It is a capable tool with a good interface and a business model worth understanding before you start. Here is where it works, where it stops, and where pointing it at a drive causes harm.
For deleted files and lost partitions on a healthy drive, it is among the better options. For a drive that is physically failing, no scanner is the right answer — including this one.
The interface is genuinely better than most of the category, which matters when the alternative is a command-line carver. Previews are the strongest feature: seeing a thumbnail before paying tells you whether the data is intact, and that is worth more than any marketing claim. It handles APFS containers and snapshots properly, which several competitors still do not, and its signature-based scan finds a wide range of file types when the file system itself is unreadable.
For the standard cases — emptied Recycle Bin, quick-formatted partition, a volume that mounts as RAW — on a drive that is otherwise healthy, it does the job.
On Windows the free version recovers up to 500 MB; on macOS it previews but does not recover without a licence. Either way the scan itself is free and complete, which makes it useful purely as a diagnostic — if it finds and previews your files correctly, the data is intact and it becomes a question of which route to take. If the scan finds nothing, or previews come back corrupt, no licence changes that.
Use it that way before paying. A free scan that shows healthy previews is genuinely informative; the same scan showing garbled thumbnails tells you the problem is read errors, not indexing.
Like every scanner, it assumes the drive is healthy enough to read repeatedly. A drive with failing heads or spreading bad sectors will be read for hours, and the tool has no concept of conserving a limited number of remaining reads — it will keep trying. Drives die during recovery scans regularly.
It also has no meaningful RAID reconstruction. Pointed at a single member of an array it will find fragments and misinterpret the layout, which can produce partial files that look recovered and are not. And it cannot address firmware faults, dead boards or anything requiring the drive to be made readable first.
Use it when the drive is physically sound, the fault is logical, and you can install and recover to separate media. Under those conditions it is a reasonable purchase and often cheaper than a lab — and we would say so rather than take the job.
Don’t use it when the drive makes noise, drops out intermittently, holds the only copy of something irreplaceable, or forms part of an array. In those cases the drive needs imaging read-only first, from £300 +VAT after a free 48-hour diagnostic.
For logical faults on a healthy drive, yes — the interface is better than most, previews are genuinely useful, and it handles APFS properly where several rivals do not. For physically failing drives or RAID arrays it is the wrong tool, as is any scanner.
The scan and preview are free and complete. On Windows the free version recovers up to 500MB; on macOS it previews only without a licence. Using the free scan as a diagnostic is sensible — healthy previews mean the data is intact.
It will try, and that is the problem. Scanners assume a drive can be read repeatedly and have no concept of conserving a limited number of remaining reads. Drives die during recovery scans regularly. If it clicks or drops out, stop.
Not meaningfully. Pointed at a single member of an array it will find fragments and misread the layout, producing partial files that look recovered but are not. RAID needs every member imaged and the geometry reconstructed.
When the drive makes noise, disappears intermittently, forms part of an array, or holds the only copy of something irreplaceable. A lab images the drive read-only first, so every attempt runs against a copy. Single drives from £300 plus VAT after a free diagnostic.