DOC Regenerator Review
Ugly but effective - if basic
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You can buy it at RegNow for that price.
- Successfully recovers a wide range of deleted documents - Easy to use
- Impossible to point to a particular directory to search - Cannot pick files to recover from list - Ugly as sin - Other choices for less money
Let me preface this review by saying that it is an ugly piece of software - it would look dated even on a Windows 95 desktop.
Looks are irrelevant, however, if the software performs as expected - which DOC Regenerator does. To test, deleted copies of a range of Word documents (Word 6.0, 97 and 2003) on both a FAT32 and NTFS partition, six documents on each for twelve total.
The software did an excellent job in recovering all my test files, as well as a large number of fragments from Word files long since deleted. In total, close to 1000 fragments were uncovered between the two partitions.
Of the 12 test documents, all but 2 were recovered in their entirety, and the other two were very close to complete.
I was disappointed, however, in the inability to define a particular directory to search for deleted files to cut the total time required. I am no software engineer, so it may be a technical limitation, but it can take a very long time to scan a whole partition - in my case, close to four hours for each search. Luckily, the software does not appear to take up much memory, so you can continue doing other tasks while it is crawling through your drive.
I was also shocked to see that the software did not present me with a list of files found on the hard drive to allow me to choose which files to recover. The initial scan took around 20 minutes, but the subsequent recovery of every single Word document ever deleted on my computer took hours. I would consider it an essential feature to be able to choose to recover only the files I deem necessary, not every file found.
Like a 1984 Buick Century, its ugly, slow, relatively expensive for what you get, and is missing some features that would make it really stand out. Given the price and similar competition, it is difficult to recommend as a must-have piece of software. Nevertheless, you can't argue with results, and here, DOC Regenerator simply works.