Are you a professional photographer who clicks hundreds of pictures every day? Then you must have definitely come across a situation where you accidentally deleted your photos or formatted your SD card without any backup. It can be a frustrating experience in trying to recover your photos and videos. Here’s where Stellar Photo Recovery comes to the rescue. With a legacy of over 30 years, let’s see how you can use Stellar’s experience to recover your photos and videos.

Stellar Photo Recovery: Free Version

We started the testing with the free version of Stellar. It does a comprehensive scan of your disk or drive and shows you a preview of selected files which you can recover. However, if you want to view all the files, the software will prompt you to get the premium version. But if you are looking to take a quick glance to recall what type of data you have lost, then the free version of Stellar should be good enough.

Stellar Data Recovery: Full Features Unlocked

We tested Stellar to its full potential by using the paid version. First, we purposefully deleted some files on our drive and then used Stellar to scan it. The interface is simple to understand and beginner friendly, and provides you ample details. The software shows a dashboard of all the drives on your system, which you scan one-by-one selectively.

We went ahead and selected the drive from which the images were deleted. The scan took hardly 3 seconds, and the deleted images were spotted by Stellar quickly. It showed us a preview of some files, but not all file types are supported for preview, so that’s something to note. The best part, we were able to recover all the deleted files, images, and videos within seconds.

We also tested Stellar Photo Recovery with an external drive, and the software performed flawlessly. However, the time taken to scan and recover files depends on the storage speed of the drive, which took considerably longer on our external drive.

Features of Stellar Photo Recovery

Stellar is a feature-packed tool that lets you restore almost any type of deleted data. You can recover images from HDD, SSD, MicroSD, flash drives, and even smartphones. It also supports file formats from major brands like Canon, DJI, Garmin, GoPro, and others, covering everything that professional creators will possibly need. Since the software is pre-configured with these file types, it’s more effective in searching for recently deleted media.

One of the notable features of Stellar Photo Recovery is Deepscan. It takes a bit longer, but scans for your data at a multiple level, trying to recover stuff from overwritten segments. This increases the chances of recovering your data, especially if it was deleted a long time ago. In our experience, this feature worked well enough, but the success rate was not as good as the regular scan.

The list is long with this one, you can also pause the scan midway without damaging the files. You can even enter your own file type to scan if it is not already coded. You can navigate and filter through the files using the file types and sizes.

Pricing: Worth Your Money

Stellar offers three tiers of its premium version. The Standard Plan is best for regular users who are only looking to save some lost data, nothing fancy, priced at $49.99. The Professional Package takes it up a notch and offers you the feature to repair corrupt files. You can get the thumbnail for a file that is beyond repair. All this is for an extra $10, which puts the Professional Package at $59.99. The Premium Package is priced at Rs $69.99, which buys you the option to repair corrupt videos and photos. You can repair multiple videos in one go through this.

The Technician Package at $99.99, is the most advanced tier that combines every feature from the previous tiers. This one is specifically designed for photographers and technicians who regularly need data recovery.

Stellar Data Recover Review: Verdict

Stellar’s data recovery algorithm is perfect, it knows how to get the job done. The attention to detail is clearly visible in the features, and the interface is beginner-friendly. The software supports older formats like CF and xD and also the newer ones, giving you the complete flexibility. You get every major brand support and an option to do a double and even thorough sweep for lost files.

The only drawback is the changes in the file name after the recovery. While it makes it easy to identify a restored file from your normal files, it would have been better if Stellar offered an option to keep the file name the same. The software can also struggle a bit when dealing with larger amounts of data, but the actual performance depends on the speeds supported by your drive. These are not dealbreakers as such, but its worth noting while paying for software.

The standard plan should be good for most people who are looking to recover files from an old drive, or their current SD card. If you are a power user, then the Technician package will surely prove helpful, with all the powerful features that Stellar offers. You can download Stellar Photo Recovery and use the free trial yourself to experience the magic, before making your choice of subscription.