First, the good news. Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery provides a simple interface for rescuing your images. You have three options - Data Recovery, Resume Recovery or Create Image. The application recovers your images by scanning your hard drive. If you know a little about where the images might be located, or what type of file they are, you can filter the search by hard drive sector or camera/image type. If you know this information, use it - if you don't, the scan can take a very long time.

Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery also allows you to save the results of the scan for later use, or create an image of part of your hard drive. This will be a help if bits of the drive are corrupt, and may allow you to recover images at a later stage. The program also provides decent offline help, and despite not having many configuration options, is very easy to use. Now for the bad news: Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery doesn't actually allow you to repair/recover your files in trial mode.

Although this is disappointing, Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery gives every indication that the full version would perform perfectly. Add this to the fact that the program recovers much more than 'just' photos, and it begins to look like a good option for a specific task.

Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery is an efficient program - it's just a shame about the trial limitations.

Download Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery 4.1 in Softonic

As the principal location for data storage, your hard drive is one of the components on your PC that requires the most attention. Fortunately, Hard Disk Sentinel offers a series of utilities that helps improve its performance.

Although not common issues, overheating, vibration, and other errors can adversely affect the performance of your hard drive. With various notifications and monitoring methods, Hard Disk Sentinel detects these issues so you can work toward rectifying them in short order. As a consequence, Hard Disk Sentinel's main objective is to verify, diagnose, and repair any problems your hard drive may have.

Unfortunately, Hard Disk Sentinel can be a little difficult to use for first-timers. There are a lot of options, but most of them don't work without paid registration. This limits the usability of the program. Since all of the advanced features are still shown on the trial version as well, it might confuse users who aren't as tech-savvy about PC optimization programs.

Hard Disk Sentinel is a good PC optimization program to get you started. If you want advanced features, however, look elsewhere.

Download Hard Disk Sentinel 3.60 in Softonic

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery features several scan and recovery methods (quick scan, deleted file recovery, formatted file and folder recovery, and search lost volume). The program can also analyze your hard drive to find out any physical issues, and create a drive image in case there are too many bad sectors, to improve the chances of a successful data recovery.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery is very easy to use and has a nicely designed interface, with clear layouts and big, rounded buttons. The program did find a lot of deleted files during our tests, but bear in mind that this doesn't mean it will always recognize the files that you are looking for.

If you've lost some valuable data, you may still have a chance of recovering it by scanning your system with Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery.

Download Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery in Softonic

Ashampoo HDD Control is the right application to keep an eye on your hard drive. It features a bunch of tools that let you analyze the status of the hard drive (as long as it has support for the S.M.A.R.T. technology), control its temperature, perform a defragmentation or even do some benchmarking tests to check your drive's performance, and compare it to that of drives from other manufacturers.

Ashampoo HDD Control is very easy to use. It features a tabbed interface with clearly designed buttons that give you access to the program's main features. There is also a comprehensive settings menu to tweak the program's behavior.

Besides checking your hard drive's health, Ashampoo HDD Control can also help you improve it with its built-in cleaning tools, with which you can erase all Internet browsing traces and redundant files. The program includes a special "Guard" component as well that can monitor your hard drive in real time and warn you of any potential problems. This function however may make your system a bit slower.

Ashampoo HDD Control is an easy-to-use yet powerful tool that lets you check your hard drive's health.

Download Ashampoo HDD Control 2.09 in Softonic

Help is at hand however with Stellar Phoenix NTFS Data Recovery is a complete data recovery solution that helps you to search, locate and recover lost, missing, inaccessible or deleted data on FAT drives. It's aimed at those unfortunate users who have lost data due to accidental reformatting, virus attacks, software errors and unexpected shutdowns.

However, this particular version is only for those with NTFS formatted drives - if you're not sure what type of drive you have then right click on your hard drive and select "properties" to see whether you're using an NTFS drive. Most Windows users are now on NTFS which is considerably quicker and doesn't fragment as much although older systems, such as those using Windows 2000.

