DataRecovery for Windows

Just as its name suggests, DataRecovery aims to recovery files that had been deleted, including compressed and encrypted files. It also claims to wipe files so that they cannot be recovered. However, we were not impressed by its unintuitive, amateurish user interface.

The user interface offers very little direction with its vague commands. It consists of three commands--Scan, Wipe, and Recover. There are no other settings or configurations. We selected a hard drive and clicked the Scan button. The program did scan our computer very quickly, but a window popped up that was difficult to decipher. It had something to do with running a full scan, but at the same time, it warned that a full scan would take a long time. We tried to selectively remove files using the Wipe feature, but another cryptic message appeared stating that we could not wipe any system files. From there, we tried the only other command on the user interface--the Recover feature. We simply selected a file and browsed for a location to send the recovered file. The file was quickly saved to our choice location.

The only help available with DataRecovery is in the form of a text file located in the folder containing the executable file, and even then, it doesn't offer a lot of detail. Even though the program is free, we found its cryptic pop up messages and lack of viable help unappealing. This isn't a program we'd want to rely on to recover important files.