Stellar Phoenix for Novell NetWare Data-recovery S/w

You can always minimize or prevent data loss by backing it up to other media and locations; however, this does nothing to prevent loss of live data that is yet to be backed up. What would you do if one of the hard disks in your NetWare file server suddenly crashes and some of the data on it hasn't been moved to other media yet? Use this data-recovery software from Stellar Phoenix; we've reviewed it in the past, and this version of their software is for Novell NetWare 3.12 or above. 

Its key features include, support for segmented volumes and sub-allocated data volumes. In addition, it extracts data from corrupt volumes and work with compressed files and directories. However, we found it would not recover encrypted files or folders. Technology-wise, it supports both IDE, SCSI drives, as also NSS (Novell Storage System).

The software is very easy to use. You can install it on any Windows machine and connect the crashed NetWare hard disk as the secondary master to it before running the software. To recover the data, just select the damaged drive and the software will do rest. Once it manages to recover the NetWare partitions, it will show you all the files and directories on its interface.

To recover files from this selectively, just select the file and choose to recover them. We tested the software on a fairly

low-end machine running Win XP on a Celeron 400 MHz system with 128 MB RAM and a 20 GB

HDD. 

One of our tests included an intentional deletion of the NetWare partitions and installing Win XP on that drive. Stellar Phoenix managed to recover the original data even then. 

BOTTOM LINE: The software manages to recover all data reliably, except encrypted files from even formatted volumes. A great buy if you're still using NetWare servers.

Sanjay Majumdar