Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery (for Mac)
Jun 22, 2020.
- Paste: Keep countless items in your clipboard. You might not have noticed, but your Mac is.
- Another utility I use with iTunes is Airfoil Speakers, part of Airfoil. Airfoil is designed to let you stream audio from a Mac to all sorts of devices, and it is an essential tool for doing this task.
Editor Rating: Good (3.5)
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Buy It Now
Stellar | £77.65 |
Pros
- Recovered more original file names than competitors.
- Simple to use.
Cons
- Repairing volumes requires the utility's Platinum edition.
- Would benefit from advanced filtering.
- License transfer is onerous.
- Ineffective for recovering files on solid-state hard drives.
Bottom Line
While it doesn't provide the most sophisticated tools for filtering recovery results, Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery offers an easy on-ramp to Mac data recovery.
Everyone loses files, even on a Mac. Sooner or later, you'll delete a file by mistake, then empty the OS X Trash—and then realize that you needed that deleted file after all. Anyone who uses a computer heavily sooner or later loses a file because of a software glitch or disk crash or some other disaster. Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery is one of a small number of OS X apps designed to claw back deleted or otherwise lost files from your hard disk, or from the flash card in your camera. Apps like this can't perform miracles, and the file you want to recover may be gone forever. Depending on circumstances, however, this app or one like it may be able to bring your data back to life after it seemed to be gone forever—a lot like the phoenix the app is named after, the legendary bird that dies and returns to life from its own ashes.
Interface
Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery sports an elegant, efficient interface that may help calm you down when you're desperate to recover data. The opening screen has a big 'Recover Data' button and two smaller buttons labeled 'Create Image' and 'Resume Recovery.' I'll get back to those smaller buttons in a moment, since you'll probably start with 'Recover Data.' Click on that button and you then selection options to recover photos, deleted files, whole partitions that got deleted by mistake or through a software glitch, or files on an iPod, CD, or DVD.
Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery sports an elegant, efficient interface that may help calm you down when you're desperate to recover data. The opening screen has a big 'Recover Data' button and two smaller buttons labeled 'Create Image' and 'Resume Recovery.' I'll get back to those smaller buttons in a moment, since you'll probably start with 'Recover Data.' Click on that button and you then selection options to recover photos, deleted files, whole partitions that got deleted by mistake or through a software glitch, or files on an iPod, CD, or DVD.
All these options work in essentially the same way—they scan a disk for data that has the characteristics ('signature') of a known file type like a PNG image or an MP3 audio file. When I told the app to search my 512MB hard disk for delete files, it took an hour to scan unused parts of the disk, and eventually displayed a tree-structured list of hundreds of files that might be recoverable.
The tree-structured list wasn't structured to match the directory structure of the disk but according to file types, so that all image files were displayed in a branch of the tree labeled 'Graphics & Photos' and all documents were displayed in a branch labeled 'Document.' Stellar Phoenix outclassed a rival app, Prosoft's Data Rescue 3 by using OS X's built-in QuickLook feature to display the contents of the files it listed; Data Rescue 3 used its own less-powerful built-in previewer.
In Stellar Phoenix, I was able to click on a file in the list of recoverable files and either right-click and choose QuickLook from a menu or simply click on a QuickLook menu. If QuickLook displayed the whole file, then it was worth recovering. If, as happened often, QuickLook showed only a tiny fraction of the original document, that meant that the file couldn't really be recovered, even though Stellar Phoenix listed it among files that might be salvageable.
Unfortunately, I couldn't simply scroll down the list of files to preview each, but had to select and click on each one in turn, a procedure that quickly gets tired, but at least I got an accurate, reliable indication of whether the recovered file would be complete. As with other apps of this type, however, the app usually has no way to guess the original file name, so you may need to preview dozens of arbitrarily-named PNG files before you find the one you want to recover.
Recovery
When I had selected the files I wanted to save, I clicked on the Recover button and Stellar Phoenix saved the files to a USB drive that I had plugged into the system. It rightly refused to save files to the same disk from which I was trying to recover them, because this would have risked overwriting some other file that I might want to recover.
When I had selected the files I wanted to save, I clicked on the Recover button and Stellar Phoenix saved the files to a USB drive that I had plugged into the system. It rightly refused to save files to the same disk from which I was trying to recover them, because this would have risked overwriting some other file that I might want to recover.
Those other two buttons, 'Create Image' and 'Resume Recovery,' lead to advanced convenience features. You use 'Create Image' when a drive is physically failing and you want to capture everything on it to some other location so that you can recover individual files later on—even after the original drive may have failed completely. 'Resume Recovery' is the button to use when you've already begun a recovery operation but had to stop in the middle to restart your computer or for any other reason, and you used the app's option to save the data it uses for recovering files so that you don't have to wait an hour or more while the app rescans the drive.
