iBeesoft Data Recovery review

ABOUT iBEESOFT

iBeesoft, established in 2015, is a professional Windows data recovery, Mac data recovery, iPhone data recovery, Data Backup and file shredder software provider. First created by two creative and enthusiastic programmers, the team is now composed of a group of highly-skilled young talents who commit themselves to providing better products and service for users.

PREFERENCES

iBeesoft Data Recovery for Mac has no specific preferences-menu available, but a to recover file-types choice at its main/home page. Just select your choice and press the large not to miss START button and you’re on your way.

INTERFACE

The main-interface is nicely done, presents choice for file-types to be recovered, but no choice for folders to be scanned. Infact I have not found yet a recovery program taking you straight to just a folder of your choice. Cisdem does a better job in terms of interface ( shown below) as you may want to recover deleted files/folders or from formatted partition/device. iBeesoft also shows the available devices but not as straightforward like Cisdem. iBeesoft Data Recovery is a one-step recovery utility. The second screen with a devices overview is somewhat cluttered and you need to watch carefully if you want to make a selection. Again Cisdem has a more minimalistic approach to provide the same information in an clear interface. Maybe this is personal taste, but the best interface should also work for novice users. This doesn’t mean iBeesoft software is not at Cisdem’s or iBoysoft (simular approach as iBeesoft) level, but I do prefer cleaner interfaces.

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HOW DOES IT WORK
Lets use the analogy that your device is a book, and the blocks of the hard disk/SSD are the the pages of the book.
Naturally, your data would be the text contained in the pages of the book.

Now consider a flag – 0 or 1, indicating whether a page of the book is empty or is occupied by some text. The net ‘free capacity‘ of your hard drive is empty is the sum of the block sizes of the pages which are marked as 0 (empty). Makes sense, right?

Firstly, let us understand what happens when you delete a file. Does it vanish in thin air?

The answer is NO. The file never gets deleted, but what happens is that the pages of the book which contain the data of the file are now marked with a 0, thus designating the space that the file is using as being available for future use when needed. It is no longer ‘accessible’.

N.B. The deleted data is still there, but you have indicated that you are not concerned about it, since you have deleted it. In course of time, the data in this space can be overwritten by other files, and thus compromising the original file that you had you deleted and intend to recover.

So now, how does the recovery software work?

In layman’s term, data recovery software scours the hard drive to look for the pages marked with 0’s to locate any recoverable data, piecing it back together and providing it in a salvageable format. While deleted files are inaccessible and are in danger of being overwritten, they can often be recovered with professional data recovery tools.

N.B. No Data Recovery software is perfect: if a file has been partially/wholly overwritten or otherwise compromised, recovery chances are low.  But if it hasn’t been too long since you deleted the file, the chances of complete recovery are pretty good!

NEED TO DISABLE SIP ?
macOS 10.13, 10.14, 10.15 and later macOS is using the new file system – Apple File System (APFS). It doesn’t allow any application to access to the system hard drive (the hard drive where the macOS is installed). So, no data recovery software can directly scan the system hard drive (also called startup hard drive, boot hard drive, Mac HD, etc) under macOS 10.13 High Sierra or later macOS. If you want to recover lost data from the system hard drive in APFS, you should disable System Integrity Protection (SIP) first and then run the data recovery software.

IF you run Catalina on your Mac, you need to disable SIP depending on the source to recover:

Here’ how to disable Apple integrated System Integrity Protection (SIP)

SPEED
Judging speed of scan-time we need to consider the scanning process involved:

– Normal Scan
– Deep Scan

When do you need a deep scan recovery.

When your disk or drive is recognized as RAW or when you want to find more files, the deep scan is necessary. What is a RAW recovery? Data recovery tools usually rebuild lost files in two ways. One is the fast and easy way to locate the files via file directory info. The scan result will be listed in a file tree with the original file name and attributes.

The other is RAW Recovery, which will search and re-create the file directly by searching all Data Field. It requires more time to go through all sectors on a partition. The recovered file will be assigned a new name like FILE001 and all sorted by file types in the “Tags” and “RAW” folder. When the file directory is corrupted, there’s no method to recover files with the right file names and data content. So you need to check the files found by RAW Recovery in order to recover lost data.

Our speed and number of recovered files test proved iBeesoft a solid performer. iBeesoft offered a Deep Scan after a first run, not finding many files, the Deep Scan recovered all deleted files. In terms of scan-time, iBeesoft Data Recovery proved fastest compared to Cisdem, iBoysoft and Stellar.

Scan-Time. is at best with iBeesoft ( Deep-Mode ) and worst with Stellar Data Recovery in Deep-mode. Scan-Time is of no importance when its relation to recovered files counts for the xtra time. However there is no direct relation between recovered files amount and scan-time, which makes us judge the applications by their merits. iBeesoft Data Recovery is fastest of them all, and found most recoverable files. The used algorithm seems to be different for developers of recovery software.
So which is best ? Which would you prefer ? Difficult to answer really as the interface of iBeesoft is a bit confusing for novice users, but is fast and gets good results. Best interface is Cisdem and Stellar, both showing the important bits clean and minimalistic. Stellar has professional features and more sophisticated tricks covered in their application and hence more expensive, where iBeesoft is a one trick pony.

So iBeesoft Data Recovering is keeping up with its rivals and is fastest of them all. Below you see part of the scan/recover interface which I feel could puzzle users. For the single file/data recovery you’ll need the RAW selection, rather then the structure on top.

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🧰 To ensure the success of recovering deleted, lost or formatted files from for instance SD card on Mac, don’t save the recovered files to the SD card again. You know, your device may generate new data, which will overwrite the deleted files in the SD card permanently, making the recovery fail. So, please save them to your Mac or another external hard drive. If you do, you will be risky to lose them again.

VERDICT

The final conclusion of this ‘Data Recovery’ multitest is a bit mixed, as we have winners on different subjects. First we feel we use this utility to recover lost/deleted files, and esthetics are less important to find an overall winner. iBeesoft Data Recovery proved to be an overall winner in terms of speed, found files and good pricing. Novice users of Recovery tools might feel unsecure to choose the right path (RAW Files) as other paths are presented as well. But overall iBeesoft Data Recovery surprised us with a solid performance and a definite first choice if you’re in for a recovery tool.