Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows: Get Back Deleted Files, Lost Partitions and Data from a PC That Won't Boot
You emptied the Recycle Bin a minute too soon. Or a drive suddenly shows up as "RAW" and Windows wants to format it. Or worse, the PC stops at a blue screen and won't start at all, with every photo and work file still on the disk inside. In each case the files are usually still there, just out of reach, and the next few hours decide whether you get them back.
Stellar Data Recovery Professional (formerly Stellar Phoenix) is a do-it-yourself recovery tool for exactly those moments. It scans hard drives, SSDs, USB sticks, memory cards and even scratched discs, shows you what it found, and copies the files you pick to a safe place. The Professional edition goes further than Stellar's basic edition: it finds lost partitions, reads BitLocker-encrypted and RAW drives, and builds a bootable USB drive to rescue data from a Windows PC that won't start.
Quick facts
- Version: 12.6.0.0
- Developer: Stellar Data Recovery
- Runs on: Windows 11, 10, 8.1 and 8, plus Windows Server 2022, 2019 and 2016, 64-bit only
- Recovers from: hard drives, SSDs, USB drives, memory cards, 4K-sector drives, CDs, DVDs, HD DVDs and Blu-ray discs
- File systems: NTFS, FAT16, FAT32, exFAT and ReFS
- Price: $79.99 USD for a 1-year license for one PC, renewing yearly
- Free trial: scans and previews everything it can recover. Saving the files needs a license.
- Refunds: Stellar's policy allows refund claims within 30 days of a first purchase, under conditions (see the note below)
- Languages: English, German, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Hindi and Chinese
Before you buy: run the free scan first
Stop using the drive you lost files from, and don't install the trial onto it. Every new file written there can overwrite what you're trying to save. Install on another drive, run the scan, and look at the preview. If your files open in the preview, the license will save them. If they don't, you've spent nothing.
That order also matters for refunds. Stellar's refund policy rules out claims from buyers who didn't download and try the evaluation version first, as well as renewals, special-offer purchases and orders placed through partner stores rather than Stellar directly. And the license sold here renews every year, so if you only need one rescue, note the renewal date.
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Overview
The program follows a simple three-step flow: choose what to recover (everything, or just documents, emails, photos, audio or video), choose where to recover from (a drive, a physical disk or a common location like the Desktop), then scan and save. A sidebar keeps the other tools one click away: recovering from a non-booting PC, resuming an earlier recovery, and creating or scanning a disk image.
There are two scan depths. Quick Scan covers most everyday deletions. Deep Scan searches the drive sector by sector for known file signatures, which is slower but finds files after a format or file system corruption. The software reads the drive in read-only mode, so the scan itself doesn't change your data.
The Recover From screen, from Stellar's user manual (the manual's screenshots carry the Premium edition's title bar, and Professional uses the same screens): connected drives, physical disks and common locations such as Desktop and Documents, with the Deep Scan switch and the Scan button at the bottom.
Features
Recover deleted, formatted and lost files of almost any type
It handles the usual disasters: Shift + Delete, an emptied Recycle Bin, a formatted drive, a sudden shutdown, a virus attack. Documents, photos, videos, music, archives and email files (Outlook PST, Outlook Express DBX, Exchange EDB and more) are all recognized, and the original folder structure is kept where the file system still records it.
See your files before you save them
Found files appear as soon as the scan locates them, sorted three ways: a tree view of folders, a file type list, and a deleted list. Double-click a photo, video, song, document or archive to preview it. On NTFS, FAT32 and exFAT drives you can preview and save files while the scan is still running.
Scan results for drive C: in the dark theme (from Stellar's user manual): photos sorted into folders by format, a file list with sizes and dates, and a preview window showing a recovered JPG, with "Marked 33.87 GB in 13054 files" at the bottom.
Find partitions that have disappeared
When a partition vanishes from File Explorer after a deletion, a bad resize or corruption, choose Can't Find Drive. The software searches the whole disk for traces of old volumes, lists the ones it finds, and lets you scan each for files.
