Stellar updates Phoenix Photo Recovery for images, AV files
updated 02:00 am EDT, Tue May 24, 2011
Recovers from camera, phone cards, hard drives
Stellar Information Systems, known for its Stellar Phoenix drive-recovery software, has updated its version of the software specially aimed at recovering photos, audio and video from camera and mobile-phone memory cards as well as hard drives. Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery v4 tries to recover images and AV files in over 50 different formats from drives where the files have been accidentally deleted or formatted, or suffered from corruption, read/write errors or have been improperly ejected.
The software, which is also available for Windows computers, supports English, German, French, Spanish and Italian languages and offers a free trial that allows users to scan the affected drive to see what, if anything, the software will be able to recover before purchasing. It operates on a simple, three-step level for first-time and novice users, but offers advanced recovery options for professionals. It supports the recovery of RAW image files from most major camera makers, including Sigma and Mamiya along with brand names like Canon and Nikon.
In addition, the software can be used to recover audio or video files in a wide variety of formats, including AIFF, AU, RA, WAV, OGG, MP3, M4A and WMA and others for audio. For video, Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery supports AVI, WMV/ASF, MPEG-4, 3GP, DivX, OGM, Matroska, VOB, MTS, MOV, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, DV, 3G2 and others. Image formats that the program supports include the usual JPG, TIFF, PNG, GIF, PSD, INDD (InDesign) and others, but also rarer formats like MOS, PCT and PSP.
The new version supports several new image, video and audio formats (detailed above) and adds a "Recover" button that animates during the recovery process, the previewing process has been improved, and users can buy the upgrade to the full program directly from within the trial version.
The program costs $39 and is backed with a 30-day money-back guarantee. It requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or higher. The free trial version will scan and preview recoverable files, but a license key must be purchased to gain the ability to actually recover the files.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Apr 2008
Tried this once before
Did not yield great results. Eventually sent my drive to Flatirons data recovery in Colorado as they are Mac recovery specialists. They got everything back correctly though there was some corruption so I lost about 15 photos out of several thousand.