Active File Recovery for Windows

Product summary

Active File Recovery, from LSoft Technologies Inc., is a desktop application designed to retrieve files that were deleted, corrupted, or lost after a volume was reformatted — and it can even access data on systems that fail to boot. It’s designed to be straightforward to use, and is available in several paid editions as well as a severely feature-limited demo.

Editions and trial options

• Ultimate
• Professional
• Standard

A demo edition is available for evaluation, but it restricts many features compared with the paid packages.

Primary workflow overview

• Recover the items you want to restore
• Inspect and organize scan findings
• Perform a disk or volume scan

The typical rescue operation involves scanning a volume, reviewing the scan output and then restoring the selected files. The three phases above cover those actions, though you will interact with the interface to move between them.

How to scan and examine results

Begin from the Recovery Explorer and initiate a scan on the target volume (choose the “Volume (Logical Drive)” option) to search for deleted or lost data. When the scan completes, results appear in the Logical Drive Scan Result View, where you can review detected items and pick which to recover.

To make the list easier to work with you can change how items are grouped:

• Date categories (e.g., deleted/accessed, modified, created)
• Application associated with each file
• File type or extension

You can also narrow results using the File Filter toolbar by filtering on filename, file extension, or deleted status.

Detailed restore procedure

• Decide and confirm the folder where recovered files should be written
• Mark the file(s) you want to restore in the Logical Drive Scan Result View
• Open the recovery dialog (click Recover or use the Recover command from the context menu) and start the restore
• Allow the process to finish, then verify the integrity of the recovered files

Confirming a safe destination before beginning the restore helps avoid overwriting data on the source drive.

Is it worth purchasing?

If you keep important documents, schoolwork, or irreplaceable files on your PC, Active File Recovery can be a useful tool. It’s user-friendly and suitable for non-technical users, and the paid editions provide more comprehensive recovery capabilities than the demo. For those who need reliable recovery options, the software is generally considered to be a cost-effective choice.