Losing data from a hard disk is always a bit of a tragedy, regardless of its contents. For some reason, losing our photographs makes that tragedy even more distressing, as if we had lost some irreplaceable memories rather than just bits and bytes. Hetman Photo Recovery promises to bring back to life those memories in a stress-free process just by following the few simple steps of its wizard-based interface.
Having an interface that guides you along an otherwise fairly stressful process is a blessing. The first thing you’re asked to do is to choose a disk. Actually, you can choose any internal or external disk and device connected to your computer, including digital cameras, smartphones, tablets, memory cards, USB sticks, etc. The program supports all kind of storage devices, regardless of their file structure. Next, you have to decide on the type of scan your files require – a Fast scan for images deleted or lost not too long ago and a Full Analysis that will search for the tiniest trace available of any long-lost file. As expected, the deeper the scan, the longer it will take.
The next step will let you search for a specific file or set of files by size, date, or type, or a combination of any of those. Click on “Next” to launch the analysis of the selected drive(s), and wait for the program to show you the thumbnails of all the recoverable files found. You can stop the analysis at any time if you happen to see the file or files you were looking for. Select the file(s) you wish to recover and tell the program where you want it to store them – on a hard drive, on a CD or DVD, as an ISO file, or on a different computer via FTP. And here is where the magic ends.
As it happens with most similar tools, Hetman Photo Recovery’s trial won’t recover any file whatsoever. After going through all the process, you’ll be asked to register your copy if you still want to undelete the image or images you lost. I have to admit that when I saw the thumbnail of the image I was looking for all covered with watermarks saying “Unregistered version” and ruining the entire picture, I hoped that the program would let me check its true efficiency by allowing me to recover that watermarked (and therefore useless) copy of that photo. Regrettably, it didn’t. Thus, encouraging as it was to be able to see that lost photo again at the end of the process, nothing guarantees that paying for its high registration fee will bring it back to life again.
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