Most of us have been there. You have a digital camera full of photos waiting to be transferred to your PC, and you accidentally select 'Delete all'. Or you might find that you've somehow deleted a folder full of documents you've been working on for months.

With Data Rescue Pro you can run the program, point it at the disk from which the files have been deleted (or connect your digital camera or external hard drive), and instruct the program to scan it.

In our tests, the results were varied. We used an old video camera to record a few clips and take some photos. We then deleted some of these using the camera's menu. When we plugged the camera into the PC, the files were nowhere to be found, but Running Data Rescue Pro and getting it to scan the camera's memory card found the deleted snaps.

Each file's metadata was shown (filename, date modified, thumbnail and so on), making it easy to spot the images we wanted. Each file is also given a quality rating out of five, and a status percentage.

Clicking the freshly deleted files and selecting 'Recover' successfully restored it to a folder of our choosing, and the pictures and movies opened without a problem.

Interestingly, Data Rescue Pro also found deleted files from a few years ago. Although almost all were given five out of five for quality and had 100 per cent status ratings, we weren't able to recover these.

We learnt two things from this. First, if you delete an important file, make sure you act reasonably quickly to recover it, and don't use the device in the meantime. Second, the quality and status ratings of the deleted files aren't always reliable.

Next, we formatted a USB drive through Windows and then tried to recover the data that was wiped but Data Rescue Pro couldn't find any deleted files.

There's no doubt that Data Rescue Pro can recover files that couldn't easily be recovered by other means, as long as you act fast. However, if you format a disk, the information is gone for good.

While our thirst for computing power increases, so does the need to move live data – and even full OS installations – between PCs. If you have a second external disk drive or solid-state storage device, Paragon Drive Copy 11 Professional can help solve these data migration problems in one.

Drive Copy 11's interface is clear and uncluttered, with a launcher for common tasks. These include data migration between computers, modifying disks to take advantage of the new GPT standard without losing data, creating recovery disks, and transferring files to and from archives.

GPT support is welcome, overcoming the space restrictions associated with disks containing a traditional master boot record.

Tasks like creating partitions and manipulating existing ones are amply catered for, which means you'll never have to drop into Windows to set up a new hard disk before migrating data to it. Select the 'Undelete partition' tool.

Hidden power

For more complex tasks, there's the Paragon Scripting Language. This lets you create complex, exacting data migration jobs, which can be scheduled to run at specific times.

The software can also copy your Windows OS to a virtual machine. It understands the virtual machines maintained by VMware Workstation/VMware Fusion, Microsoft Virtual PC and Oracle's VirtualBox. This lets you test potentially destructive scenarios in a safe virtual environment.

Drive Copy isn't restricted to the FAT 16, 32 and NTFS partitions found in Windows. It also lets you copy and restore Linux Ext2FS, Ext3FS and Ext4FS file systems, and there's even 'limited' read/write access to Apple's HFS+ partitions.

The help system is exemplary, with illustrated walkthroughs, and the odd quirk of language (possibly due to the program's German heritage) is easily forgiven.

Mozy has recently updated its popular online backup service and it's had a few tweeks, mainly under the hood. The main improvements are faster backup and restore operations and an easier-to-use interface.

Installing and using Mozy is very Mac-like. Once you've installed it and chosen your options everything happens in the background, much like Time Machine. Obviously, an initial backup takes lots of time if you have multiple gigabytes to upload, but once it's done the additional backup is fast and, most importantly, invisible.

You can get into the software and tinker about with what gets backed up and how much of your bandwidth to use, but if you're happy to just let Mozy work, it does so with minimal fuss.

Restoring your data is a similarly easy process. A few times when doing our initial backup, web browsing was a bit jittery with video and the like, but there wasn't any genuine evidence that Mozy was the reason.

To see where you are with your backup progress it's a simple case of clicking on the Mozy icon in the toolbar. You can get to the application through the System Preferences pane too, if you'd prefer not to clog up your toolbar.

All the data transferred is encrypted for your security and the data centres – where your data is actually held – have the same levels of encryption as a well as serious physical security. All of this comes with the caveat that Mozy is about to put a cap on the monthly upload limit for home accounts and charge extra for more storage.

