Losing data – whether through accidental deletion, hardware failure or some other reason – can be heart-stopping and soul-destroying. The sudden realisation that weeks, months or years of work files, photos or other documents have gone can leave you wondering what on Earth to do next. ApowerRecover may be able to help you out.

This data recovery software can be used in a couple of ways to scour hard drives, memory stick and removable media to files that can be recovered. The first option is to simply scan an entire drive for everything recoverable, while the second is to specify a folder from which you know a file or files have been deleted.

Available for both Windows and macOS, ApowerRecover take the potentially complicated task of data recovery and makes it simple and accessible to all. Things are so simple, in fact, that you don't even need to worry about configuring any option – just select the drive or location you would like to scan, and then sit back and wait while a search is conducted.

By default, the program performs a quick scan which gives you the fastest results, but once this is complete a more thorough, advanced scan can be performed. It's likely that a huge number of recoverable files will be located, so to help you home in on the ones you are looking for, it is possible to filter and search the results that are returned. In the case of some files it is possible to use the preview pane to take a peek at contents so you can make sure you have the correct file selected. All that's left for you to do after this is to select the files and folders you would like to get back, click the Recover button, and choose where they should be saved.

But while ApowerRecover is quite impressive, there's one thing that lets it down a little – the price. You can subscribe to the software for a month for $69.90 (currently reduced to $49.95), or yearly for $119.90 (currently reduced to $79.95). Alternatively you can buy a lifetime license for $239.90 (currently reduced to $139.95). While the lifetime license certainly represents better value for money, it could be argued that this is a piece of software you may only ever use once or twice – and with this in mind the monthly subscription makes more sense. At the same time, nearly $70 to use the software for just one month is undeniably quite expensive, but then you have to ask yourself just what value you place on the data you are hoping to retrieve.