O&O RescueBox – The First Aid Kit for your Data Reviewed

O&O RescueBox – The First Aid Kit for your Data Reviewed
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What is O&O RescueBox 5?

O&O RescueBox 5 Personal Edition is a software bundle including O&O Professional Editions of DiskImage 3, PartitionManager 2 plus the Personal Editions of UnErase 4.1, FormatRecovery 4.1 as well as the (extended) Personal Edition of DiskRecovery 4.1.

System Requirements & Installation (5 out of 5)

O&O RescueBox programs can be installed individually or together installed on Windows 2000, XP as well Vista operating systems including 64-bit versions. On the test system all installs all went smoothly and followed standard steps.

What makes the Rescue box utilities especially useful that they can be started from a bootable CD which is very useful when there is no operating system or when the OS has been corrupted.

DiskImage 3

O&O DiskImage 3 Professional Edition lets you to clone (1:1 copy) drives and partitions. Delta images can as well be created using O&O DiskImage’s incremental or differntial snapshots. The software can additionally be helpful for restoring entire Windows operating systems to a working state.

On top of that does O&O DiskImage 3 PE have a number of burnings options, support BZIP-compression and lets you take images during operations without taking the machine offline. I found particularly useful that using O&O DiskImage 3 Professional Edition you can mount image files a drives with an assigned drive letter.

PartitionManager 2

O&O Partition Manager is helpful for managing partitions and is more capable than Windows’ built in Disk Manager. In addition to formatting and resizing partitions and volumes does PartitionManager 2 allow for secure wiping of free disk space or permanently deleting partitions so that the data a disk contained cannot be recovered by traditional means.

FormatRecovery 4.1

O&O FormatRecovery 4 recovers deleted or formatted partitions including their files and directories. What differentiates FormatRecovery 4 from UnErase 4 and DiskRecovery 4 is that only FormatRecovery can recover partitions when the Master File Table (MFT) has been corrupted or deleted, that is when there is no file index (DiskRecovery, discussed on page, 2 does the same on a file type bases!).

Highlights include, but are not limited to, O&O FormatRecovery’s capability to recover data from all Windows supported media, the recovery of hidden files and file attributes as well as recovering empty file objects.

DiskRecovery 4.1

O&O Disk Recovery, despite is name, searches for accidentally deleted or lost files by file type. The tool not only works on media such as computer disks and memory cards but also on many digital cameras! O&O Disk Recovery recognizes and recovers 350 file types such as jpg or txt for example.

The (extended) Personal Edition, which is the O&O Disk Recovery build you get in the RescueBox 5 Personal Edition bundle, can restore up to 10000 files per data recovery. Use the O&O Disk Recovery’s InstantDiskRecovery 4 tool for data recovery without prior installation to avoid overwriting files (which might be the case if you install O&O Disk Recovery).

UnErase 4.1

In contrast to FormatRecovery which recovers deleted or formatted partitions, and opposed to DiskRecovery which is an advanced tool for scanning and recovering lost files by file type in case the MFT has been corrupted or deleted, UnErase allows for simple restoration of deleted files when the MFT is intact which is the case for objects gone by emptying the Windows Recycle Bin for example.

To recover files by file name or file property use UnErase in advanced search mode, and restore deleted objects onto a different partitions as a best practice.

InstantUnerase

Unerase

Interface, Performance, Help & Support (4 out of 5)

The RescueBox tools - the first aid kit for your data - have well structured and nice GUIs which allow for easy navigation and operation. If you look for information you will probably find it in either the great help files or in the in-depth manuals.

On top of that does O&O also have a support section with FAQs on their website; support is available for registered users. Most importantly, O&O RescueBox tools are fine products which have been designed to run from the Start CD without installation.

Price to Value (5 out of 5)

The O&O RescueBox 5 Personal Edition price is $149.00, but many existing O&O customers qualify for a cross upgrade which is only $89.00. Users having competing products are also eligible for the very competitively priced cross upgrade which includes full versions of all five tools O&O RescueBox 5 is comprised of.

The Bottom Line

All components of O&O RescueBox 5 Personal Edition are fine products, and you can you request a trial version of O&O RescueBox to try before you buy. If you need a product of this type, you should certainly evaluate O&O RescueBox - it’s without doubt an excellent and comprehensive package. If you do not need O&O Start CD functionality, and if your undelete or data recovery operations are not very complex you may also want to have a look at Recuva.

References

  • Author’s own experience
  • Screenshots by the writer