New limits

Previously, accounts had been completely unlimited. At the time of writing, Mozy couldn't tell us exactly what the UK prices were, but the new pricing model stands at $5.99 (£3.70) a month for 50GB of storage for one computer, or $9.99 (£6.15) a month for 125GB of storage for up to three computers. To add a machine costs a further $2 (£1.25) a month and each additional 20GB costs $2 (£1.25) as well.

As well as the Home edition, there's a Pro version that has a slightly different pricing structure and a more comprehensive support service. A Pro account costs £3.99 a month per machine and 50p per gigabyte per month.

If you're not sure about the service, Mozy does offer a free 2GB account that you can use for backup or storage. This service is available even if you choose not to upgrade to one of Mozy's paid-for options.

The competition is still offering unlimited backups, but Mozy argues that when users go above a certain amount the service is automatically throttled and becomes too slow to use reliably. Mozy also argues that the limits it has set in place will affect only a few users.

Naturally, if competitors such as CrashPlan or Carbonite follow suit then this makes Mozy a touch more competitive, but on the whole it's harder to recommend Mozy, even when taking into account its claim of bandwidth throttling and poor service from other companies that offer unlimited backup services.

The Mozy software and service is undeniably good. From installation to first use, even the newest Mac users shouldn't find too many hurdles. However, the coming limitations to Mozy's service may just give you pause for thought.

Most of the time, you can rely on iTunes and iPhoto to get data from an iOS device, but that's not always the case. If something goes badly wrong with your iTunes library and you have no back-up, a fresh iTunes install may want to wipe your device and start from scratch; also, iTunes and iPhoto occasionally screw up, not syncing properly, thereby denying access to your data.

In such situations, PhoneView enables you to view, access and copy data to and from your device.

Unlike competing products, PhoneView doesn't merely provide access to an iOS device's file-system— it also makes sense of it. For example, click Photos and you see the photos (including dates and dimensions) on your device, rather than a list of cryptically named folders.

And along with copy options, there's an option to send selections directly to iPhoto. PhoneView also provides access to your music, books, podcasts, notes, call log, messages and apps.

The last of those things is particularly interesting: by default, you view apps where iTunes enables file sharing, but you can also access other app packages. For the former kind, PhoneView's system is better than iTunes for copying data to and from a device. With the latter, you can extract /Documents and /Library files, safeguarding or backing up videogame high-scores and the like.

Much faster since we looked at the app two years ago, PhoneView is, bar the occasional non-destructive crash, now near-perfect and recommended for anybody who has an iOS device.

We've been able to archive and decompress simple zip files in Mac OS X for some time now. Still, even with super-fast broadband, sending large files can be a pain. Add to that the fact that files are getting larger all the time and the problem gets worse. It's occasions like this that the simple archive function in OS X no longer delivers.

Stuffit Deluxe 2011 is the latest version of the compression tool that takes basic file zipping to the next level.

Rather than simply create a zip file, Stuffit enables you to streamline your workflow in one step. It's easy, for instance, to compress and upload a folder to an FTP site or MobileMe; you can automatically add archives to emails too. You can add passwords and encrypt them all on the fly.

Stuffit Deluxe also decompresses zip files that have been split, as well as almost any other compression format available.

The floating interface makes setting up workflows easy and the entire process smooth. Simply drag your folder or file over the relevant tile, and the whole archive-and-send operation is managed by Stuffit from then on.

As for compression and speed, Stuffit makes slightly smaller files at a marginally faster pace. The main benefit is certainly the extra workflow options.

If you use large files a lot and send them to different places, then Stuffit may just well be indispensable. At about £30, it's a steal too.

You may be under the impression that all you need is Time Machine to ensure the integrity of your data. However, a belt-and-braces approach is always a much safer option. The more backups you have of your data, the less likely you are to be worried when a hard disk starts making a weird clicking noise.

There's no shortage of backup tools available already, but just like everything, some approaches suit a working style better than others. The latest edition of Get Backup Pro offers a three-way approach to try and bridge a gap of sorts.

You can run a backup regimen that enables you to save specific folders of content, such as your iPhoto library, mailbox, iTunes folder and Address Book. Or, if you prefer, you can simply clone your disks for a complete copy.

Thirdly, you can synchronise selected folders so content is stored in two places at once. This is, no doubt, a good way to attract those users who like a belt, braces and another-belt-for-good-measure backup routine. The good news is that this triple-routine doesn't add to the complexity at all.

