Ease US Data Recovery Wizard Pro
MSRP $99.95
“Ease US Data Recovery Wizard Pro is a fantastic solution for restoring lost files, folders, and partitions.”
Pros
- Excellent recovery of HDD files
- Restored a lost partition and files from thumb drive
- Recovered SSD files in some cases
- Quick file previews even with a slow drive
- Offers a good free version and weekly subscription
Cons
- Doesn’t always recover SSD files
Ease US develops a wide range of utility software, with a strong focus on data recovery, disk partitioning, and data backup. Its Data Recovery Wizard app is a popular solution to help restore lost files.
I reviewed Ease US Data Recovery Wizard Pro for Windows to make sure it works well and is easy to use. I also checked in with Ease US support to find out how responsive it is when questions or problems arise. Data recovery can be difficult, so it helps to know whether help is available.
If you need to restore lost files for a Mac computer, you should check out our guide to the best data recovery software for the Mac.
Tiers and pricing
Ease US makes a free version of its Data Recovery Wizard, which might be all you need. It can find and restore up to 2GB of lost data, a generous amount at no charge.
Ease US also offers a free trial of the paid app, but it only shows previews of what might be recoverable. To actually restore files, you’ll need a subscription.
If you think you’ll only need this utility for a brief time, the monthly plan costs $70. If you linger on the website for a few minutes, you might see a pop-up offer of $40 for a weekly subscription.
When you have a large number and variety of drives and recovery software is something you’ll use throughout the year, the annual plan offers great value since it’s priced at $100 for 12 months. If you regularly need to restore files, the lifetime upgrade cost has a one-time fee of $150.
The paid plans work on one computer, so if you want to use it on several, you’ll need Ease US Data Recovery Wizard Technician, which costs $299 per year but supports up to 10 computers, making this a a bargain when you need it.
With any paid plan, you get live support via chat for the duration of the subscription.
Design
Ease US Data Recovery Wizard Pro is straightforward and easy to understand. On the left sidebar, I could pick what type of drive I wanted to access. Beyond the usual choices of a hard disk drive (HDD) and solid-state drive (SSD), I could pick an SD card, a network drive (NAS), a Linux drive, or a drive from a crashed PC.
After selecting a tab, I could see a list of connected drives. I had a mix of SSDs, HDDs, and logical drives (partitions) to choose from. I could search any drive for lost data with a couple of clicks. The app also showed Google Drive, but I doubt it could recover missing data from Google’s cloud server.
At the top right, the Ease US Data Recovery Wizard Pro app has buttons and menus to get support, check for updates, and choose a display language.
After starting a drive scan, files are displayed in a list of filenames, file size, file type, and modification date. I can sort by any column. A toolbar at the top lets me switch to a grid of thumbnails, which is great for seeing any images that have been found. I can also search and filter the list.
Ease US Data Recovery Wizard Pro provides a convenient and informative view of what the app is working on, with options to narrow in on the files I’m most concerned with.
Features
I tested an SSD and HDD in a couple of different scenarios, attempting to restore 165 files in nested folders with Ease US Data Recovery Wizard Pro. I also had an old thumb drive that stopped working a couple of years ago that I checked out. The results were mostly positive with complete success in all but one test.
I deleted several files from my HDD, and all were restored, including both the filenames and folder structure. I deleted all 165 files and enjoyed the same success for each. I moved on to a quick format, which proved to be no challenge to Ease US Data Recovery Wizard Pro. It recovered every file and folder again.
I was testing on a slow USB backup drive. While it took about an hour to complete the 165-file tests, a list of files popped up quickly, so I knew it would be worth the wait.
I moved on to the SSD tests, and this is where I ran into a problem. After deleting files, Ease US Data Recovery Wizard Pro was able to see all 165 files, but recovery yielded files that I couldn’t open. Only the file and folder names remained.
I contacted support about this issue, and the reply was that it’s much harder to restore files deleted from an SSD. I copied files to my test SSD and tried another test, but with my expectations lowered.
After running a quick format, Ease US Data Recovery Wizard Pro listed all the files, just as before. However, it managed to recover every file and folder intact this time.
My long-lost thumb drive scan revealed that it was a lost partition containing a Windows recovery environment, which was supposed to serve as a startup disk in case my main drive crashed. In a twist of fate, the emergency thumb drive was the first to fail. Ease US Data Recovery Wizard Pro was able to recover those files as well.
Support
From the Ease US Data Recovery Wizard Pro, I chose the robot icon at the top right, which offers support options. A question mark would have made more sense, but the robot is cute.
There are three options: help finding the drive that I wanted to recover data from, the quick-start guide, or VIP chat. I wanted to speak with a live agent, so I chose the chat option.
The Ease US website loaded in my default browser, and the wait for live chat was only about a minute. I received a friendly and informative reply to my questions about recovering data from an SSD. The support agent told me that’s more challenging than restoring lost files from an HDD.
I checked up on this and found that it really is harder to restore deleted and lost files when stored on an SSD. The best SSDs have a TRIM feature that speeds up data storage and extends the life of the drive, but with the side effect of more thorough deletion of files. That’s only a problem when you accidentally throw away an important file.
Privacy and security
The Ease US privacy policy is oriented toward website visitors. It states that it won’t sell your personal information. However, the company may share anonymous data from your website visit with third-party advertisers. You can opt-out by enabling the U.S. Global Privacy Control.
Since there’s no need to upload data to an Ease US server to recover files, using the app shouldn’t pose any privacy risks.
Is Ease US Data Recovery Wizard Pro right for you?
Ease US is a good solution for HDD and thumb drive data recovery. It gave mixed results with an SSD, but that’s not a surprise with that type of drive.
If you see the $40-per-week offer, it’s likely the best deal you’ll find. Since Ease US is among the best data recovery solutions available, it’s easily worth the money.
Ease US handles a greater variety of drives than most data recovery apps. If you use network attached storage (NAS drives), Ease US Data Recovery Wizard Pro stands out as a unique solution to restore missing files. It can even help with computers that won’t boot.
If Ease US Data Recovery Wizard Pro doesn’t work for your drive, you might need to get help from experts that use custom hardware to restore damaged drives.
Editors’ Recommendations
