Install the free version of a commercial program and you expect to find some restrictions, but undelete tools often go a little too far. You might only be able to recover 250 files, perhaps. With a maximum size of 100KB. And only on Tuesdays. You know how it works.
Lazesoft Recovery Suite Home Edition is refreshingly different. Okay, it’s strictly for non-commercial use, but aside from that the only notable missing feature is one you won’t find in most of the competition, anyway (HFS+ file system data recovery).
That’s all the more surprising when you see how much the program can do. It’s able to recover everything from individual files to entire partitions; there are several scanning methods; you’re able to filter your deleted files (optionally with regular expressions), and there’s a built-in preview pane to help you find the file you need.
There are other neat touches, everywhere you look. Even if a file appears to be corrupted, for instance, you can save its sectors for analysis later. And if you’ve spent a long time scanning a drive, filtering the results, trying to track something down, you’ll appreciate the ability to save your recovery session, so you don’t have to start from the very beginning later.
This would be impressive on its own, but Lazesoft Recovery Suite also includes three other applications.
A Password Recovery module builds a bootable CD/ USB key which can reset a forgotten local Windows password.
The Windows Recovery module (also run from CD or USB) fixes common Windows boot problems, including a corrupted boot sector, MBR, Registry and so on.
"Disk Image & Clone" is a complete disk manager which supports image backup/ restore, disk cloning, basic partition management and secure disk wiping. There’s also VHD support, boot sector/ MBR/ partition table backup and recovery, disk signature fixing, a sector editor, and more.
These also have some restrictions, but aside from the "non-commercial use" license, they’re relatively light. The most significant is that Home Edition can’t fix boot issues due to missing system files ("ntldr is missing" etc), which your Windows disc will probably handle all on its own. You probably won’t care about the rest (it doesn’t support Windows Server, it can’t reset Windows AD Domain controller passwords).
If you do need any of these, or want to use the program commercially, then check out the Professional ($27.95), Server ($94.99) or Unlimited ($199.29) editions here. The company deserves some support for their generous licensing.
But for consumer use, the feature-packed Lazesoft Recovery Suite Home Edition is hard to beat. If you’ve any doubts about your own disaster recovery abilities then go grab a copy immediately.