Recover My Files is the world’s most thorough data recovery software, capable of recovering more than 200 different file types and provides a preview screen to allow the user to see files as they are being recovered.
“A very high percentage of our downloads and sales come through Download.com, so it’s an excellent measure of the success of the product and customer satisfaction,” GetData Managing Director, John Hunter, said today.
“We rate highly on Download.com which is also a highly competitive site, so we’re very pleased with the reactions we’re getting from users.”
John Hunter also said they monitor very closely the constructive criticism that is often attached to the praise.
GetData Welcomes Constructive Criticism
“Every computer and every user has a different set of issues. To anticipate every conceivable combination of technical and user issues would be impossible. But we take note of every comment and try either find fixes or add a capability to the software. We appreciate both the good and bad and keep trying to improve the product,” he explained.
The most common recurring issues were the speed of searches (dependent on how many files are on a drive), that some users had not seen the warnings to save found files to a new drive (internal, external, USB, CD or DVD) and that while the trial version is free (and can find your files), as in any business, you have to pay for it to own and use the software application.
“But once you own it, it’s yours to use for ever, you can get upgrades from the Recover My Files website. And never be caught out again,” John Hunter added.
Five Star Ratings
In January this year, “jprgo” summed up succinctly what many users say about the product, giving it five out of five stars: “Retrieve your deleted data, i've seen a lot of programs that say they can, but there are always (sic) some flaws. But in this product i can't find one!”
Another five star rating came from “PC Tech”, beginning with the heading: “Worked for me, does what it says.”
“PC Tech” went on to say: “Pros: It scanned my damaged hard drive on my laptop and allowed me to recover my files to an external 160GB USB drive.
“You can also use Recover My Files with BartPE to create a bootable windows environment running entirely from CD and do recovery on your hard drive from there. Scanning time was decent, but remember it can take a while with any recovery program to scan your drive (especially if your drive has errors or is damaged).
“One thing you have to realize is that no software is perfect, nor does any software perform miracles. One last thing, "No program is any better than the person using it."
Cons: One thing that stinks is having to type the loooong serial number. Other than that? No complaints so far.”
John Hunter noted:”The quick and simple way of handling the alpha-numeric numbers, and not getting them wrong, is to copy and paste them across.”
User Expectations and Options
A three star rating came from “coolbreezeworld”, with the heading: “Has the capability to fulfill many users' expectations.”.
“coolbreezeworld” went on to say:
“Pros: I remember that this was the first product that came to my mind when I accidentally deleted some of my music files. Actually this was the second time I downloaded this product. The first time, when I downloaded and tested the product, it didn't impress me much, but the second time was more informative. Let us see....
“Sharp and yet not flashy. It does set the tone for being a serious program.
It has numerous extensions, from which you can specify the necessary extension and it will have two '+' menus, one being the extension specified and the other - a collection of all the other extensions. This does make the whole task easier, better than shifting through numerous files.
“It found many files, some which were useful and others hardly useful. A point to be noted that it can give a preview of a selected file, but this is for only for image files.
“It informs the user on how easy or how difficult it is to recover the file or files selected. This is good, because it gives an idea on how tough or easy it is to recover the files selected.
“It can even recover files lost by formatting and from many hard disk formats, but the files recovered by formatting were very tough to recover, and not many results came up.
Different Types of Search Modes
“It offers different modes of searching, such as Quick search or In Depth search for deletions etc. I went for a Quick Search at first, and was impressed that it found 4 of my deleted files, but the In-Depth search never returned those final 2 files. Now....”.
“Cons: First of all, time plays a very important role in the usage of the program. The faster you run the program, the higher are your chances of recovering all the files deleted. For me, I was able to find only 4 of the total 6 mp3 deleted.
“Quick Search is much better than In-Depth Search, as the latter takes up more time, but never returns all the files as required. Also the search times are very long and lenghty, which is also a negative in this age of speed
“The price factor. Uhuhuh. Sample this. A program which doesn't return all the files needed and a sum of nearly $70! Do I need to elaborate further?
“One more thing. I had to specify the recovery path to my nearly full drive of D. The program wouldn't allow me to recover them to C drive or my main drive.
“I also agree with cyberbum's liner about the file extension problem he encountered.”
“Fatalfury” gave Recover My Files a four star rating, but had a note of warning after the heading “Great tool”.
“Pros: Choose which file types to search for. Search results lists all files found, their ex-location, and the chance of their recovery (very good, medium, bad, etc.).
“Cons: Must have a partition or removable drive to save recovered file to. But I guess that makes sense.”
Got Back Formatted HDD
And another five-starrer, from “Reggy” whose heading was: “Got back my Formatted Hard Disk”
“Pros: After a hdd problem I could no longer see the drive letter. This program was simple to use and recovered the entire partition with full file and folder names. Great job.”
“reggy” came back to use the product a second time and had this to say: “Pros: Ive used this program before to recover deleted files and it did a great job. I updated to version 3.60 and tried the new "Fast Format Recover" options for a drive that no longer showed in Windows.
“It re-built the whole partition with full file and folder names in less than 15 minutes. Highly recommended. I particularly like the ability to save directly to a CD or DVD, a feature which no other data recovery program I tried had.
“Cons: No cons. It did the job and did it well.”
And although “eagletec” gave the program a rating of five and headed his comments “Pretty Good Program”, “eagletec” also had a few observations about the program:
“Pros: Tested in a Laptop that was accidentally reformatted and after that install it the Laptop Recovery Disk. We download the file and it was able to recover almost all the pictures that were lost, and avoid a Divorce ;-). After see that we can recover the pictures we Bought it.
“Cons: Slow process. (5-7 Hours in a 80 GB HD). Missing an option to save the list of the files that was able to find, in case that you want to recover the same files again you don't need to run the process again. :-( .”
Some Quick Responses
And a couple of other quick ones. “adonai AD” scored it five out of five:
Pros: This program saved my files! Nothing else to say except---THE BEST in its field!!!! To: Software Critic: Don't blame this program if you don't have an alternative storage device. It tells you in the beginning that you need another storage area!!!
And “toneslater”: “Pros: Need I say more - this is a cool tool and everyone should get it - simple.”
John Hunter said: “We appreciate all of the comments, constructive and otherwise. We’re constantly working on all of our products. We take all of them in to account and wherever we can improve Recover My Files we do so as quickly as