Disk Drill

What is Disk Drill

Disk Drill is data recovery software for Windows and Mac OS X. Like any other recovery app, Disk Drill is good for a wide spectrum of data storage devices; it recovers files from removable media, phone and tablet SD cards as well as HDD (SSD).

Main features of the Disk Drill recovery

• Selective file recovery: in the preferences tick the file formats and extensions you want to recover. File types which can be restored by the app: Archives, Audio, Documents, Pictures and Video.
• Scanning session can be paused any moment; it is saved and can be continued after the app has been shut down and started again.
• Your data is protected from getting rewritten: in Disk Drill every drive can be protected from files rewriting by pressing the Protect button (Recovery Vault feature).
• Backup for drives: backup into recoverable images via Extras.
• Deep Scan: this option enhances lost files recovery chances (available only in Pro and Enterprise versions of Disk Drill).
• User-friendly preview: search results window contains a search field. The search results can be filtered by file type, size and date modified.

File types that can be found and recovered

• JPG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, PSD photos and images
• AVI, MP4 and other video formats
• audio in AIF, MP3 and WAV formats
• images from photo cameras: RAW, CR2, NEF and DNG
• lost MS Word and Excel files: DOCX, PPTX and XLSX

The Pro version of the Disk Drill is able to track and recover up to 400 file formats.

Where to download Disk Drill to try your hand at it

The Disk Drill application is published on the developer’s website. Depending on your OS, there are two versions for download: Disk Drill for Windows or Mac OS X.

There is no trial version of Disk Drill Pro but you can test the Free version if you are happy about 500MB of recoverable data limit.

Difference between Disk Drill Free, Pro and Enterprise versions

The standard version, Disk Drill Basic, recovers the volume of data up to 100MB on  Windows or Mac OS.

Disk Drill Pro can be installed for one user on three computers. The license removes restrictions on recoverable data volume. Besides, the Pro version can:

• Select between Quick scan and Deep scan depending on what you need in terms of the scan speed, search depth and recovering probability
• Restore lost partitions
• Search and recover by signature 200+ formats
• Support all file systems: NTFS, FAT(32), EXT3-4, HFS, etc.

Disk Drill Enterprise is a corporate edition. It can be installed on the unlimited number of computers; technical support is provided.

Disk Drill can be set to a portable mode which is, however, applicable only in the Disk Drill for Mac OS X.

The app cost ranges from $89 to $399. To educational and non-profit organizations Disk Drill offers 20 to 50% discount.