Swan Reviews (Almost!) Everything web site.
Please adjust your bookmarks.
Good morning software seekers!
How many times have we all lost files, due to mistaken deletion, or even purposeful deletion, only to discover that we needed them some weeks, or even months later?
Today’s software is designed to recover such files, easily and without too much user knowledge.
Going to a file recovery specialist, means paying up to a couple of thousand dollars; having to carry your entire computer to their store and having to wait around a week (if you’re lucky!) to pick your computer up again and carry it home.
Developer: Enplase Research
Supported Languages: English; Bulgarian; Traditional Chinese; Persian (Farsi,) and Russian.
System Requirements: Micro$oft NT 4.0 (with SP4), 2000, XP, 2003, Vista
Additional Requirements: Pentium II 300MHz or better; 128 MB RAM
Tested on: Windows XP Pro.
Unlike some data file recovery software, MultiStage Recovery supports all Windows file systems including NTFS/NTFS5, FAT12/16/32. Further, Enplase Research states that it is able to recover information from both hard/floppy disks; digital camera cards and flash drives.
GUI (Graphical user interface:)
The interface itself seems very intuitive, with an inbuilt explorer menu tree on the left and a large window on the right, with columns displaying; File Name; Size; Created; Modified; and Condition headers.
Across the top, is a Windows style toolbar displaying menu options for; File; Edit; View; Tools and Help. Below that, is another toolbar showing options for; Wizard; Recover; Preview; Update; and Search:
Settings:
The settings are for: Scan; Extraction; Virtual Drive and User Interface:
Scan Options:
- Sort preference; choose one of six different types;
- Cache Size;
- NTFS/NTFS 5: opt for quick scan, (searches for all files and folders,) or, complete scan (searches for deleted files only;)
- FAT12/FAT16/FAT32: check or uncheck box for Detect Recovery Probability. The default is checked.
Extraction options:
- Check or uncheck box for your preference in using the default directory for extraction. The default is unchecked;
- You can also choose to use the File Allocation Table, for FAT files where possible.
Virtual Drive:
If you have one, the choice is to check or uncheck the box to show it. The default is unchecked;
If you do happen to want it shown, then you need to stipulate how to find it – either as a Boot Sector file or a Master File Table;
User Interface:
Checkboxes include;
- whether or not to show the log at the time you launch the extraction process;
- whether or not you want to show the wizard on start-up and whether you want the software to write detailed error information into the file.
Wizard:
Referring to the image, the box in the center, is the Wizard to scan drives for deleted files. You can elect to automatically show it each time you launch the program – which I find is always a good way to learn any program. You can always uncheck the box, when you feel that you know what you’re doing.
The next screen sets MultiStage Recovery in scan mode and gives you a choice of which drives to scan. After making your selection, the next screen asks whether or not the drive you’ve chosen has been formatted.
After answering appropriately, the next screen asks you to choose a scan type. The two choices given to the user, are to search for missing NTFS files; or just use the default scan.
NTFS – What is that?
It stands for New Technology File System and is (very basically,) a more advanced and optional file system for Windows (all versions from NT onwards,) and was designed to be a self-healing system, supporting security at the file-level; auditing and compression. It is also superior to using the FAT32 file system, also in Windows.NTFS is also able to encrypt files and folders to protect all your sensitive data. Casual users may already have discovered this, but not known how the encryption was administered to the files.
Ok, so now you know the basics about NTFS 
If you choose this method of searching in MultiStage Recovery, be aware that it is more time consuming than the default scan – but it does detect files from fully formatted NTFS partitions.
The software describes the default scan as; “…. a fast and adequate scan method.”
Testing: Default Scan Test:
Scanning my C: drive took only 4 seconds on my machine using the default scan.
Scanning my F: drive (which is significantly larger,) took 1.5 minutes, using the NTFS scan. That’s not a bad result at all, I was actually expecting the latter to take longer.
In both cases, the scan found many deleted files in: Documents and Settings; Program Files; the Windows directory (including ini; log; sys; ocx; prx; scf; among many others;) and even registry entries.
Just out of curiosity I also tried to see my Registration details, only to be met with another error, in the form of: “list index out of bounds (6)” as in this image. This error presents itself every time I try to look at the information via the directory tree.
Interestingly, you can access the registration information file, by clicking on [Help,] without the appearance of errors.
I was going to kick off another NTFS scan on my E: drive just to see what it would find and was met with yet another error: “Invalid pointer operation,” also seen with this image. However, I couldn’t reproduce this one when I launched the scan again.