Not Quite Stellar
Everything about these basic operations worked well, but I found one strange glitch. The app includes a feature that lets you add a new 'file signature' to the program's built-in list of file types. I tried to use this feature to add to the list of file types the format used by the WordPerfect word-processor. As the program requested, I dragged ten existing WordPerfect files into a file-signature window, and the program told me that it had successfully added the signature to its list of types. But when I looked at the list of file signatures recognized by the program, the new type wasn't listed anywhere. I was puzzled by this, so I tried it again, and had exactly the same result. In contrast, Data Rescue 3's version of this same feature worked perfectly.
Everything about these basic operations worked well, but I found one strange glitch. The app includes a feature that lets you add a new 'file signature' to the program's built-in list of file types. I tried to use this feature to add to the list of file types the format used by the WordPerfect word-processor. As the program requested, I dragged ten existing WordPerfect files into a file-signature window, and the program told me that it had successfully added the signature to its list of types. But when I looked at the list of file signatures recognized by the program, the new type wasn't listed anywhere. I was puzzled by this, so I tried it again, and had exactly the same result. In contrast, Data Rescue 3's version of this same feature worked perfectly.
Compared to Data Rescue 3, Stellar Phoenix offers a more useful previewer, which made it easier for me to tell in advance whether my files would be recoverable. But in all other ways, Data Rescue 3 offered a comparable feature set and a generally smoother experience. Fortunately, with both apps, you can download the program in a trial version, run it to see whether it can actually recover your files—you can use the preview feature to determine whether the file you want can be brought back to life—and then pay for it so that it can perform the actual recovery.
If I had to choose one,s use of the QuickLook previewer instead of a more limited built-in previewer might change my mind. My advice: download both, and let each one scan for deleted files on your disk, and see which one feels more at home on your system. You can't go wrong with either.
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Last updated September 7, 2020
All About Mac Utilities
In order for your computer to run smoothly, you need more than just a good configuration. No matter how good the components are and how new, fast and powerful your computer is when you first purchase it, it’s not going to stay like that forever.
Just like with any other item, computers also need a lot of maintenance, in order to keep running at their best capacity.
After years of wear out, browsing the Internet, endlessly installing and uninstalling programs, moving around files and folders, downloading stuff and so on, you will notice the effects. Your system will get slower and less efficient with time. That’s where utility software springs into action.
Utility software is a program/app that helps your computer work better. There are a lot of types of utility software, depending on what part of your computer it focuses on: the operating system, data storage, hardware and so on. There are apps that clean up your junk files from your Mac and free up the space on your hard drive. Others may detect apps that are running unnecessary in the background, slowing down your system and help you optimize it. There are programs that detect malware, viruses, bloatware and so on, that help you recover lost data or protect sensitive information. The list goes on…
Best Mac Utilities 2016 Product
All computers usually come with built-in utility tools and Macs make no exception. Some examples are: Console, Disk Utility, AirPort Utility, Keychain Access, Activity Monitor and others.
But these integrated tools are not always as efficient as utility software developed by third-parties. However, you shouldn’t expect miracles from any program. Although you will experience an increase in performance after using them, none of them has the ability to make your computer behave like it is brand new again.
Here are some of the most common types of utility software:
- Antivirus utilities
- Disk cleaners
- Disk cloning utilities
- Backup utilities
- Cryptographic utilities (they let you encrypt files and folders for increased protection)
- Memory testers
- System monitors (they monitor the performance and resources)
- Network utilities
Mac Utilities - What to Look For
There are a lot of apps out there that claim they can boost your Mac’s performance. While some of them can be tested for free and don’t cost you anything, a lot of them are paid apps, so you should be careful what you pay for.
You should always try the free apps first and only if they prove to be worthless, go for the paid ones. Also, the good news is that most of the paid apps also have trial versions, so you can test the product before you buy.
When looking for utility apps for your Mac, you can either install specific apps that can perform specific tasks: cleaning apps, data recovery apps, encryption apps, backup apps, security apps and so on, or choose a suite that incorporates all of them.
No matter which option you choose, you should pay attention to some essential aspects when searching for the right utility app. The most important ones are:
- cost vs. quality
- features
- ease of use
- performance
- how the customer support is for that specific app
- security
Here are some of the best choices we could find:
Mac backup software:
Data Backup, Carbon Copy Cloner, Acronis True Image, SuperDuper, ChronoSync
Mac recovery software:
EaseUS, Stellar Phoenix, Prosoft Data Rescue, Disk Drill Pro, Wondershare, Cisdem DataRecovery
Mac encryption software:
Concealar, Hider 2, Espionage 3, MacKeeper, Data Guardian 3
Best Mac Utilities 2019
“All-in-one” Mac utility software:
Mac Utilities Apps
MacKeeper, OnyX, iDoctor, Data Rescue 3, Stellar Drive ToolBox