We’ve reviewed quite a lot of recovery programs in the past and some quite recently. However a new player has appeared on the block and requested that we took a look at their solution. Their product can recover all kinds of files. However they pride themselves on the possible of previewing GIF images, video files and more. So is this perhaps the Best free data recovery software out there? Well it’s not quite free, however it might be worth the money. Let’s see!
Features
As always we first took a look at their features. We were welcomed by a screen we don’t often see, the possibility to either recover from our computer or from a mobile device. That last one sounded good and we wanted to give it a shot. However you need to install an iOS version or Android version of the program to be able to do that. So we continued with recovering files on our Windows machine.
You have 3 options for scanning your device:
- You can perform a quick scan. That way you will find files you accidentally deleted by cleaning the recycle bin and so on. You can also recover files that you removed with shift-delete this way.
- You can also recover files using a deep scan. It suggested that you use this if the quick scan has failed to find the removed files. We did however see that the quick scan finds the files in most situations.
The last option is recovering files from a formatted disk. However be aware that you can only do this on a drive that has been formatted by a Quick Format. You can’t recover files from a partition that has been formatted fully.
The program recognizes most common file types and has the ability to recover other files as well. By default the program allows you to filter the following file types;
- Images and Photos
- Documents
- Audio
- Compressed File
- Video File
- And other files
You also have the option to pause the scan if it’s impacting your system too much. However we do believe that you should recover files as soon as possible, so live with the slow system if it happens. The scan was incredible fast in our tests (512GB NVMe drive)
Because the developers of the program are so proud of their video preview mode we went ahead and downloaded a copyright free video (credits; https://videos.pexels.com/videos/video-of-a-pigeon-854022) and removed it using shift-delete. Once deleted, we also deleted the folder. To make it a bit harder we placed 3 other videos in the folder as well.
While it couldn’t find out which folder it was, the program was able to recover the video files. At least 2 of them. When we used a deep scan it was able to recover all 3 of them.
So is this the best free video recovery software? We are not sure, but it comes quite close to it. Overall we would score the program a solid 9 out of 10 on the features and their performance.
Ease of Use
While the program is quite easy to use we loved this message (see below) that appeared during the installation. It reminds you that installing on the disk you want to recover from could potentially wipe out the recovery data! And you surely don’t want that to happen.
If you first start the program you’re greeted with a good tutorial helping you through the program step by step making it very easy to use. We love this addition by the developers of the program. We believe that most programs should do this, while many do, some still have a steep learning curve ahead of them. Luckily Bitwar Data Recovery has already implemented it, and we loved it.
Overall we would score the ease of use of the program a solid 8.5 out of 10. They could make it a bit easier to find certain features. I had to search for a home button and so on. The menu on the bottom of an application is simply not where we expect it as normal user.