Review – iTop Data Recovery – Highly trustable yet comes with some quirks

Disclaimer: The gauging of the price-to-satisfaction ratio in this review is solely based on the current ongoing promotion and will change depending on whether the prices return to their original numbers

Last month I reviewed my very first software in the form of the iTop VPN, I was met with a pleasant experience that makes me give the benefit of the doubt towards a safe and encrypted Internet surfing session given that companies aren’t pulling the backstabbing and leaking user information on their own.

With this time around, iTop is returning yet again but as a standalone program in the form of the iTop Data Recovery tool. Despite I have no use of such a program in the first place because I rarely delete stuff by accident and the only time I do is formatting the wrong drive during Windows installation which is like a point of no return, I’m heading into this with a positive vibe expecting iTop doing a good job so yeah, let’s see what you can do with it.

Just for a heads up, since we are given a product key for review therefore we’ll be able to explore everything the tool’s got to over.

Starting with the home screen, it is very clean for one – No side tabs and minimal scroll bar count (Wouldn’t even exist if the available hard drives is less enough) with flat-out properly segmented icons that are easy on the eyes and aren’t distracting.

Over here, you can choose what sort of files you wanna recover from the photos and videos to the music and documents while not missing the archives and the rest of the things that are not part of the 5 categories.

Next, pick the desired drives that you wanted to scan, and to cut down on scanning times, you’ll probably just have to pick the one drive that stores the file that was accidentally deleted. You can even designate specific folders or removable drives to really shorten the recovery period.

Alternatively, if you need a program that helps you back up your files regularly at set intervals you may do so via the Data Backup function where you can select a particular file with the Add button down there and set the backup location of your choice with a couple of selectable options that could match your needs in certain scenarios.

While it might be naive to think that one needs a program to help backup things but for one, automated backups are just so reliable to not miss out on mission-critical records, and for two, this can be utilized to create shadow copies if you have a network-based home storage running the same NTFS format for full compatibility.

Driving back to the main topic of recovering files, let’s hit it with a single SSD of the D: drive, and the scan pretty much finished within 20 seconds or so and to my surprise, it can even find stuff that was created back in 2013 (Although these files are for my college years around 2018).

In terms of what sort of results you can get back, it is a bit complicated which I’ll talk in a bit.

If you decided to use the Deep Scan function which scans really slowly in order to cover tons of sectors, you better not be in a hurry because it actually takes so long that I straight up stopped it on the 251 million mark.

The total progress of 21% took an hour and guess what? The first 20% was done in a minute while the next hour covers only 1%.

Yes, it is that slow.

So yeah, you’ve been warned. You’re not obliged to use this unless the standard scan can’t find your file for whatever reason.

But once the scan is done in either case, you’ll be able to select the file you want and select the destination for them.

Test Results

Here comes the actual result of the recovered files where I selected all available image files containing JPEGs, PNGs, and GIFs, and yes all of them are recovered without any problem. Nice start.

As I only got a spare video file on hand, the 10MB clip is recovered without any playback errors so at least the baseline is there. It could be quite hard to get back like say, a full movie the size of several GBs.

Music files are in a bit of hit or miss situation as the first 8 tracks of the album are recovered with full information and work perfectly fine while the 9th to 12th are broken. Yes, the cover image is broken as well.

As for the document part, I’ve chosen a simple Word file of a few KBs and a couple of PDFs ranging from 1MB to 3MB, and everything is restored flawlessly – A gospel for those who lost their assignment files and project proposals written over tens of hours.

A little caveat

Although the recovery function works with about 90% accuracy in terms of recovered files that are actually openable, you might want to be careful about recovering files from the Recycle Bin.

It is because of the nature of how deleting files works in a digital environment (At least in Windows for all I know) where available spaces are just occupied blocks that are permitted to be overwritten with something else.

So if your file happens to be overwritten partially or fully, the software at most could only retrieve the file name via the Master File Table (And sometimes even fail to do so), and the file size with the contents inside completely broken.

But with how files are created and used nowadays, they are probably first created and saved within the desktop or certain folders inside one of the directories of a given hard disk.

What I would do to improve the chances of recovery is to target that specific directory to search and perhaps retrieve the lost files successfully.

Conclusion

At the end of the journey, I’d say that the iTop Data Recovery software did its job well and was fairly decent with its easy-to-understand interface navigation, straightforward scan and recover approach allowing even the most basic computer user to get back what they need.

As something that can save one’s progress from human-made errors of accidental deletes or by malware infections, iTop’s decision to include a Data Backup function that encourages users to backup shadow copies of important archives and records shows that they went above and beyond to make sure all the precious data are not lost by simple mishaps.

Pricing

The last point of the review is the pricing which takes a different approach from their VPN service since the data recovery tool is offline-based.

In conjunction with the Black Friday sales, they are currently offering USD29.99 for 1 Year of the premium plan while a lifetime license can be purchased for a flat USD39.99 and no more.

Therefore, whether you just want to have a quick use of the tool and can slowly shell out USD2.50 per month to ease the pain on the wallet or just throw a quick 40 dollars and end the nightmare once and for all, it is your choice.

And yes, the 1-month thingy is just there to make the others look enticing – the usual marketing gimmick.

So with a PRO plan, iTop is basically saying you’ll get to recover more file types and a higher chance of success span across different scenarios and removable devices on top of the automatic backup function that can help you backup files regularly that would otherwise need to be done manually.

As such, I would recommend you consider the following steps to determine whether you need it or not:

1. Get the free version and see if you can recover your files flawlessly
2. Opt for a 1-year USD2.5 per month plan in case Step 1 fails since it is easy for your wallet and has a money-back guarantee
3. Try your best to recover your files again with the PRO plan algorithm
4. Most likely you’ll get your files back, then use Data Backup function to create copies of them regularly
5. Go for a lifetime license if money is not of your concern and you feel satisfied with its recovery skills and accuracy

Click here to get access and try out the iTop Data Recovery tool starting today.

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