Note: Make sure when you recover files, to (always!) recover them to a different drive, partition or device. If you recover to the same drive, you risk losing some of the deleted data, or having your current data overwriting your deleted files.
If this happens you can forget it – it’s lost for good. However, once you’ve recovered it all to another location, you can then move what you need back to their original location on the source drive.
Help File:
This seems comprehensive and able to well educate the unsophisticated user in the use of the software. It also explains how the software works, which is always a great aid to complete the new user’s understanding of a task. Index and search features are also included.
Features:
- Quick scan;
- Low-level scan;
- Supports all Microsoft Windows file systems; FAT12, FAT16, FAT32/VFAT, NTFS, NTFS5;
- Support for large volumes;
- Recovery of compressed NTFS files;
- Recognition of localized names;
- Global and local file search by name or mask;
- File recovery on formatted partitions;
- Save recovered files on any disks (including network), visible in the host operating system;
- File preview. The following file types can be previewed to estimate recovery chances;
- Recovers just about any image format, including a few somewhat eclectic types;
- Recovers many sound and image formats;
- Recovers from the Recycle Bin;
- Able to search by file, using wildcards (*) if you don’t know the entire file name.
- The software will recover from:
- Hard Drives;
- Floppy disks;
- Zip files, Jazz and LS-120 Drives;
- Digital camera cards;
- Mobile phone removable cards (such as TransFlash, SD and others;)
- USB Drives;
- Any other storage device that displays a drive letter.
Negatives:
The program as it is at the moment is slightly buggy.
Points:
- Originality: 5/10
- Functionality: 8/10
- Intuitiveness: 8/10
Summary:
The developer needs to address the cause of these error messages and provide a (free!) patch out of good faith, to all who own the software.
Other than the errors, MultiStage Recovery seems to be an effective program for recovery of files; folders; registry items and more. The error messages while irritating, didn’t seem to stop the software working as intended.
You can download a trial version or grab a free fully licensed copy from Giveaway of the day for the next few hours today only.
Price: US$49.95:
While a little steep for the average user, it’s still significantly cheaper than having to take your computer to a recovery expert to retrieve your deleted/lost files.
To be competitive in the file recovery market, Enplase Research needs to drop their price a little, especially with errors still surfacing.
Recommendation:
Without the errors, and through extensive testing over 4 hours this morning, I found this to be a relatively good program for its stated purpose. There were some files that I specifically remember deleting around 3 years ago – perhaps the time past is a factor, perhaps not, I’ll leave that to Enplase Research to consider.
I wouldn’t want to be recovering from 3 years ago anyway, and I’m fairly confident that this program will suit my particular needs. So I plan to keep this program in my toolbox in the hopes of a patch or eventual upgrade.
Given the high price, this software is only recommended after a patch has been created for free download.
Again thank you for reading my reviews, and comments are always welcome!
~ Swan
addthis_url=”; addthis_title=”; addthis_pub=’~Swan’;
All Content is Copyright © premreviews.blogspot.com
All Rights Reserved.
Please contact Swan if you’d like to purchase a candid, constructive review, under privately agreed terms, of your software; games; or web site design.
Advertisers:
Please contact Swan, if you’d like to arrange for advertising your product on this web site.
“The day will come when machines and software will tell us whom to know; what to eat; what to wear; when to go to work and what profession to pursue; when to sleep; what entertainments to enjoy and with whom to have any kind of relationship. It can’t be avoided and you will succumb.”
~ Swan (2005)
2 comments:
The review makes for a pleasant, useful and informative read. Thank you very much for taking so much time to write this review.
I’m hoping it will be able to recover a large amount of data I lost several weeks ago. (over 200Gb on a 320Gb HDD). I took it off line immediately after the wiping and it’s been gathering dust ever since waiting for the right sort of program came along. I’ve already bought two extraction programs, both of which were useless for my needs. Hopefully this will be a ‘god send’ for me because some of the data I lost are irreplaceable.
After doing an initial test it looks promising. Unfortunately, a faulty vacuum cleaner tripped the power switch in the house, so I’ve got to run the program again. It’s relatively slow, but I don’t care about that; if it works….
Stephen
Hey WhiteRabbit!
It’s so nice to see you over here!
I hope it works for you too – perhaps you could leave another comment to let us know how well it worked for you?
It’s an awful feeling when you can’t recover important data – even when it’s only an emotional attachment.
Good luck WhiteRabbit!
~ Swan