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Advances in back-up awareness and technology have made career-ending crashes much less of a worry, but rescue from them isn't cheap. For significantly less than what some recovery specialists charge, VirtualLab offers you a chance to drag your data back from the grave.
The app starts up with a helpful intro screen showing you its recovery modules: PC or Mac Partition, Deleted Files, E-mail, Photo and CD/DVD ROM. Clicking on one of those takes you to a screen with tabs for those recovery modules on the left, making it easy to switch between them. The control panel for each module is on the right, and the options change appropriately from Recover to Save as you progress through the recovery process. The lack of toolbar buttons on the top of the app makes it easy to see your files in a clear and uncluttered way.
In our tests, we were unable to test the app against data loss because we hadn't lost any data. However, we did recover files that we had deleted several weeks ago. The number of files presented to us was enormous, and VirtualLab could benefit by some advanced search routines to help identify specific files to resurrect. Still, this is a powerful recovery application and worth trying for anybody who has lost their life's work and doesn't have thousands of dollars to spend on getting it back.
Publisher's Description
From BinaryBiz:
VirtualLab Data Recovery Software is like six data recovery programs in one! While other programs just recover deleted files or camera cards, VirtualLab recovers everything from deleted files, corrupted or formatted drives, CD & DVD-ROM Disks, RAID, flash drives, thumb drives, camera cards, USB/Firewire drives, Outlook & Thunderbird E-mail and even Mac Volumes. VirtualLab will even make a sector-by-sector disk image of a failing hard drive so a recovery can be performed safely. Supports many file systems in one application including FAT 12/16/32, NTFS, NTFS5 (VISTA), NSF, Mac HFS/HFS+, Ext2FS.
What's new in this version: Version 5.5.17 improves RAID and other data recovery routines and account management.
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All versions:
4.3 starsout of 1,093 votes
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Current version:
3.7 starsout of 289 votes
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My rating:
Write review
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"Bad Deal !!!"
Version: VirtualLab Data Recovery 5.5.17
Pros
Nice user interface but apart from that this product honestly has no pros
Cons
Very Very Expensive
Watch out for Data limit. Unlimited use is even more expensive, only for 1yr then you have to pay again.
There is a real question about privacy and security of your data.Summary
If you want to recover deleted or lost documents and pictures you can do this for free on a mac or pc using freeware. For larger files, ie. video, freeware recovery tools or most $30-60 software (which have no data recovery limits) perform better and are far more cost effective. For recovering entire hard disks sending disks to a reputable recovery specialist that does not charge unless your data can be recovered could be more affordable than VirtuaLab Data Recovery. I am very sceptical about the authenticity of some of the reviews here. I am prohibited from recommending the many better alternatives which are out there due to cnet policy. But if you search for 'data recovery freeware' or 'best data recovery' in any search engine you can find these better deals. My last recommendation is that if you pay for Data Recovery solutions make sure there is a 'live chat' link on their site where you can put your questions to them directly and that if its software you are purchasing that they give a 30day money back guarantee. Just because there has been 10million downloads does not mean anyone has actually used this software!
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"not whats it's cracked out to be"
Version: VirtualLab Data Recovery 5.5.17
Pros
it works well showed me my missing files
Cons
they seem to be a phony company and rip off to me
Summary
i downloaded the software it found all my missing files on teh external hard drive, i payed 99 dollars in order to get the 500gb activation key to get an transfer my files to a new hard drive from the damaged one. paying with my check card on the site was not working it kept saying denyed and i know that is wrong . since i have over 500 dollars in my bank account. so i went with one of they payment sites. the one i choose was 2co.com immediatly they proccessed my order and toom my money out the bank. supposidly i was suppsoed to get the activation key after that. which i never recieved . so i was very annoyed and binarybiz.com has no numbers or contact info to get in touch with them. so i kept calling 2co.com talking to them and asking them to email binarybiz.com for my key they did so 3 diffrent occasions. i never got my key , nor a responce from binarybiz. so i asked 2co.com to refund me my money back from the transaction since it been a whole day and no key . they told me they have to wait 2 days before they can refund me my money. they have to wairt and see if binarybiz will respond to make sure i don't have the key and trying to get my money back at the same time, i tihnk it is bs . and i will not get anything from them in the future.
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"A CRAPPY program"
Version: VirtualLab Data Recovery 5.5.17
Pros
Nothing at all
Cons
Wasted 3 hours before i got "out of memory" even though i have 6GB and running Win x64. Seams to be a bogus company as it is easy to see the same patterns in many 5 star comments.
