I got a chance to use a great piece of software. Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery is a complete solution that helps you to search, locate and recover your lost, missing, inaccessible or deleted data. It is pretty cool in the fact that what you thought you might have deleted is actually not deleted at all. Quite simply, it is a stellar addition to any computer.

Unfortunately, “Windows Data Recovery” means that the software is just for Windows machines, so Mac users should look elsewhere. Not only does the software cover Windows machines only, but also covers all operating systems. Stellar Phoenix covers FAT16, FAT32, VFAT, NTFS and NTFS5 file system. It also allows you to recover the data from compressed NTFS drives or individually compressed files.

Stellar Phoenix is powered by an engine which helps scanning the drive three times faster. Standard search is very fast and efficient in normal cases. If you are not able to get the desired results, it also offers advanced search. The method has greater chance to discover lost data. It scans each cluster of the logical drive and also scans the entire unused cluster for known file types. In case of formatted drive, previous file system can be selected for scanning.

What I like most about Stellar Phoenix is the support to “Recover more than 300 file types in case of severe file system corruption.” This means the program will have signatures of almost 300 file types. You can also add, edit and remove signatures that are added. The program also has the capability to determine file size of some of the file types. With this feature, you can recover different file types including MS-Office, Web, Images, Movie, Digital Camera, and Application files.

Lost any of your RAW camera format files? No need to worry. Stellar Phoenix has that covered also. The RAW Recovery option provides enhanced photo recovery and supports all major camera format file types such as NEF, CRW, CR2, ORF, SR2, K25, KDC, DCR, RAF, MRW, PEF, and X3F. If you are like me, some of these file names just don’t make since, but thankfully there is a preview mode. You will see that many files will have strange names while you are trying to recover them and you will not come to know what exactly that file was because it does not have that familiar name.

Of course, I had to test out the software, rather than assume it does its job, so I did a simple test and deleted a bunch of items in my recycling bin. Phoenix did a stellar job at recovering everything. Then I moved to an adventure that is a little more dangerous. Ooops. I accidently deleted one of my hard drive. This time around, I ran the scan in RAW mode, an option that scans each and every sector of the drive for files. This can take quite a long time. My 160GB hard drive took well over 4 hours to be fully scanned.

Afterwards, I was pleasantly surprised that most of my files were back. Not all of them, but luckily I had duplicates of everything before doing my tests. Perhaps something you may not have known is the fact that in Vista, a full format actually gets rid of everything by writing zeros to every sector of the disk, and no recovery software can deal with this – nope, not even Phoenix Stellar. Partitions formatted under Windows XP can, for the most part, be recovered.

When disaster strikes and your hard drives crashes, what do you do? Well, if you don’t have one of the many services that allow backup online, then you can’t do much. Regardless, you can never be too safe. Phoenix Stellar is good at what it does. However, I must admit, it was my first time using such software so I was, of course, pleased with results. The software is a little confusing at times, and I simply did not know what to do, or what many things meant. If you find yourself running into trouble however, customer support is free and 24-7. They are kind and very helpful. The user interface is not a site to behold; however, it is clear that their focus was not so much on looks, but functionality and for that, they are stellar.

The software is $99 after you have used your demo, and can be downloaded here.