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Review: Phoenix Recover Pro 6 system restore utility

A complete backup and restore utility for Windows

Most PC users have enough forethought to install a firewall and virus checker to protect against everyday threats. For this reason, it isn’t always necessary to invest in a dedicated recovery suite.

Phoenix Recover Pro 6 offers a more versatile solution to the standard Windows System Restore tool and is aimed at those who want a more reliable way to recover from disaster scenarios, offering far more control over every area.

When you first set up the software it creates a protected area on your hard drive in which it places a dedicated tamperproof recovery application. It also creates a safe area in which to store backups.

You can then revert to this environment if Windows suffers a catastrophic failure. This takes up a fair chunk of disk space, so you may need to free up some room to get the software set up correctly.

Through your Windows environment, the Recover Pro tools will help you create regular backup and restore points for your system in a similar way to Microsoft’s System Restore.

There’s also a File Backup tool that you can set up to automatically create backups of all files with specific extensions whenever they are changed, all of which works quietly in the background.

These backups are stored in your protected area; when it reaches its capacity you can choose to automatically remove older file backups, or be notified that you should clean it up.

You can make complete backups of your hard drive, build a startup disc and manage and explore the backups at any point to recover or analyse files that have been changed.

In short, you get far more control over the entire process than you have with Windows’ built-in tools, and there’s enough here to justify a purchase if you’re concerned about the security of your system.

Also consider:
Norton Save & Restore
A simple way to protect your valuable files

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Our verdict

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Pros: Works silently backing up your files; protected recovery console; good control over backups and restore Cons: Takes up a fair chunk of your hard drive setting up its protected area Overall: Phoenix Recover Pro 6 is a low-cost yet powerful recovery utility offering concerned users peace of mind

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Phoenix

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