Stellar Data Recovery review

In this Stellar Data Recovery review, we’ve examined every aspect of one of the best data recovery software programs in the world. Stellar Data Recovery is a popular data restoration application, around for more than two decades now.

It claims to help you recover lost or deleted files across various formats and devices. However, has the application evolved enough to fit modern data recovery needs? We’ve carried out detailed testing of the Stellar Data Recovery platform, highlighting its best features, pricing, installation and hands-on experience.

Stellar Data Recovery: Plans & pricing

You get three plans to choose from, starting with the Standard plan costing $59.99 per year. This is the base plan, which allows you to recover lost, formatted, and deleted data from any storage media.

After this is the Professional plan at $89.99 per year, which also facilitates lost partition recovery, data recovery from unbootable systems, RAW hard drives, and damaged optical disks beyond basic recovery in the Standard plan.

The highest-tier plan is the Premium one, costing $99.99 per year, which, in addition to everything in the Professional plan, also allows you to repair corrupt videos and photos and extract thumbnails of images. All three plans can also be bought for a lifetime, costing $99, $149, and $199, respectively.

Besides this, you also get a limited free plan you can use to try out the product before committing to a purchase. It lets you recover 1GB of data, which is less than what EaseUS allows (2GB).

Stellar Data Recovery: Features

Stellar offers data recovery apps for Windows, Mac, iPhone, and Android – Linux is not supported yet. It supports a wide range of devices such as hard drives, SSDs, USB sticks, SD cards, external drives, and more.

However, I didn’t find its supported file systems on its official product page. Only after digging into its documentation did we find that Stellar supports APFS, HFS+, HFS, along with NTFS, FAT (including FAT16 and FAT32), and exFAT.

Stellar also supports custom file types, allowing you to add raw file formats. You can upload a few files of the same format, and the software detects the file structure and extracts signature patterns to find similar files in your desired location. Alternatively, you can manually define the file extension, header, and footer, which allows Stellar to scan their binary structure and find byte patterns.

Saying that Stellar offers forensic-level data recovery would be an overkill. However, it does try to get close to such software through its byte-to-byte disk backup and restoration, which it calls disk imaging and recovery. This allows you to generate an image of an entire or a specific range of the hard disk, partition, or volume to recover data from it.

Instead of working directly on the storage device or drive, Stellar lets you perform recovery operations on this image file, reducing the risk of further damage. This comes in handy in case of failing hard drives and prevents permanent data loss.

Additionally, you can also scan encrypted storage as well as FileVault on Macs. Simply provide the password to unlock the drive for recovery.

Scanning

Stellar gives you two options: quick scan and deep scan, with a dedicated toggle button that you can select before starting the process. I chose the quick scan mode to scan an external NVMe hard disk, which took more than 25 minutes to complete, which is way longer than some competitors. As the scan goes on, you can see the list of all folders on your disk, as well as a dedicated file list that divides the data based on file type.

However, you cannot view the list of deleted items until the scan is complete, which is a bit disappointing. Competitors like EaseUS allow you to recover data while the scan is being run in the background. With Stellar, you have to wait until the scan is complete to be able to recover data.

That said, one good thing about Stellar is that it allows you to pause scans and resume them later. This comes in handy when you are scanning a bulky disk or working on an extended data recovery project.

Also, the software doesn’t consume a lot of CPU resources. The usage averaged 7-10% while the scans were running, which is pretty modest for a data recovery app.

Stellar Data Recovery: Installation and in-use experience

Installing Stellar is pretty simple. You’ll find the free download button on its main website. Click on it and install the .exe file that downloads. Hit “Next” a few times and then click on “Finish” once the installation process is done. The whole process takes about 3 to 5 minutes, and the app launches as soon as installation is done.

The main interface is pretty modern, where you will find a list of all connected devices, physical disks, and common location addresses for you to recover data from. Since we had hooked up our external hard drive, we selected that location and ran a quick scan, which was a slow process as iterated above.

Now, the “pause” and “stop” features offered by Stellar are a bit buggy. If you click on “pause”, there is no way for you to go back to the main screen and scan any other drive. You must complete one particular scan first.

And if you click on “stop”, you will have to re-scan the whole drive from scratch the next time. Even if you want to recover a small 10 MB file, you will have to wait for the entire scanning process to complete before you can do that.

There’s also a bit of a learning curve involved with the software, which isn’t ideal for beginners.

Stellar Data Recovery: How we tested

I first installed the free version of EaseUS on my Windows 11 system, with 16GB of RAM and a 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-12500H processor.

To test Stellar’s data recovery capability, I first downloaded an album of Mozart’s music from the Internet Archive, which consisted of 22 files – 13 JPG files, 4 PNG files, 2 MP3 files, 2 FLAC files, and 1 torrent file. I copied this folder onto a 1.36 TB NTFS hard drive and connected it to my Windows 11 system.

I then deleted this folder and emptied the Recycle Bin. After this, I ran a scan with Stellar to find and recover the folder. Although the scan took longer than expected, Stellar was able to recover all the files in question.

Stellar Data Recovery: Support

Stellar Data Recovery users have access to phone, live chat, and online ticket support. Phone support is available worldwide, but only in English. We tested the live chat briefly and were connected with a friendly, knowledgeable agent within a minute.

There are also a few different self-help options available. The FAQ section provides simple answers to common questions, and the comprehensive knowledge base contains excellent step by step instructions on how to perform basic tasks like data recovery as well as helpful information like which file formats are supported by preview.

Stellar Data Recovery: The competition

There are numerous alternatives to Stellar Data Recovery which could better fit your needs. For example, the Ashampoo Undeleter is significantly cheaper (just $14.99 for a lifetime license) and is great for simple file recovery.

Data Rescue 5 is a more expensive alternative (starting at a $99 one-off payment for five recovery drives), but it comes with a selection of powerful features comparable to those of Stellar Data Recovery.

Stellar Data Recovery: Final verdict

Overall, Stellar does a pretty good job at its core function, which is recovering deleted or lost files. While the app experience is a bit buggy and scans take longer than expected, Stellar still offers decent value for money, considering you can get an annual plan for $59.99.

Features like disk imaging and recovery, which facilitate byte-to-byte disk backup and recovery, and the ability to pause and resume scans are an absolute win. The software is also not heavy on your computing resources, allowing you to go about your work while scans run in the background. All in all, Stellar Data Recovery stands as a reliable and well-rounded data recovery solution.

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