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"Very poor tech support"
Version: VirtualLab Data Recovery 5.5.17
Pros
Good interface, when you have quota, it does recover data
Cons
Our company purchased the software, and paid for unlimited quota for the year. However, the next time we used it, it said enter key, which wasn't anything like the activation key they sent us. I tried to contact support, and have never got back to me
Summary
The fact that the program is totally useless to us, and there is NO technical support phone number means this program gets two thumbs down from our company. If they bothered contacting us and tried to help resolving the licence key issue then I would be happy. Please note that the activation 'key' they send is not the 'number' the program asks for. The key is like bfu-19rr53 but the key the program wants is xxx-0000-0000000. Shame as we would probably have continued to licence this software from year to year. They lost out licencing to a fairly large manufacturing company. If you use the free quota or just want to use the program on one user PC then it may be fine, but not for an enterprise.
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"I was able to recover photos from a corrupt thumbdrive"
Version: VirtualLab Data Recovery 5.5.17
Pros
VirtualLab Data Recovery automatically updated after the install. The program was very easy to use.
Cons
No downside that I've discovered yet.
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"It's a scam. Doesn't work and no tech support."
Version: VirtualLab Data Recovery 5.5.17
Pros
The free trial showed me all the files it could recover if I purchased the full version.
Cons
It does't work - the purchased full version failed to recover anything and kept giving error messages.
No tech support - They don't have a phone number, just a tech support webform which they didn't answer. I tried it 3 times over more than a week.Summary
It doesn't work. It's fraudulent.
The free trial duped me by showing all the files it would recover if I paid for the full version, so I gladly did. Then it didn't work, and the company's tech support doesn't exist (or decided to completely ignore me for some reason).
I have since contested the charge with my credit card for a refund, and successfully recovered all my files with a different recovery software that actually works (and is cheaper). -
"Amazing! Thank you virtualLab"
Version: VirtualLab Data Recovery 5.5.17
Pros
Good price
Easy to use
works amazingly
fast recoveryCons
do-it-yourself method can be a little intimidating for inexperienced users
Summary
I lost a bunch of my files when one of my hard drives failed.
Photos, music, files, you name it, I lost it all
Luckily I found virtuallab, and got all of my data back without a problem.
thanks to the guys over at binarybiz, I'd recommend their product to anyone looking for a powerful data recovery solution. -
"Beware - Trial Download has no functionality"
Version: VirtualLab Data Recovery 5.5.17
Pros
Looks like a good interface
Cons
Download has zero functionality - You cannot preview undelete function or see how the sofware would work even for a trial period.
Summary
Perhaps a good product, but did not buy. Marketing department of this company has a poor sales strategy that this buyer wasn't interested in following. Made me very angry and unwilling to buy.
If you want to trial a product then this is NOT a trial version, it is a teaser version that forces a purchase for any useful functionality. -
"Not Free----Won't Work"
Version: VirtualLab Data Recovery 5.5.17
Pros
Don't know, never got to use it.
Cons
You can't recover individual files, you have to recover a whole directory. Then they put a data limit that is so small, you can't recover anything unless you buy the software.
Summary
Cnet let them scam you into downloading the software as free when it really isn't. Don't waste your time downloading and installing. Oh, and it also takes forever to read the directory that it tries to recover from. So not only do you waste your life downloading and installing, you also waste a lot of your life waiting for it to read the directory you're trying to recover, only to find out it won't recover for you unless you buy.
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"Recovered everything, for a price"
Version: VirtualLab Data Recovery 5.5.17
Pros
I had tried other products to recover data but nothing was able to restore the complete file system or the actual file names. Many products were unable to even detect the partition. This recovered everything, exactly as it was.
Cons
The price is higher than shown on the download page, $99 for 500GB and not $39 as shown. So I would only recommend this product if recovering your lost data is worth $100 to you, which in my case it was.
Summary
When my drive crashed windows could not detect a filesystem (I still don't know what happened). The filesystem was displayed as "UNKNOWN" I tried several utilities that could recover certain files without their file names, giving them arbitrary names like "1000132.jpg". Nothing I tried could recover the names or the folder structure. I tried several utilities that could not even analyze a drive that was not mapped to a drive letter, or that could analyze a drive but found no partition on my drive. This product restored everything as it was before the incident.
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