Searching a 931.51 GB WD disk for lost partitions (from Stellar's user manual): the progress dial at 32%, the sector being read, and one lost partition found so far.
Rescue data from a PC that won't start
If Windows won't boot because of a blue screen, a corrupt boot sector or a failing system drive, use a working computer to turn a USB stick into a recovery drive. Boot the broken PC from it and copy your files off to an external drive.
The Recover Non Boot PC screen (from Stellar's user manual), which asks you to connect external USB storage and click to create the recovery drive.
Open BitLocker drives and RAW disks
Give it the password or recovery key and it scans BitLocker-encrypted drives, external disks and even BitLocker disk image files. For a drive Windows calls RAW or unallocated, the Physical Disk option scans the raw sectors and recognizes files by their signatures. You can teach it new file types too, either by giving it a few sample files or by entering a file's header and footer yourself.
Image or clone a failing drive first
A clicking, dying disk might survive only one long read. Create Image copies the whole drive, or a chosen segment, into an image file so you can run all your scans on the copy instead. Drive cloning makes a replica on another disk. A separate Drive Monitor utility reads the disk's SMART data (temperature, health, performance) so you can tell when a drive is on its way out.
The Create Image screen (from Stellar's user manual): connected drives and physical disks, with New Volume (D:) ticked and a Select Disk Segment option next to the Create button.
Scratched discs and big scans you can pause
It reads scratched or partly burned CDs, DVDs, HD DVDs and Blu-ray discs and keeps their original file names and folders. Long scans on large drives can be paused and resumed, and a finished scan can be saved and reloaded later without scanning again.
Benefits
The real payoff is one tool for nearly every way data goes missing. A deleted folder, a vanished partition and a dead Windows install usually need three different utilities. Here they sit in the same sidebar, so you don't have to diagnose the problem perfectly before you start.
The preview also takes the guesswork out of paying. You see the actual photo or document before you buy, so you're not paying in the hope that a file named "IMG_0412.jpg" is more than a broken header. And the disk image option protects you from the worst mistake in data recovery: hammering a failing drive with scan after scan until it dies.
Real-World Uses
- The formatted camera card. A photographer formats the wrong SD card on a shoot. A Deep Scan finds the RAW and JPG files by signature, and the preview shows which ones are intact.
- The laptop that blue-screens on startup. You build a recovery USB on a family member's PC, boot the laptop from it, and copy the Documents and Pictures folders to an external drive before anyone reinstalls Windows.
- The partition that vanished after resizing. A disk-management mistake wipes out the D: partition. Can't Find Drive locates the old volume and lists its folders.
- The BitLocker drive that went RAW. An encrypted external drive stops mounting. With the recovery key, the software scans it and pulls the files out.
- The archive on an old DVD. A scratched backup disc won't open in Explorer, but the optical media recovery reads what it can and keeps the folder layout.
Who It's For
Professional fits home users and small offices who want more than basic undelete: anyone whose problem involves a missing partition, an unbootable PC, an encrypted drive or a RAW disk. If you only ever need to undo a deletion, Stellar's cheaper Standard edition covers that. If you also need to repair damaged photos and videos, look at Premium. RAID arrays need the Technician edition.
Usage Guide
- Install on a different drive. Download the trial and install it on a drive other than the one with the lost files. Setup is the usual click-through.
- Choose what to recover. Keep All Data ticked, or narrow it to Office Documents, Emails, Photos, Audio or Videos for a faster, tidier result.
- Choose where to recover from. Pick a drive, a physical disk or a location such as the Desktop. If the partition is gone, choose Can't Find Drive. Turn on Deep Scan for formatted or corrupt drives.
- Scan and preview. Browse the results in the tree, file type or deleted lists and double-click files to check them. Pause the scan if you need to, or save it to finish later.
- Activate and save. Enter your activation key, tick the files you want and click Recover. Save them to a different drive from the one you're recovering.
