free recovery limits audit

Protocol

{
  "title": "Free recovery allowances and licence terms: a documented-facts audit",
  "type": "desk_audit",
  "region": "US (terms and prices as documented to US visitors)",
  "cohort": [
    "The active software profiles published on /software at registration (12):",
    "photorec, disk-drill, disk-drill-windows, disk-drill-mac, easeus-data-recovery-wizard, easeus-data-recovery-wizard-windows, easeus-data-recovery-wizard-mac, dmde, recuva, recoverit, stellar-data-recovery, windows-file-recovery"
  ],
  "data_source": "This site's own documented-facts tables (products, product_releases, product_facts). The audit performs no new vendor fetches: every value it reads already carries a captured official source and its own dates.",
  "method": [
    "Documented facts only: every value is quoted or closely paraphrased from an official vendor page (the vendor's own site, or Microsoft Support / Microsoft Store for Windows File Recovery) and is bound to a dated captured source record.",
    "Dated and expiring: each fact records the date its source was checked (verified_at) and a refresh due date 90 days later (expires_at). A refresh re-verifies the whole release and lands as a NEW dated release row; existing rows are never silently overwritten.",
    "Vendor claims are vendor claims: disclosed terms prove what the vendor documents, not measured performance. Nothing in this study is a test, and /software publishes no rankings or scores.",
    "Claim types stay separate: a free scan or preview claim is recorded apart from an actually-saved-recovery allowance.",
    "Missing is missing: where a vendor documents no cap, the record says so explicitly on the page that was checked. An undocumented limit is never recorded as zero and never inferred."
  ],
  "fields": [
    "product and release label",
    "platform",
    "region and currency",
    "free scan/preview terms (free_scan)",
    "free recovery allowance (free_recovery_bytes)",
    "price and licence term, including any recurring billing or renewal/cancellation terms (initial_price_minor, currency, licence_term, recurring)",
    "supported filesystems and media",
    "observation date and refresh due date",
    "official source page per value"
  ],
  "missing_policy": "A value the vendor does not document is recorded as not documented, naming the page checked. Unknown is never zero.",
  "findings_policy": "This study organises dated vendor disclosures; it produces no measurements of its own. Publication of any results table is a separate gated decision, and results stay disabled site-wide until it is made. This page shows methods only.",
  "status": "No findings. Protocol registered; registered protocols are immutable, so scope changes land as a new version."
}

Protocol hash b6e1201fd64db717485cf16f8ccf15f88990349066a80aa6c259d4882808c6b8 · registered 2026-09-16T03:51:44.961Z

Who did what

Study owner: Essential Data Recovery. No reviewer approval recorded yet.