When it comes to our electronic devices data is everything. From memories to important documents, our little pocket assistants gain in importance with every little bit of data we feed into them. Protection, backup and recovery of these important files and data will become our first consideration.
Luckily we are in the age of the cloud, hardly anyone knows what happens with their bits and bytes in the cloud, but we gladly hand over everything we have to the nerds in the sky. Despite the gigabytes of our personal data that we hand over to Apple, Google & Co. there are still some things that are a little too dear to let out of site, things that we want to keep safe and close to us on our phones or tablets.
A phone is just as good as any portable drive to keep or transport your data, the problems start when something goes wrong and you accidently erase or lost some important and valuable data. Any PC user knows that it is not that difficult to retrieve data from a hard disk, but Apple’s iOS devices were not made for easy data access. They don’t even have a file manager on board and I don’t think Apple has any solutions to recover data from iOS devices, so you’ll need a PC, or Mac, and a third party solution.
One of these third party solutions is FonePaw iPhone Data Recovery.
Interface
The interface is clean, simple and easy to use. It graphically confirms the device you have connected and gives you three options for data recovery
- Recover from iOS Device
- Recover from iTunes Backup File
- Recover from iCloud Backup File
Procedure
For the iTunes backup file option, the file should be on the same computer you are using for the software to find it and the iCloud option needs your credentials, obviously.
Once you have chosen your option you can let the device scan your device, file or cloud and after a relatively short time you get an overview list of all the files found.
You can practically recover different kinds of data from your iPhone/iPad/iPod. You have the option to recover all typical phone stuff like messages, contacts, photos, videos, audios, call history, reminders, notes, voice memos, etc.
When you click on a specific category on the generated list, you are offered a detailed view of all files in that category, with the option to choose the files you would like to recover.
Of course you can only recover files from iPhone/iPad/iPod to your computer, not the iOS device. This might be a downer for some people but from a software point of view understandable.
There is also the possibility than some of your photos are physically not on your device, only a thumbnail, and can only be recovered from the cloud or backup file.
Who needs it?
The better question is who doesn’t. After years of carrying a phone around, experience has shown me that there are a thousand ways you can damage your phone, and there is always that one file you desperately need that you can’t find anywhere else.
There is a free test version that only shows if it works for you. If you want to recover your all recoverable data then you have to pay $69.95 USD for Windows version to get the full version.
Conclusion
If you are just missing the cute picture of your neighbor’s puppy, then maybe you are better off looking for another one on Facebook. On the other hand there are sometimes documents, or memories, that are worth paying for, everyone has to make their own decision. Of course there is always the case of a big family of clumsy iPhone users, who breaks a phone a week on average, then the software FonePaw iPhone Data Recovery is definitely worth its money.