Data Rescue is a powerful, yet very easy to use program that will let you recover essentially everything that you might want to recover off your hard drive. It's one of those programs that you may end up asking yourself "Can I really be without this thing?" The answer is a combination of: "How valuable is the data on my hard drive?" and "Do I really back up my data like I'm supposed to?"

Normally the first thing you do when your computer starts crashing (aside from running around in circles and shrieking in terror) is to put a repair CD into the computer, restart, and try to repair the computer.

The catch is, depending on what caused the problem, using a repair program may cause the loss of some of your documents. This situation can occur when your computer (for either hardware or software reasons) starts to place a new file over previous files and/or directories. When this overwriting happens, the old file and/or directory becomes useless and some data is lost. Repair software may misunderstand what is a good file from a bad (corrupted) file and save the wrong one. At that point, the good file may be gone for good and there is no chance for recovery.

However, if you had recovered all your data (or at least your "important" data) before performing the repair, you have something to go back to. That's where Data Rescue comes in. Data Rescue's sole purpose is to recover all your data--Data Rescue doesn't, and can't, repair anything.

To recover the data on your hard drive, Data Rescue must be started from either the CD (Data Rescue comes on a bootable CD for Mac OS and OS X), an external hard drive (e.g. fire wire), or a separate partition's hard drive. On your hard drive, Data Rescue can be used to recover data from floppies, Zips, Jazz disks and other removeable media.

One important catch when working with Data Rescue is that you must have some other place to store the items it's going to recover. This can be removeable media (Zip, CD, etc.) or another hard drive. It cannot recover to the hard drive it's trying to recover. Makes sense really.

When first starting Data Rescue, one first selects which drive is going to be examined and then select which type of scan is going to be performed. If you are nervous about your data, select the "Thorough Scan." The good thing about this is that it will find just about any and everything on your hard drive. The bad thing about this is that it can take many, many hours for the scan process to go through an average hard drive. Set it up and go to lunch, dinner, a movie, to bed, whatever. You can always try the "Quick Scan" first as it will take less than an hour to go through a medium sized hard drive. If you don't see what you are looking for, go to a movie (after setting up for the Thorough Scan.).

Once Data Rescue has completed its scan, you are presented with a list of all the files it has found. You then go through the list, folder by folder (it maintains the Finder's folder order) and click on each item you want it to recover. Once you have done this, you click on the "Recover" button and all the selected files will be recovered to the disk of your choice.

As you see on the bottom of the image above, you can also search for the names of documents and with custom you can search for things like ".doc" and other suffix endings. At that point you must go to each found item one at a time (by clicking the "Next" button) and manually check the box for the item to be recovered. [Wish list: it would be great if there was an option letting you "select all items with a .doc suffix," or "select all items with "proposal" in the name. Admittedly, all you really want to get off a bad hard drive is your data, and as such, the easier (and faster) it is to getting such data selected the better.]

One aspect I should point out is Data Rescue's ability to "find" hard drives or removeable media that won't mount on the desktop. During my testing, I was able to EASILY have Data Rescue see and recover the data from a hard drive that only showed a blinking question mark during startup. This same hard drive (when started from an external firewire drive) would not show up using either Norton's or TechTool using their respective "search for missing disks." After recovering the data off the hard drive, I erased and reinstalled everything (and just dragged back the recovered data from a fire wire drive).

I also had a Zip cartridge that had some kind of major physical damage. Although I was not able to get the data off the Zip (all the data was already backed up so this was a test more of curiosity than necessity), I had no problems with Data Recovery "seeing" the disk.

As stated, this program can recover your data. The next question is "then what?" Well, the choice is up to you. You can then repair your hard drive or disk with a repair program or just purchase a new hard drive. There is no doubt that since corruption can happen at any time, it may not be logical or prudent to purchase a new hard drive every time you have a hard drive crash. However, if you are having too many crashes and/or losing too much data, perhaps it's time to get a new (and bigger) hard drive. Your choice. At least with Data Rescue you are less likely to lose all your data.

Before I give my profound endorsement to this program, let me slap Prosoft Engineering around a bit. While some of you may read this review and say "Oh boy, I want and need to get this program now before I have a problem," chances are most of you who do get the program do so because you ARE having a problem.

Problem #1). Although it is supposed to be included, the two disks I had sent to me did not include a serial number. The program will not work if you do not input a serial number--even if you are booting off the CD. Although I had no problem getting a serial number by phone, I shouldn't have to. This is careless and inexcusable.

Problem #2) All the documentation is in a PDF document which is on the CD. I do recommend you read the documentation BEFORE you use the program. Unfortunately, if your computer is having problems, you cannot read the PDF because your computer is broke. The PDF manual is only 37 pages. It would not have killed Prosoft to print this out and place it in the box. Heck, if they condensed the basics down to a single sheet of paper explaining how to use the program and left the details for the PDF--it would have sufficed. This is cheap and inexcusable.

All that notwithstanding, I cannot recommend this program enough if you have data on your hard drive you care about. What is unusual about this review is that I'm only giving Data Rescue only 4 out of 5 happy Macs because I am upset about how the program is packaged. My attempt here is to shame them into at least providing a simple instruction sheet and making sure the serial number is in the box. If you do get this program before you need the program, please write them a note asking why they do not include a manual or basic info sheet.

One last comment: better than Disk Rescue is constant backing up. Disk Rescue should not be considered as an alternative to backing up. Sort of like a floatation device should not be considered as an alternative to learning how to swim. However, in a life-threatening situation, a floatation device is a wonderful thing.

.