A couple of years back, I recommended the Stellar Data Recovery Free Edition software as a way to quickly grab files that you may have accidentally deleted. Time has passed, and they are back with the latest version, the 14.0.0.0 update.
This time, it will be the Standard Edition, which is the entry paid plan, since the folks over there have added a couple more features that can solve more troublesome issues. So let’s see what’s in store.
Installation and Main Page
The software is available for download for free from the official website, where the wizard will guide you through. And as usual, no paid plans, hard sells, or advertisements shoving up your face during the installation. So pretty good.
Now for the main interface. They’ve added Dark Mode for a start, which looks better in my opinion, and the overall vibe has been redesigned. You have menus popping out from the left side and a big round button at the bottom right.
But that doesn’t mean things have been made complicated. The same starting page that asks you what’s missing – Photos? Musics? Videos? Important documents? Just tick what you need and hit Next.
Recovering Files
The bread and butter feature is, well, recovering files that you lost. So I spun up a drive and put some files in there. Rest assured that these are permanently removed with “Shift + Delete”, so that these blocks are ready to be replaced with new data.
After the main page, you get to select the drives that you want to recover. The software is also well-coded enough to recognize virtual drives (VHDX) since the R drive is technically one. By the looks of it, if you have multiple partitions created from a single physical drive, you can choose that too, or just target the entire unit under the Physical Disks section. Then hit up the Scan button (Or enable Deep Scan for a more thorough sweep).
If there’s anything to recover, the software will tell you how many files in how many folders have been found, and the recoverable data’s total size. After that, just target a new destination folder (Cannot be from the same partition, by the way), then you’re good to go.
There you have it. Documents have been retrieved, while images and videos are readable and openable by other tools.
BitLocked drive? No problem
With a Standard Edition license, you can even tackle partitions that have BitLocker enabled. You know, sometimes it gets toggled on either by accident, by default when you got the PC, or because of another Windows Update.
In any case, here I got the S drive up and running with BitLocker turned on. The software is still able to read and recover the files, albeit just a few seconds slower since it takes some time to decrypt the files.
Lost and Found
Pretty sure you’ve run into the problem of “drives” or “partitions” suddenly disappearing from the list. No, it didn’t straight up die; it just became unallocated for a few reasons. The data is still there and can be reattached through Disk Management.
But if you don’t want to be bothered about it and just want the files, Stellar can do that for you too.
Here, I spun up yet another drive as the T drive, wiped it to make it unallocated, and just went ahead and chose the “Can’t find drive” option, where the software will lead you to target the physical disk first, then the associated sectors.
If you don’t understand how this works, just give each option a shot. One of them should lead you to the correct spot and show you the recoverable files.
Conclusion
Stellar did a pretty good job in this release of the Windows Data Recovery Software, with improved UI and UX and a stronger recovery algorithm under the hood. Not only drives like HDDs and SSDs but external devices such as SD and microSD cards are compatible as well, making this one of the best tools to recover files from mainstream storage media.
On a side note, they also increased the file size limit from the old 100MB to the current 1GB; therefore, recovering long videos and recordings is now possible, which is extra cool.
Which plan is for you
Compared to last time, Stellar has made the paid plans more concise by cutting options down to just three: Standard, Professional, and Technician. Subscriptions can be bought in either 1-Year or Lifetime.
By opting for Professional or the Technician tier, you get access to more powerful features that can actually repair files, create disk images, and recover files from unbootable drives, including RAID setups.
For those who are looking to offer data recovery services as the basis of your business operations, I recommend getting the Lifetime license straight up, so that your TCO can be lower over time.