Get Backup Pro has a very approachable and easy-to-follow user interface. The three backup options are all managed from a single interface, but the layout doesn't lead to confusion and it's clear whether you're backing up, cloning or syncing.

The three sections are easy enough to master, starting with the backup window. Here there are five pre-defined backup routines: iPhoto, Mail, iTunes, Documents and Address Book. Simply click on one of the icons to add that folder to your backup procedure.

You can mix and match, do one at a time or all five, with the option to save to different locations or all to the same disk. If you prefer, you can also simply add a folder of your choice.

The clone window is, as you might expect, easy enough to follow too – simply choose a source and destination – with the Synchronise pane just as clear. Each backup is referred to as a project and you can have just a few or a selection of different ones, but naturally the more you have, the more complex it becomes to manage.

You can schedule the backups to occur whenever you want and, in this pro version, encrypt your backups for extra security. (There's a free version without the encryption options, synchronisation limited to one-way syncing, and some other minor restrictions.) If you've got a lot of data, you'll be in for a long wait the first time you use it.

After that, we found it to be speedy and stable. If you're a home user, then the Pro version probably isn't necessary, but having encrypted backups, two-way synchronisation, and incremental backups is handy.

We really liked the clear interface, which makes it easy even for the complete novice to manage a range of backup routines.

Entourage is the email app that comes with Microsoft Office for Mac. Some people prefer it to Apple's Mail. Others (like us) use it because IT departments insist on it, typically to work with a Microsoft Exchange server, although Mail also now supports Exchange.

Entourage's problem is that it stores mailboxes in a single file called 'Database'. Most people hang on to emails as a record, and it's not ideal to have all your eggs in one large basket.

Any file that's constantly read and written is liable to corruption. And if you include it in your backups using Mac OS X's Time Machine, that's a big chunk of data to update.

Entourage Time Machine from Softhing aims to help. With one click, it copies all your messages to a set of XML files. You can then browse and search these in a viewer.

It's simple and it works, but not perfectly. Currently only POP accounts are handled. Archiving around 50,000 messages, we found the initial backup glitchy.

Incremental backups are quick, but they can't be automated. The viewer only shows plain text, so HTML emails are garbled. The developers claim searching emails is faster than with Entourage.

But entering search terms often gave us an error, and when it worked it was slow – as was folder switching. The app's not quite there yet, but it has some interesting potential.

You won't need Prosoft Drive Genius 3 in the normal course of events. Minor file system mishaps will be catered for by Apple's automatic clean-up scripts.

After that, Apple's standard Disk Utility will have a decent stab at file system repairs and will effect a repair in the majority of cases, but it can't cope with severe file system or partition problems.

At this point you may wish that you already owned a copy of Drive Genius 3, which offers all the drive repair tools you could hope for. If you've already got a copy of Drive Genius 2 then you may wish to skip the rest of this review; version three offers some nice new features but most existing users will find none of them a must-have.

Drive troubles slain

This latest version has an impressive array of features, including those you would expect (and may already have in an older product) such as: file system repair, hard drive information reports, defrag, data shredding, rapid benchmarking and Drive Slim, which looks to free up wasted space.

A new feature is an improved drive integrity check that can scan for bad blocks. Hard drive trouble comes in two flavours: file system issues and hardware failures. An experienced ear can tell the difference simply by listening to the drive trying to read data.

A hardware failure isn't necessarily game over though, as all drives have 'spare sectors' that their firmware uses to 'reallocate' a failing sector and prolong the life of the drive. In English, this means that tiny bits of worn-out hard drive are ignored and new spare space is used instead.

New to version 3, Drive Genius will scan your drive (and surprisingly quickly – see the screenshot below, right) for worn-out sectors and trigger the remapping feature, which can resurrect a failing drive – at least long enough for you to get your data off of it (and if anything, experience has taught us that failing drives should be retired sooner rather than later).

Also new is Drive Pulse – a menubar item that visibly reports your drive's health (note this only applies to internal drives since external drives can't report their health over USB or FireWire), an enhanced defragmentation algorithm, native 64-bit installation (10.6 or later only), and email notification of task completion.

Also new and more impressive is the ability to resize, hide, duplicate, delete and add partitions, including the boot volume (if you start from the supplied DVD), and RAID support in the form of both Apple's hardware and software array solutions, making this a wise purchase for a Mac Pro owner with lots of internal drives.