A scan at 10% (from Stellar's user manual): the folder tree fills in by file type while scanning, with elapsed and remaining time at the bottom left and pause and stop buttons beside the progress dial.
Tips
- SSDs are a race. With TRIM turned on, Windows clears deleted blocks on its own. Scan an SSD as soon as you notice the loss.
- Image a drive that clicks or slows down before you scan it, then work from the image.
- Save the scan after a long Deep Scan. If you need to come back later, you won't have to wait hours again.
- A physically damaged drive (one that won't spin up or isn't detected at all) is beyond any software. That's a job for a lab.
What Users Say
Stellar is one of the best-known names in DIY data recovery, with ratings to match, but the complaints are worth reading too, because they show where recovery software in general reaches its limits.
TechRadar: 4 out of 5
Krishi Chowdhary tested Stellar Data Recovery by deleting a folder of 22 music and image files from an NTFS drive and emptying the Recycle Bin. The verdict:
"Stellar Data Recovery is a reliable data recovery tool that recovers most file types across various storage devices. It offers useful features like disk imaging, encrypted drive support, and low resource usage. Although slower scans and minor usability issues hold it back, it still provides solid value for everyday recovery needs and remains a dependable choice overall."
On the test itself: "Although the scan took longer than expected, Stellar was able to recover all the files in question." The review lists slow scans as the main drawback and calls the pause and stop buttons "a bit buggy": "If you click on "pause", there is no way for you to go back to the main screen and scan any other drive. You must complete one particular scan first." It also found CPU use modest, at 7-10% during scans, and got a live chat agent "within a minute".
KitGuru: 8 out of 10
Simon Crisp reviewed the Professional edition specifically, including partition recovery and disk image creation, in an older version. His summary: "Stellar Data Recovery is an easy to use, but powerful data recovery tool and offers retrieval options from the more basic for home use to advanced for business users."
He liked the layout ("by the use of a series of icons and tick boxes made navigating through the basic job of data retrieval less painful than it might be") and noted "a very good online user manual". His cons: "Deep scans take some time." and "Subscriptions are a little pricey."
Comparitech: good for accidental deletions, weaker after a deep format
Chris Stobing tested an older Professional release (version 10) and called it "a solid option for someone who has accidentally deleted important files off a hard drive". He was less impressed by the scan options, writing "There aren't really a lot of customization options as far as what types of files you want to look for", and after a drive was wiped with a write-zero format the software "only recovered a couple of scraps of data", which is what you'd expect from any tool once data has been overwritten. (Quotes read through a page summarizer.)
Press quotes on Stellar's page
Stellar's product page quotes PCMag (rated 4.0): "Data recovery can be a pain, but "Stellar Data Recovery" takes most of that pain away. Keep this app for a rainy day of data recovery." and PC World: "Stellar Data Recovery grabs deleted data from nearly any media type, supports a clean interface and recovered nearly everything we threw at it."
Trustpilot: 4.8 out of 5 from 5,561 reviews
Stellar's Trustpilot page covers all of its products, not only this one. 89% of reviews give five stars and 4% give one star. Many of the five-star reviews thank a named support agent, for example Ali: "Best experienced with Ashish from Stellar. Provided excellent services and helped me to recover drive data." and Grincavitch: "Kush did a great job helping me recover 10 years of data while trying to transition between win to Mac."
The one-star reviews are mostly about files that came back but wouldn't open, very long scans, and licensing. Excerpts:
- Jörg Ingenpaß, "All data recoverd. No data usable anymore": "All headers were damaged, none of thre files was usable."
- Dana: "Being able to find missing or deleted files is not beneficial in any way if they can't be opened."
- P., "What a colossal waste of money": "The "deep scan" ran for about 20hrs then the software crashed."
- sophia theodosiadou: "It took almost 24hours to scan 200gb amd the next day,after it finished hey asked me £89.99 to finish the recovering."
