Data Recovery Wizard is designed as a one-stop data recovery solution. It will recover files that have been deleted by accident, recover lost files after its partition has been formatted and recover files after the attack of a virus or a computer crash. It can recover most any type of a file, including Word documents, Outlook messages, Excel spreadsheets, video, audio files, etc.

Data Recovery Wizard is 4.59 Mb and dog simple to install. You download the installer from http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/download/drwdemo.zip, unzip the archive and click the installer icon to start the installation. Basically what you see is a typical series of installation dialogs and the best thing is to click Next to do them all.

Starting the program opens a user interface with 5 large buttons that looks like a roadmap with several ways to go depending on the problem you have. Each button starts a wizard that will get you around the recovery in a step-by-step fashion. The interface looks clean and clear and doesn't shout with bright colors or too many elements.

There may be different problems that require data recovery. The most commonplace problem is deleting a file by mistake and then empting Recycle Bin. The second typical problem is when a file was lost because you had formatted the hard drive.

Data Recovery Wizard offers various data recovery techniques and each technique is suitable to recover one type of a data loss or another. For example, using 'DeletedRecovery' option, you can undelete lost files or folders. If you lost a file when you formatted the hard drive, then it's best to use 'FormatRecovery'. 'AdvancedRecovery' is good to recover files after a computer crash, virus attack or formatting a bad drive. You should choose 'RawRecovery' to scan severely corrupted partitions for files with a file signature search algorithm. This tool will help you recover files from a partition with damaged directory structures. If you interrupted the last recovery job, choose 'ResumeRecovery' to recover on!

Well, now it's time to see Data Recovery Wizard in action. Let's assume we have deleted a file and emptied Recycle Bin. Click 'DeletedRecovery' and you are taken to the dialog that displays all storage devices (hard drives, digital camera, USB, etc.) which are connected to the computer. Now you should select the device you want to search by highlighting it with the mouse. Then, it's also possible to select the folder to search by using 'Search Specified Folder' option. This allows you to narrow your search to a specific folder, which takes less time.

Click Next and it starts the scan that depending on the drive size could take 10-20 minutes. In my case that was 8 minutes and then Search Complete dialog popped up. On clicking Ok, Data Recovery Wizard shows found folders and files like in Windows Explorer: the folders in the left area and files contained in each folder in the right area. For each file you can see the associated information, including file name, size, file type, modification time, creation time, last access date, attribute and state.

The results of the search indicate the files that can be recovered and those that cannot because they have been overwritten. The best way to see if the file can be recovered or not is to preview it using the Preview option. The file can be previewed as text, HEX, or as an image. If the preview of the file is not available, the file is unlikely to be recovered.

To recover a file, you should tick its checkbox with the mouse and click Next. That's all.

Once the file has been recovered, you can save it to any folder of your choice. The restore and save operations are available to registered users. Please, register to gain these abilities.

As you can see, file recovery using Data Recovery Wizard is super-simple and doesn't require technical knowledge. In my case I recovered a deleted file. As for the other types of recovery, you can try them on your own. Download a free evaluation version of Data Recovery Wizard and see it in action: http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/download/drwdemo.zip.