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6 January, 2009

blue dots  FileSalvage Review - Thumbs Down

A Review of FileSalvage from SubRosaSoft.

Data loss can feel like mind amputation. I accidentally deleted a directory full of photographs that were important to my work. Desperate, I paid $80 for SubRosaSoft's FileSalvage for OSX (versions 4.1.1), figuring it was worth the time and effort and heartbreak I would save, being able to recover my lost JPGs.

Not exactly. FileSalvage is a crash-prone, poorly-documented program with a somewhat crude interface and zero online support, save for an email address. It barely does what it promises, with few thrills and negligable UI. Ultimately, I found it wasn't worth the money, which broke my heart because most of what I read online made me think it was good, solid software.

a scanner, slowly

Firstly, FileSalvage needed to scan my entire hard drive. 75 gigabytes; it takes about an hour. The manual claims there's a "scan free space only" button on the interface, but it never appeared on my screen and I couldn't figure out why.

After scanning my hard drive, FileSalvage came up with a list of all the files I might be able to recover: 10,997 jpgs were listed. Each one had the name "File.jpg" and no date listed, only a file size. Unfortunately, the file size was not a useful measurement - some AIM icons were listed as 20 megabytes. The 10,000 number came from the vast numbers of deleted web cache files included; banners and graphics from web sites.

crash, preview, crash

Fortunately, you could preview each picture, to see if it was worth recovering. Unfortunately, you could only preview one picture at a time, and each picture took 3-5 seconds to come up. It made rapid scanning impossible, so I resigned myself to sit through and deliberately poke through the listings to find my few valuable JPGs.

Then, as I was paging through the JPGs, the program crashed.

I re-launched FileSalvage, rescanned my entire hard drive, and attempted to see what the 12,000 TIFFs listed could have been. Then FileSalvage crashed again.

no help

In the midst of this heartache and toil, I turned to the help menu. It's a very barebones listing of the program's features, without any explanations for anything. Largely useless, and certainly not the type of support I'd expect for "mission critical" type software.

In short, not what I would expect from $80 software, revised to version 4.1.

suggestions

My suggestions for bettering FileSalvage:

Improved Stability
Even running the latest version of the Mac OS (v. 10.4.2), and the latest version of FileSalvage (4.1.1), with no other applications open and my internet connection off, the program crashes routinely when paging through lists of deleted image files. That sucks, especially when I'm looking for 300 files in a 10,000+ listing and I am forced to rescan my hard drive each time.
Thorough, contextual help
Imagine someone unfamiliar with computers, desparately trying to recover their data. They wonder, why are all the files named File.jpg? Tell them. Why aren't there any dates listed for deleted files? Tell them. Explain how data recovery works, and give some compassionately-worded strategies for undeleting. And give them this in the context of a ? clickable from within that window, not a four page PDF outside of the software.
Provide a FAQ
Granted the complex and critical nature of this program, FileSalvage needs a much better FAQ; both online, and in the context of the product manual (see above).
Help Forum
Without or without additional documentation, how about creating a forum where users can help other users?
Gallery Mode
If I'm recovering dozens or hundreds of thousands of pictures, I want to see more than one at a time, check off the ones I wish to keep, and salvage those. There are scores of programs that offer this kind of interface (see iPhoto or ACDSee, for example); even the SubRosaSoft "CameraSalvage" software looks like it has nothing more than the photo-by-photo clickfest I've been enjoying. Agony!
Save my scanned drive
Can you save my listing of deleted files that I've now generated for the fourth time, because your software crashes too often? I don't have too many more hours I want to spend working to recover these photos, but if I don't get more photos back, I will feel like I've wasted $80. Then I'm twice the idiot: once for accidentally deleting something, and twice for buying FileSalvage!

Caveat

After more wrestling, I discovered that most of my pictures were recoverable, and they were mostly listed around 1.3 megabytes. I was able to recover them - each file named "2.jpg" in a separate sudirectory created based on the date and time down to the second.
(/FileSalvage 19-9-05 21-52-53/JPEG/)
Huh? Who would want to save files like that? This program needs some "Recovery Saving Preferences."

I'm terrifically glad, and I am appreciating this software much more now, but I wonder, how is someone supposed to figure that out? Without hours of brute-force poking around. I stand by my recommendations that this software should be tooled-up to suit its price-point. FileSalvage is not user-friendly, mostly because it ignores ignoring some largely standard practices for first-rate software.

I received an email from someone at the company after I sent them this link; nice to hear back but they passed the buck for problems on to their programmer.

Thinking deeper about time on technology; perhaps the problem is with me, the user, and twofold:

1. I didn't work with this software long enough.
2. I shouldn't be too attached to (not-backed-up) data.

Posted by justin at September 19, 2005 7:11 PM

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Comments

I am still waiting on my refund of CopyCatX from this company so we both got screwed... :(

Posted by: marientina [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 19, 2005 7:52 PM

"Thinking deeper about time on technology; perhaps the problem is with me, the user, and twofold:

1. I didn't work with this software long enough.
2. I shouldn't be too attached to (not-backed-up) data."

I wish you could see the dismayed look on my face.

It's OKAY to call junk "junk" - really, it is. Especially EIGHTY DOLLAR junk! Don't encourage them!

Your story, plus the comment above me, makes me wonder about the stuff you read online - you think it could have been 'planted' by the company itself somehow?

Posted by: Lisa [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 21, 2005 12:56 PM

Lisa - I doubt the company itself planted these reviews. Rather, I think most people are extremely happy to recover their data, so that adds a glowing tinge to most writeups.

Posted by: Justin Hall [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 28, 2005 11:05 AM

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