That said, the latter features will be of most use to an IT professional and there is a Pro licenced version available for $250 (about £164), which is aimed at IT service shops. The whizzy animated interface is inventive, but won't be to everyone's taste, hence it can be stilled via a preference tickbox.

Recovery lacking Conspicuously absent from Drive Genius is any sort of data recovery feature. For this you'll need to purchase Prosoft's sister product, Data Rescue 3 (which, incidentally, is most excellent).

This isn't the first time that Microsoft has tried creating a syncing service. You may remember the old Live Sync, a FolderShare-based synchronisation service that was finally replaced by Live Mesh.

As for Live Mesh, it's still around, letting you keep folders synced across several PCs and mobile devices using cloud services and peer-to-peer exchanges.

You'll find the new Live Sync very familiar. You can select folders to be synchronised between PCs and up to 23GB of SkyDrive storage in the cloud.

PC-to-PC sync uses a peer-to-peer protocol, allowing you to sync far more than the 2GB cloud storage limit. We would recommend just using Live Sync's PC-to-PC tools for passing files between network-connected PCs, and then using SkyDrive for any files you want to make sure you can access anywhere.

One thing to note though – unlike Live Mesh, there's no indication in Explorer if you've shared files. You'll only be able to see which folders you've shared in the Live Sync client, making it easy to misread your syncing settings.

Cloud bursting

Setting up synchronisation is easy. Just pick the folder you want to synchronise and the PC where you want it to go, and files will start flowing, with the destination folder automatically created on the target PC.

You can also use the cloud-based SkyDrive service to share synchronised folders with family, friends or colleagues. It's a simple way of building collaborative workspaces that ensure everyone has the same files, whether you're planning a wedding or writing a sales proposal.

One useful new feature simplifies something many Live Mesh users had to set up by hand. Live Sync gives you a quick way of synchronising key Office settings (including templates, signatures and custom dictionaries) and Internet Explorer favourites. If you've ever had the pleasure of moving settings between PCs, you'll certainly find these new features a big help.

You're not limited to Windows, either; there's a Mac OS client out now for Live Sync, as well as the possibility of extra mobile clients in the future.

Remote view

Live Sync isn't just for transferring files. It also gives you a way of getting to a PC desktop from anywhere on the internet. Click the 'Remote' link on the desktop client to get access to a shared PC desktop, or use the connect option from http://devices.live.com.

Both give you the same remote desktop view, with full control of the remote PC. There's some image degradation, with fonts looking jagged, so don't expect a full fidelity desktop. You do get the option of scaling the image, though, so if you're on a small screen netbook you can get access to the full desktop of a hefty desktop PC.

The web option is the most interesting, as it brings your remote PCs right into the browser. You will need to use Internet Explorer for a remote connection over the web, as the control needed is only supported in 32-bit versions of IE6 or later.

We also recommend dropping down to Aero Basic for a speedier connection, as the browser desktop connection is a little slow, even over a local network.

With more and more people using more than one PC, Live Sync looks likely to become an important tool for making sure that all your files are just where you want them – no matter which machine you're using.

The addition of optional cloud storage with SkyDrive also means it doesn't even have to be your own machine. It's just a pity that some features didn't make the transition from Mesh to Sync.

Most safety-conscious people use Time Machine or other backup software. However, in the event of a full hard drive crash, getting up and running using Time Machine can be time consuming – you'll need to restore OS X first, then use Time Machine to restore the rest, since Time Machine can't access system and other files in use during backups.

Alternative backup programs, such as Carbon Copy Cloner, can create copies of your entire hard drive, but require that you boot from another drive.

Paragon's Volume Snapshot for OS X claims to be the first Mac software to use snapshot technology to create a fully bootable image of your hard drive, even when you're running applications and software.

It will create a snapshot of each file on your hard drive and copy that to a DMG file that your system recovery DVD can use to restore your drive. It also claims it can do so at up to 1GB per minute.

Our first experience with Volume Snapshot wasn't pretty: the installer hard-froze OS X. However, once installed, it was very simple to use and created a bootable image of the hard drive.

The 1GB/minute speed advertised was nothing like what we got – it took two hours to create a 42GB backup of 60GB of data.

But that's it. It doesn't have any scheduling or incremental backup functions, or any of the other facilities of Time Machine and other tools.

Given the options available in other, cheaper tools, this shouldn't really be a first choice for backups.