IsoBuster review
IsoBuster is designed to help you recover data from just about anywhere, including hard drives, Flash drives, and discs. While it isn't pretty, it did prove effective in recovering usable data.
Pros
Effective: IsoBuster is fairly easy to use. It searches for available drives and displays the options as soon as the software is opened. Once you find data you want to recover, you'll have several options to choose from to help you get the best results. This includes just saving the files or folders to a location of your choosing, or choosing to extract the raw data. In our tests, the app was quick, and we were able to extract all the data we found on an old CD that we hadn't been able to access in the past.
Install warnings: IsoBuster tries to help you achieve success by guiding you through the install process. It warns you not to install the program on the drive/partition that you are going to try and recover data from and, on the flip side, to not save data in the same place as you are recovering it from to avoid overwriting data. If you tend to just hit Next during the install process without reading the fine print, you could run into some trouble later on. But during the installation process, you can easily hit Back to reread each message if you think you missed something important.
Cons
Two steps to access: You'll install IsoBuster as you would any other app, but depending on your user account settings, you also may have to click through the box asking if you want to permit the publisher to make changes to your computer each time you open the app.
Outdated look: It doesn't seem like the design area and even the options for icons have been updated in a while.
Bottom Line
It may not have the most appealing interface, but IsoBuster gets the job done when you need to recover data.
Editors' note: This is a review of the trial version of IsoBuster 3.5.
