Wondershare Recoverit Review
Wondershare Recoverit is a free tool with the only limitation that you cannot recover files amounting to larger than 100 MB. You can upgrade to the premium version to remove this restriction which starts at $40 per annum. Talking about the software, right of the bat, I loved the look and feel of the UI. It feels good to have a modern touch to the UI with a hint of minimalism. On the first page, you will have all the external drives, disk partitions laid out in front of you. You can go ahead and perform a Recycle Bin Recovery, Deleted File Recovery or Formatted Disk Recovery.
Talking about how recovery tools work, in simple words, when you format or delete a file, the data is still on the disk unless you overwrite it. So, Data Recovery Tools work in fetching that data from the disk sectors. But Disk Recovery is something which is easier said than done. They do work but how usable the file would be after recovery is still a matter of discussion.
Features
Wondershare Recoverit is an all-around recovery tool which lets you recover data from deleted files, empty recycle bin or a lost partition. Depending on the features, Wondershare has 2 pricing plans for Recoverit: Pro and Ultimate. The only difference is that you get “System Data Crash Recovery” in the Ultimate version. Apart from that, the Pro version comes with zero restriction and in my opinion, this is the one you would mostly end up using. Recoverit doesn’t bifurcate recovery on the basis of file type. Recoverit is available for Windows as well as Mac. You also get an app variant called “Dr.Fone” for Android and iOS. To talk about the software, you get Quick scan as well as Deep Scan like every other recovery software. But unlike the common recovery software nomenclature, Wondershare calls it “All Around Recovery” instead of Deep Scan. In case you aren’t aware of Deep Scan, it is an advanced disk scanning in which the recovery software checks thoroughly each and every sector of the drive. In most cases, a quick scan will return you the files you want. But nonetheless, Deep Scan is a good option to have.
How to recover data
First, we will check how Wondershare Recoverit’s recovery process works. Suppose, I want to recover the deleted files on my USB Stick, I would have to select my USB stick under the “External Devices” section. Once you have selected it, click on “Start” to begin scanning.
Now, the software will scan all the files it can find on the drive. You have to wait for around 10-15 minutes depending on the capacity of the USB stick. After successful scanning, you will be presented with the file list. You can select the desired file you want to recover and then click on the “Recover” button at the bottom.
Depending on the number of files and the type of external drive, Wondershare Recoverit will display you the amount of time it needs to recover the data. The data recovery would be much faster and safer if you recover the data on to a separate drive. Talking about speed, just to give you an idea, 19 GB recovery of data took around 10 minutes. And considering the fact that I have a USB 2.0 flash drive, this was surprisingly fast.
Performance
Now, apart from all the features and UI stuff, what really matters is the performance and accuracy. How quick is the software to get your files and most importantly how accurate? Well, here is the table showing it in detail. It was astonishing to see Recoverit identify 4648 files. In fact, when we formatted the drive, it had 1682 files. Recoverit was able to bring out files previously stored on the USB drive. Based on performance, this round undoubtedly goes to Wondeshare Recoverit. It was faster, more accurate and had a healthy amount of data.
Sample Tests
It’s difficult to replicate real-life file recovery scenarios but I have tried my best. A general case would be accidental “Shift+Del” on a file. This would bypass the Recycle Bin and cause loss of data. In this case, Wondershare Recoverit does a fair job. I deleted an entire folder with 33 JPEG files and Wondershare was able to identify all of them.
Now, when I recover those files, the images are just unusable. Surprisingly, when I recover individual files as JPGs from the Files View they work. To make sure this wasn’t a one-off case, I tried this method with multiple photos and video footages. Recoverit identifies the deleted files every single time but when I restore them only 75% of the time the files are usable. Rest of the time, the file is restored back in the same size but it can’t be read or used. One quick hack would be to click on the image and if you can see the preview on the right-hand side, the file would be usable on restore.
The situation is different when it comes to PDFs, excel sheets or other documents. Recoverit can find them exactly every single time and recover them back in a usable state. I tried the same with multiple PDFs and excel sheets, Recoverit did a job with them.
Another common scenario would be accidentally formatting a memory card or USB stick. It happens a lot of time with our team and I would assume this to be a litmus test for us. Now since I have already tried out the USB stick, I would go with an 8 GB memory card. I formatted the card with the Canon DSLR instead of my laptop. Let’s see if Recoverit can identify and recover all the files.
It could identify all the files but none of them were usable after recovery. Maybe the case would have been different with PDFs and excel sheets as they are easy to recover.
Wrapping Up
For a one-time recovery process, I would recommend using Recuva. It is free and has no data recovery limit but they do come with a lot of caveats. If you are looking for a total solution for your company or your startup, the subscription price of Wondershare Recoverit with technical support makes more sense. For any queries or issues, let me know in the comments below. I do hang out a lot on Instagram so you can come & say “hey” over there.
