lost files can be difficult, but Stellar Data Recovery did an excellent job. In less than four minutes, the files we had intentionally deleted were retrieved along with nearly 500,000 other files. The application supports all known file types, and custom types can be added using the advanced options menu. The sheer number of files recovered was a little overwhelming at first; however, fortunately, they can be sorted by file size, type, and location. A search bar is also available.
Support
Stellar provides sales and technical support through a support portal. You will find several knowledge base and FAQs. Overall, the knowledge base seems a bit sparse and reads more like a FAQ resource in itself. More detailed tutorials, including video, would be nice.
If you find the support portal as inadequate as we do, Stellar offers direct support options. We have exchanged several emails with Stellar during our tests, and each time we have received a response within 24 hours. You can also contact via call or chat with a live support technician during business hours. We spent some time communicating with Stellar via live chat and found friendly, knowledgeable, and fast help.
Pricing and Plans
Many Stellar Data Recovery plans are available, ranging in price from free to $299 per year. The free plan comes with standard file recovery tools, but users can only retrieve up to 1 GB of data. If you need to recover large files, an upgrade is required. Paid subscriptions start at $49.99 per year for a standard plan that includes all the free plan components along with unlimited data recovery. The four major plans for the Windows version are Professional (costs $79.99 per year), Premium (costs $99.99 per year), Technician (costs $199 per year), and Toolkit (costs $299 per year) plans. Each plan adds more advanced tools than the previous one, including non-bootable system recovery, optical media recovery, damaged file repair, and RAID data recovery.
The Mac version of Stellar Data Recovery software is only available at Professional ($79.99 per year), Premium ($99.99), and Technician ($149) rates.
Final Words
We live in the digital age; sometimes, it’s easy to accidentally delete files from our devices with a few clicks or taps. And once that valuable data is gone, it can become a nightmare if you don’t have a backup copy of it. Fortunately, a Mac application like Stellar Data Recovery for Mac can help you get that lost data back – provided you take the right precautions and act quickly. But the software does its job – bringing back the deleted or lost data from the dead. The program is safe, easy to use, and comes with a free demo with limited features.
All in all, Stellar Data Recovery Free Edition for Mac is an excellent file recovery tool with powerful advanced options for businesses. Its simplest form allows anyone to recover lost data from a computer or external storage device. Paid subscriptions may be a bit expensive, but the program’s impressive performance and user-friendly interface make it a thumbs-up from us.
