Often our prospective customers ask us: What makes R-Studio better than other data recovery utilities? Why is R-Studio called "cost-effective" when some alternative file recovery products actually cost less? Is R-Studio more powerful than other tools? Why does R-Studio seem more complicated than some other tools?
Let's tackle that last question first. The R-Studio data recovery software was originally developed for use by data recovery experts, system administrators, IT professionals, and advanced and experienced computer users. Some of R-Studio's features were even designed exclusively for computer forensic experts, and most R-Studio users don't need every single feature of the software.
Because of the many features presented in R-Studio, there may be inexperienced users who find its interface and abundant functionality a bit confusing. We've actually tried to simplify the software interface as much as possible and have included a detailed online help and manual with the product. However, we recommend to those who still feel uncomfortable with the software after reading the Manual that they start their data recovery experience with the R-Undelete file recovery tool. Its three-step wizard-oriented user interface provides an easier way to perform ordinary file recovery tasks without any compromise to their efficiency. It's the best choice for basic and some advanced data recovery needs. Below you may compare the main features of R-Studio and R-Undelete.
Features | R-Undelete | R-Studio |
Wizard-oriented interface | Yes | No |
Extensive and versatile search for files to recover | Yes | Yes |
Support for mass file recovery | Yes | Yes |
File sorting by file types and timestamps | Yes | Yes |
File preview to estimate data recovery chances | Yes | Yes |
File recovery from deleted/reformatted/corrupted logical disks | Yes | Yes |
Recognition of deleted complex partition layouts | No | Yes |
Scan for known file types (raw file search) | Yes | Yes |
Disk image creation/processing | Yes | Yes |
Automatic program update | Yes | Yes |
Text/hexadecimal editor | No | Yes |
Support for non-Windows file systems | No | Yes |
Search for user-defined known file types | No | Yes |
Support for RAIDs and logical volume managers | Visible to system only | Yes |
Data recovery over network | No | Yes |
Emergency CD | No | Yes |
Important! Within one year of the date that you purchased your R-Undelete license, you may upgrade it to R-Studio for the initial price difference only. So, for the most simple, common cases, there is no reason, from a savings perspective, to purchase R-Studio before you have tried R-Undelete.
Why does R-Studio cost more than some competitive data recovery utilities?
Well, the answer is: It doesn't. It definitely costs less than most of them! Let's see what you get with R-Studio and what the average market price is for that type of utility:
1. A full-featured data recovery utility capable of solving any task an
experienced data recovery specialist or advanced IT professional user may ever meet.
It includes support for Microsoft's new file systems exFAT and ReFS, and Apple's APFS, and uses all common file recovery methods, including scanning for known file types (raw file search).
The average market price for software with this capability is US$60.00.
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Files marked for recovery in R-Studio
In addition to standard data recovery features, you also get:
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File preview in R-Studio
2. A RAID reconstruction module.
(R-Studio on-line Help: Volume Sets and RAIDs)
This is no basic RAID recovery feature like the ones offered by most other data recovery
companies. R-Studio's RAID recovery module provides advanced and versatile features that
rival those of stand-alone array reconstructors.
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RAID5 reconstruction in R-Studio
Among R-Studio's RAID reconstruction module features:
Read more about RAID data recovery in our articles:
RAID Recovery Presentation
Finding RAID parameters
Automatic RAID Parameter Detection
The average price for such software offered by our competitors is US$80.00.
3. Advanced Hexadecimal Viewer/Editor.
(R-Studio on-line Help: Text/hexadecimal Editor)
Completely comparable in its features to the leading disk editing tools available on the
market.
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HDD edited in the R-Studio's Hexadecimal Editor
In addition to all the standard features such software offers, ours includes these extra capabilities:
The average price for such software is US$70.00.
4. Advanced Object Copy.
(R-Studio on-line Help: Object Copy)
You may copy any object visible in the Drives panel directly to any other object, byte for byte. Or you may make a smart
copy of a partition or hard drive, adjusting its offset and size on the destination object.
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HDD smart copy
The average price for such software is US$30.00.
So, now we can do a quick calculation. Separate, single-license products would cost: US$60.00 + US$80.00 + US$70.00 + US$30.00 = US$240.00.
The R-Studio local version, with its full feature set, costs just US$79.99; the R-Studio Network package, which includes five additional licenses for remote computers, costs just US$179.99.
R-Studio has the advantage of offering you these components in a single, completely integrated program. You may use the hexadecimal Viewer/Editor to browse through hard drives of a failed RAID to get its parameters, create images of those HDDs to always keep the original data intact, load those images, create a virtual RAID, scan this RAID to search for known file types, preview files to estimate data recovery chances, search and mark all files that you need to recover, specify all recovery parameters, and start data recovery. And do all that as one, single task within one program on a remote computer over a network.
For all the feature richness you have with R-Studio, it is not a resource-hungry application. Its minimum system requirements are 256 MB of RAM and Win200. At the same time, it is optimized to run on the most advanced computer hardware and latest Microsoft operating systems.
Please be warned: R-Studio is indeed a powerful and reliable data recovery software product, but it's not a miracle worker. It successfully recovers data that is present on hard disks. But if data has been overwritten, it is gone. Neither R-Studio nor any other data recovery software or data recovery professional can recover data in that event. Another special case is data recovery from a hard drive with hardware problems. You may use R-Studio to create an image of such a drive as soon as the drive shows the slightest signs of physical damage. R-Studio even creates images in its Demo mode and saves them to another nondamaged device. Data recovery from images rather than the original drives is a very good practice to prevent irrecoverable data loss. When you bring a problem hard drive to a data recovery service company, hard drive image creation is the first thing the techs usually do.
However, if your hard drive has a noticeable hardware problem (say, a grinding, scratching, or percussive sound), do not try to use R-Studio or ANY software. Instead, immediately turn off your system and disconnect the drive. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO TROUBLESHOOT IT YOURSELF! If your data is valuable, do not experiment with the hard drive; bring the drive to a qualified data recovery professional. An expert of this kind has special equipment to read data from the hard drive and create its image and, more important, has the necessary skills to work with such drives. No data recovery software, R-Studio included, will help you under these circumstances. Moreover, any tampering with a drive exhibiting these problems will surely inflict more damage on your data. And, alas, quite often the damage is fatal to it.