The program has been designed with ease of use in mind - the software has a very simple GUI that includes a find file option, file mask and file filter so that you can target specific file types. It's also pretty useful if you want to partition your drive to install alternative operating systems.

The program works courtesy of a 'Raw File Recovery' feature that can recognizes & recovers more than 300 file types including documents, spreadsheets, web content & images. However, this doesn't mean it will always recognise the files that you are looking for because if they've been corrupted, the structure or format may also have been changed.

Nevertheless, if you've lost data on an NTFS drive then you've got little to lose by running this although it doesn't detect everything that's been lost or corrupted.

Download Stellar Phoenix NTFS Data Recovery Software 3.0 in Softonic

If so, server crashes can be absolutely devastating wiping out tons of data and leaving users stranded. Of course, the best solution is to ensure that you have regularly backed up your server hard drive but if you haven't, then Stellar Phoenix enables you to access data when the server volume(s) cannot be mounted.

Phoenix - Novell Data Recovery Software can recover Data to another drive in the case of corrupt volume(s), missing volumes, deleted files, allocation errors & partition loss. It's designed to deal with losses to all Novell Storage Systems including Novell Storage System (NSS) and NetWare Traditional File System (NWFS).

The interface is based on Windows Explorer and basically requires browsing to the volume that you want to expect much as you would with any Windows application. To recover data from a drive containing deleted file or folder click the 'Select NetWare Partition' button on the Icon Toolbar and select the partition that contains the volume from which data has to be recovered. Then simply select the volume containing the deleted file and folder and Phoenix scans the folders for problems. You're then presented with a list of those files and folders that are recoverable.

Fast acting and designed for the huge quantities of data that servers can hold, Stellar Phoenix Novell can recover the files that other utilities can't reach.

Download Stellar Phoenix Novell - Data Recovery Software NFS in Softonic

If so, Stellar Phoenix PST Recovery Software is designed to repair, recover and restore data from damaged or corrupted Microsoft Outlook files i.e .pst files. Outlook normally stores email messages, contacts, notes and folders on the local drive as a .pst file. This program scans the damaged .pst files and extracts and saves information into a new usable .pst file.

Stellar Phoenix PST Recovery Software can also allow you to recover accidentally deleted messages that have been emptied from the "Deleted Items" folder in Outlook. The program offers also recovery for email attachments, appointments, contacts, notes, tasks, journals, drafts and calendars. It can even repair files that were previously password protected, although Stellar Phoenix PST Recovery Software can't guarantee that once it's been recovered the file will still be password protected. The same goes for encrypted files, pst files on network disks and multiple pst files and attachments.

If you're a dedicated Outlook user and have suffered the worst, Stellar Phoenix PST Recovery Software could be your last gasp solution.

Download Stellar Phoenix PST Recovery Software 4.5 in Softonic

Stellar Phoenix Linux is a fully automatic Linux data recovery software for Ext2, Ext3 and Reiser FS file system volumes. It's designed to deal with the particular needs of Linux users which differ than those of Windows users - e.g. you're far less likely to need it for virus attacks or security breaches like Windows users often suffer.

The program automatically recognizes lost partitions, volumes, files and folders on IDE/EIDE/ATA & SCSI hard drive media. It works with most major Linux releases including Red Hat, Suse, Caldera, SCO, Debian, Mandrake, Sorcerer, TurboLinux, Slackware, Gentoo and more. If you've had a partition deleted, it also allows you to recover data from damaged or partially deleted sectors.

Although the interface differs from the Windows GUI version somewhat, it's still extremely easy to use. You are provided with advanced File Mask options according to file name, size and date and any scanning process can be halted at any time to view the results and the log generated can be saved as a file. Although it claims to be able to recover large fragmented files, user opinions differ to how far this definition of big goes - anything bigger than a GB or so and you may be out of luck but it's worth a try nevertheless.

With very few Linux data recovery solutions out there, this utility is certainly worth a try for anyone who has suffered the worst.

