Why Data Recovery Software?

Have you ever spent hours on a document only to have the power go out, discover that you failed to save your work and lose everything you'd worked on? Have you ever turned on your computer to find that a virus has wiped much of your hard drive clean? Perhaps you've even deleted an email out of your trash bin only to find that you desperately needed the information within it for work? All of these are very real problems and data recovery software is an equally real solution for all of them.

Through data recovery software you can recover files that were compressed and encrypted. You can perform data recovery on deleted emails, recover files from hard drives located within a network or create image files of your hard drive for easier data recovery.

With the latest generation of data recovery software you can also recover files that have been deleted from your recycle bin, have become damaged or are stored on a hard drive, CD or DVD that has developed bad sectors.

Today's data recovery software typically supports multiple types of hard drives and removable media, including USB drives, CDs and so on.

But the best thing about data recovery these days is that it's so easy to use. Frankly, today's software is so user friendly that anyone—whether amateur or expert—can find and retrieve data that at one time would have been considered, well, history.

In this site you'll find articles on data recovery and comprenhensive reviews on data recovery software to help you make an informed decision on which is right for you. At TopTenREVIEWS We Do the Research So You Don't Have To.™

What to Look for in a Data Recovery Software

The best data recovery software offers a generous feature set, is easy enough for a novice to use, is extremely effective at retrieving lost data, offers a wide-range of search options and plenty of help support from the manufacturer. Below are the criteria TopTenREVIEWS used to evaluate data recovery software.

Feature set
Exceptional data recovery software provides you with several data recovery tools, including the ability to recover data from multiple sources, including:
Any data recovery program worth its salt will support a wide array of drives—external drives, removable media, serial ATAs, RAIDs, SCSIs, IDEs—and should also support a wide range of file systems. 

•Data deleted from the recycle bin
•Data lost from damaged files
•Data lost due to virus attacks
•Data lost due to power outages
•Data lost from partially deleted hard drives
•Data lost from disks with bad sectors 

Ease of Use/Installation
The best data recovery software is easy to use. Novices should be able to easily install and quickly learn how to use data recovery software without spending too much time in the help section.

Data Recovery Effectiveness
In a nutshell, data recovery software that doesn't do a good job recovering data is pointless. Today's data recovery programs should quickly find and restore data without problems.

Search Capabilities
Data recovery software should offer a wide selection of search tools, allowing you to find lost data by name, date created or extension.

Help/Documentation
Due to its technical nature, data recovery software should come with a large number of help support tools including FAQs, help manuals and contact information for the manufacturer's technical support.

Because we all use computers, losing data is something we'll all go through at one time or another. Now, thanks to the latest in data recovery software, data loss can be turned from a terrible tragedy into the most minor of mishaps.

To read our top-ranked data recovery software review, click here.