We come across Disk Drill weekly: in our customers’ browsers and on their computers, and sometimes as part of an explanation for why the recoverable drive became a problem. Thus this is a review of Disk Drill from the other side of the counter; what Disk Drill actually excels at, what “free” really means, and the three times when you will want to shut down your Disk Drill download page. There is no affiliate relationship, no commissions; we do not sell any software.
Clean interface, preview prior to paying, and a scanning engine that has earned a reputation on healthy media. None of these features are helpful if the physical failure of the drive has occurred, and that boundary is all that we are reviewing.
The “heart” of Disk Drill is a capable carve and file system scanning engine wrapped around by what is arguably the most user-friendly interface available for this product type, and having this be true makes all the difference when recovering files at 11pm after formatting a memory card. Disk Drill’s primary strength is the ability to provide a preview during the scan of recoverable files such as images and documents so they may be opened and viewed before being asked if you want to license the product. This greatly reduces the amount of risk involved in purchasing Disk Drill by converting the purchase into a decision. It scans file systems based upon the formats that are relevant to consumers (NTFS, exFAT, FAT32, APFS, HFS+) and carves hundreds of different file types from raw disk space. We also respect that it has taken the time to implement a full byte-by-byte drive backup that will allow you to clone a drive that is wobbling but readable and then use the cloned version to run the software, which is essentially how a lab would approach this problem. When used properly (i.e. as a means of backing up a healthy or merely mistreated drive) Disk Drill is the best method currently available to consumers to recover lost data.
The drive is failing physically. The clicking, buzz, vanishing mid-scan, freezing your computer: a deep scan is hours of consistent read data being fed into a device that has pleaded for mercy. We frequently get devices where the recoverable percentage dropped from scan one to scan three. The files were on an internal SSD. Modern operating systems TRIM deleted blocks within moments after they have been marked for deletion; therefore Disk Drill will continue to scan for filenames with content that no longer exists. This is physics and not something the application can do anything about. The stakes are irreplaceable. A wedding card, or a company’s only records deserve one careful professional attempt at recovery rather than a consumer level scan as your first chance, because the first scan uses the highest probability of success. In each of these cases, doing the free diagnostic first provides you the information regarding what type of situation you’re really in.
In terms of comparing the broader field, if you want a photo carving tool for free (with a very simple user interface) there is PhotoRec. Additionally, our free-software guide and Mac shortlist provide an overview of all options available.
Yes, as long as the application is running on healthy hardware, it will run “read-only” and will not write anything back onto the original drive unless specifically instructed to do so. Again, the issue here is not with how much risk your software carries with itself, but with how many risks you take with your patient. Hours of prolonged scanning of a drive that is clicking, disconnecting or dying represents a level of abuse that no software can mitigate. So while it may be perfectly fine to use the application to scan for lost data off a healthy drive where some sort of delete mistake occurred; it is absolutely foolish to attempt to run this same application against a sick drive until you create a complete clone of that sick drive on a workbench.
Partially, and depending upon how you weigh this split. While the free tier of Disk Drill offers the ability to recover up to 500 megabytes of data on Windows operating system-based computers, that amount is large enough to recover a small number of documents. But again, recovering more than that requires purchasing the full licence. When using Disk Drill on Apple/Macintosh operating system-based computers, Disk Drill provides preview capability and scanning capability for all data located on the disk. Unfortunately, none of the recovered data will ever be saved under the free licence. The previews provided in both scenarios represent the most honest aspect of Disk Drill’s offering.
Because it is different to find a file’s skeleton versus resurrecting that file in its entirety. Names of entries remain present even though some or all of the content has been partially overwritten and on internal SSDs once TRIM deletes the block associated with a deleted entry the names of those entries show up immediately in the scan although the contents no longer exist. This may be recoverable from a professional pass if the recovery was done at a level beyond what a typical consumer-level scan could accomplish on an external or card-based device. But for a TRIM’d SSD, this is not recoverable.
A free 48 hour diagnostic (the true assessment as to whether your software ever had a chance and a written quote prior to commencing any services).