Download Stellar Phoenix Linux - Data Recovery Software in Softonic

If so, server crashes can be absolutely devastating wiping out tons of data and leaving users stranded. Of course, the best solution is to ensure that you have regularly backed up your server hard drive but if you haven't, then Stellar Phoenix enables you to access data when the server volume(s) cannot be mounted. Phoenix - Novell Data Recovery Software can recover Data to another drive in the case of corrupt volume(s), missing volumes, deleted files, allocation errors & partition loss. It's designed to deal with losses to all Novell Storage Systems specifically NetWare Traditional File System (NWFS). The interface is based on Windows Explorer and basically requires browsing to the volume that you want to expect much as you would with any Windows application. To recover data from a drive containing deleted file or folder click the 'Select NetWare Partition' button on the Icon Toolbar and select the partition that contains the volume from which data has to be recovered. Then simply select the volume containing the deleted file and folder and Phoenix scans the folders for problems. You're then presented with a list of those files and folders that are recoverable.

Fast acting and designed for the huge quantities of data that servers can hold, Stellar Phoenix Novell can recover the files that other utilities can't reach.

Download Stellar Phoenix Novell - Data Recovery Software in Softonic

Normally, anything that you delete automatically goes into the deleted folder but if you empty that folder, there's no going back. According to the developers, Stellar Phoenix Mailbox Standard uses an indigenous technology to scan the mail folders and retrieve deleted emails such as .eml files that can be viewed in Outlook Express or exported to a folder.

It can also provide Outlook Express Recovery from corrupt .dbx files and .mbx files as well as provide Outlook Express Repair of dbx/mbx files and recovers emails in them, to minimize the loss after file corruption. Any message in the message files may be viewed, opened in Outlook Express, and saved as a *.eml file but the file must be imported into Outlook Express. An entire message box may be saved as *.eml files and imported into Outlook Express message bases.

The problem is that not all messages will open correctly once rescued - the file opens but it can be difficult to decipher the message which often appears with characters and numerals all over the place.

Nevertheless, if you've lost an important e-mail and don't have it backed up on an external server, Stellar Phoenix Mailbox Standard is a handy second option.

Download Stellar Phoenix Mailbox Standard - Email Recovery Software in Softonic

It recovers all components including emails, contacts, notes, and tasks. If you're not familiar with the world of OST files, an OST file is a replica of your Exchange mailbox that is locally stored on your hard drive. The OST file helps you to speed up work on your Exchange mailbox while you are logged on to the server. The OST file is a component of your exchange server account and is not usable with Microsoft Outlook mail client. In the event of an email server crash or when a mailbox account is deleted at the server, Offline Storage Files (.OST) remain on your computer. These files can be recovered including those with large attachments by embedding the information into a usable .PST file.

This is a great tool for system administrators and system maintenance technicians as it does not require any technical knowledge in rescuing OST files.

Download Stellar Phoenix Mailbox - Exchange Desktop in Softonic

Help is at hand however with Stellar Phoenix FAT Data Recovery is a complete data recovery solution that helps you to search, locate and recover lost, missing, inaccessible or deleted data on FAT drives. It's aimed at those unfortunate users who have lost data due to accidental reformatting, virus attacks, software errors and unexpected shutdowns.

However, this particular version is only for those with FAT formatted drives - if you're not sure what type of drive you have then right click on your hard drive and select "properties" to see whether you're using a FAT formatted drive. Most Windows users are now on NTFS which is considerably quicker and doesn't fragment as much although older systems, such as those using Windows 2000.

The program has been designed with ease of use in mind - the software has a very simple GUI that includes a find file option, file mask and file filter so that you can target specific file types. It's also pretty useful if you want to partition your drive to install alternative operating systems.

The program works courtesy of a ‘Raw File Recovery’ feature that can recognizes & recovers more than 300 file types including documents, spreadsheets, web content & images. However, this doesn't mean it will always recognise the files that you are looking for because if they've been corrupted, the structure or format may also have been changed.

Nevertheless, if you've lost data on a FAT drive then you've got little to lose by running this although it doesn't detect everything that's been lost or corrupted.

Download Stellar Phoenix FAT Data Recovery 1.0 in Softonic