- Nick Childers, "STAY AWAY!": "it never showed up on my account and kept asking me to buy it again."
(Trustpilot blocks direct downloads, so these were read through a page summarizer, which shortened some reviews to excerpts.)
SourceForge
The Professional edition has a single review there, 5 out of 5 from Jacques B., a freelancer: "Recovered all my data from my external drive, customer support were really helpful in guiding me through the entire process."
The recurring themes
Praised: a clear, guided interface, broad file type and device support, disk imaging, encrypted drive support, and fast, friendly support. Criticized: slow scans, especially Deep Scans on large drives, a subscription price that adds up, and cases where files are found but come back damaged. That last complaint is exactly why the free preview matters: a file that previews correctly is one you can save.
Comparisons
Professional vs. Premium vs. Technician
- Professional covers file recovery from any storage, partition recovery, BitLocker drives, unbootable systems, disk imaging and CD/DVD recovery.
- Premium adds repair of corrupt photos (JPEG, CR2, CRW, TIFF and more) and videos (MOV, MP4, AVI, MKV and more).
- Technician adds recovery from RAID 0, 5 and 6 arrays, including rebuilding an unknown RAID configuration automatically, and is licensed for professionals, companies and IT service providers.
Stellar vs. other recovery tools
TechRadar points to Ashampoo Undeleter as a much cheaper lifetime-license choice for simple undeletes, and to Data Rescue 5 as a pricier tool with comparable power. It also notes that Stellar's free plan recovers 1 GB, less than the 2 GB offered by EaseUS's free version. Stellar's advantage is breadth: partition search, bootable recovery, BitLocker and optical media in one product.
Editions and Pricing
The license sold here is the Professional 1-year license at $79.99 USD for one PC, renewing yearly. On Stellar's own store the Professional 1-year license is also $79.99 (listed at $89.99 before discount), Premium is $89.99 and Technician is $199 a year. Stellar also sells 30-day and lifetime licenses for Professional and Premium, and lifetime licenses for Technician.
FAQs
Is there a Mac version?
Yes. Stellar sells a separate Mac edition, so this Windows license won't install on a Mac.
Does it work on 32-bit Windows?
The technical specifications and user manual list 64-bit Windows only. If you're on a 32-bit system, run the trial before buying.
Can it recover files from an SSD?
Yes, but success depends on TRIM and on whether the space has been overwritten. Scan as soon as possible after the loss.
Can it recover from a phone?
Not this edition. It works with drives and memory cards attached to a PC. Stellar sells separate iPhone and Android recovery tools.
Is recovery guaranteed?
No. Stellar itself says no software can guarantee 100% recovery. Overwritten data and physically damaged drives are the usual reasons files can't be saved, and that's what the preview is for.
How long does a scan take?
It depends on the drive size and scan type. A Quick Scan of a small drive takes minutes, while a Deep Scan of a large disk can run for hours. Reviewers agree scans are on the slow side.
How do I activate it after buying?
You receive an activation key after purchase. Enter it in the software to turn on saving, with no need to reinstall or scan again.
What happens when the year is up?
The license renews automatically. Stellar's refund policy covers first purchases only, not renewals, so turn off auto-renewal if you don't want another year.
System Requirements
- Operating system: Windows 11, 10, 8.1 or 8, or Windows Server 2022, 2019 or 2016, 64-bit only
- Processor: Intel-compatible x64
- Memory: 4 GB minimum, 8 GB recommended
- Disk space: 250 MB for installation files (the user manual asks for 500 MB free), plus a separate drive to save recovered files to
Conclusion
Stellar Data Recovery Professional is a well-reviewed, easy-to-follow recovery tool that covers far more than undelete: lost partitions, BitLocker and RAW drives, scratched discs and PCs that won't boot. Its weak spots are slow Deep Scans and a yearly subscription, and like every recovery tool it can't bring back data that's been overwritten. The free scan answers the only question that matters before you pay: are your files still there? Run it from a different drive, check the preview, and buy only if they are.
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