There are lots of different data recovery programs out there. Arcksoft's RecoverPlus Photo Recovery 2.7.7 specializes in recovering digital photos and image files that have been lost or deleted on hard drives, removable media, and digital camera connections, even if the hosting media has been reformatted. It supports over 50 predefined file types, so it will recover data as well as pictures, and its Learning Engine makes it easy to add new file types to recover. It even displays high-resolution images as it works, so you don't waste your time recovering the wrong files.
The program's configurable interface is well-designed and quite attractive, with button controls located on the right-hand side, a welcome break from the usual Windows-type layout. It's an image-heavy front end, with a main display window and thumbnails that display recovered files. The Help button calls up a Web page with all the assistance we could ask for, even a quick guide to the various removable media RecoverPlus works with. Several of the program's unique features caught our eye, including the ability to toggle between Thumbnail and FileList scans and a Test Speed button that measures the storage medium's read speed. It found every image in our tests, even tiny icons.
RecoverPlus Photo Recovery comes in Pro and Lite editions; we tested the Pro version. The free trial download is limited to 64MB saved per scan. It downloads as a ZIP file but works in all versions of Windows from 95 to 7; version 2.7.7 is optimized for Win 7.