Ontrack EasyRecovery: Restore Files from HDD, USB Drives and Partitions

Kroll Ontrack EasyRecovery corresponds to its name: it lets anyone recover their data from damaged or formatted drives. This product is a comprehensive solution – simple enough for beginners, but with extra features that advanced users would appreciate. You don’t often come to see Ontrack EasyRecovery listed among the top specialized tools, but it has always been one of the best recovery tools.

Ontrack EasyRecovery: Restore Files from HDD, USB Drives and Partitions

Key features and prices

Comprehensive data recovery software solution by Ontrack provides safe recovery options for irreversibly deleted files. It can recover damaged files from hard disks, memory cards or USB drives.

With the quick and deep scan options, you can analyze a disk to find recently deleted files or run a deeper scan to recover data in more complicated cases. For Mac computers, you can find and restore damaged or deleted partitions on formatted storage devices. Ontrack EasyRecovery can recover files from devices having various file systems including HFS, HFS +, FAT, ExFAT and NTFS.

Ontrack EasyRecovery - select a recoverable disk

Ontrack offers EasyRecovery in four versions, each of them being available for both Windows and Mac. The price of every commercial version includes a year-long license for one computer.

  • Free. The non-commercial version of EasyRecovery allowing to restore up to 1 Gb of data. Use it to recover damaged or deleted data and extract information from formatted or damaged partitions.
  • Home. This version includes quick scan and deep analysis options to improve the quality of file recovery.
  • Professional. The version for small and medium-sized businesses. EasyRecovery Professional can recover data lost for a number of reasons, including accidental deleting and formatting, or damage to the hard disk.
  • Technician. Another version is designed for IT staff. It enables file recovery from RAW disks (i.e. disks missing a file system or having the RAW format) as well as from lost partitions on Mac computers. It can also form encrypted file systems.

For an extra payment of $10.74, Ontrack offers a CD copy of the version you buy.

Regardless of the EasyRecovery version you are using, there are functions for disk diagnostics and full erase so that the data cannot be recovered anymore. If you want to remove confidential information from the disk before selling or disposing of it, this is just the feature you need. However, as soon as you do it, no data recovery tool will ever be able to restore the erased information.

Ease of use and overall performance

As I have already mentioned, the ease of use is what distinguishes Ontrack EasyRecovery from other tools. The simple and user-friendly interface is there to disguise the advanced disk recovery strategy. Instead of just running a scan, the program redirects you to the menu for choosing the file type you need to recover and the storage device the data was lost from. As a result, the program will determine what scan settings are good for your specific case.

Ontrack EasyRecovery - choice of the type of recoverable files

We tested the recovery potential for various file types in two different scenarios: files lost after accidental deleting and after hard disk formatting. Ontrack EasyRecovery copes easily with finding accidentally deleted images, documents, videos and audio files.

Recovering data after disk formatting turned out to be more challenging, though. The percentage of successful data recovery from such storage device was considerably lower – but still satisfactory. For example, after formatting we only managed to recover 75% of images and photos, so keep that in mind if you deal with photographs mostly.

The speed of disk scanning with Ontrack EasyRecovery is lower than that of many other data recovery solutions, but it doesn’t seem to affect the tool’s performance in any way. That might be the reason why this program has an option to suspend the scan temporarily.

Ontrack EasyRecovery - scanning process

All control elements are easy to understand, so recovering deleted files in only a few clicks away. The only thing this tool misses is the preview function for the files to be recovered.

Customer support

The developer, Kroll Ontrack, offers access to a vast knowledge base featuring articles and news on the topic. You can contact tech support by phone, interactive chat or email. For an extra payment, there are online courses with the company’s own Data Academy.

Vladimir Artiukh

Author: , Technical Writer

Vladimir Artiukh is a technical writer for Hetman Software, as well as the voice and face of their English-speaking YouTube channel, Hetman Software: Data Recovery for Windows. He handles tutorials, how-tos, and detailed reviews on how the company’s tools work with all kinds of data storage devices.

Oleg Afonin

Editor: , Technical Writer

Oleg Afonin is an expert in mobile forensics, data recovery and computer systems. He often attends large data security conferences, and writes several blogs for such resources as xaker.ru, Elcomsoft and Habr. In addition to his online activities, Oleg’s articles are also published in professional magazines. Also, Oleg Afonin is the co-author of a well-known book, Mobile Forensics - Advanced Investigative Strategies.

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