Disk Drill Review - An Honest Review Based on REAL Tests

When dealing with data loss, you don't want to gamble with your potentially lost files, and time is often of the essence. With dozens of data recovery apps available, which one should you trust to bring your files back intact safely?

Disk Drill is one of the most highly regarded data recovery solutions. How does it fare with permanently deleted files, formatted drives, and corrupted storage devices? There's only one way to find out: let's go over its specs and test it in all those scenarios in a thorough Disk Drill review.

Overview of Disk Drill's Capabilities

Disk Drill's interface is easy on the eyes and to use. However, that wouldn't matter if the app didn't also come with a versatile, quick, and thorough analysis and recovery engine. Let's review some of Disk Drill's most essential characteristics.

Supported Devices

The general rule is that "if your OS can see a storage device, Disk Drill can, too". This grants the app wide compatibility with most types of storage devices, including:

• HDDs, internal & external
• SSDs & M2 drives, internal & external
• USB Flash Drives
• Memory cards (SD, CF, etc.)
• Smartphones & tablets

Also, after its upgrade to the v5 series, Disk Drill offers better support for RAID arrays and can even scan NAS drives remotely through SSH.

Supported File Types

Disk Drill's Quick Scan is perfect for when you absent-mindedly hit "delete", as it can bring back any type of file.

As for when a storage device's file system becomes corrupted or appears as RAW, Disk Drill's Deep Scan can analyze it and detect file patterns even when there's no file system.

Thankfully, Disk Drill is familiar with hundreds of such "file patterns", including older and uncommon file types. For example:

• Image: JPG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, BMP, RAW, DCR, GPR
• Video: AVI, MOV, MP4, WMV, MXF, R3D, ARI, 360
• Documents: DOC, DOCX, RTF, PDF, DJVU, XLS, XLSX, PPT

Supported File Systems

Disk Drill's support for file systems is just as expansive as for file types. For example, it can effortlessly locate files stored on Microsoft's FAT32, exFAT, and NTFS file systems, as used on all versions of Windows.

Although Disk Drill doesn't run natively on Linux, Disk Drill for Windows can also work with the EXT2/3/4 file systems, considered the golden standard in that OS, and the more advanced but not as popular BTRFS. As mentioned earlier, Disk Drill can work even with devices that appear RAW or without a file system.

Still, its Windows version has a slight limitation: it can't scan partitions formatted with Apple's HFS, HFS+, or APFS. However, the keyword is "yet" since it's quickly reaching parity with Disk Drill for Mac, which can work with those file systems.

Compatibility

The latest versions of Disk Drill, in its 5th generation, officially support only the equally new Windows 10 and 11. Those who, for whatever reason, still use an older version of Microsoft's OS, can use one of Disk Drill's previous versions, trading newer features for extended compatibility.

Similarly, it's available in two flavors for Macs: Are you using a Mac with macOS 10.15.7 or newer, either one of the older Macs that relied on Intel's CPUs, or the brand-new ones built around Apple's own M1, M2, and M3 silicon? Grab any version from Disk Drill's 5th generation. Are you on even older Intel-based hardware using OS X 10.5 or newer? Disk Drill 1/2.x/3.x/4.x has you covered.

Additional Features

Trying to include everything and the kitchen sink usually results in a complicated mess. That's why Disk Drill includes only features that are related to data recovery and can be helpful to most of its users, such as:

• S.M.A.R.T. support to keep tags on storage devices' health.
• Byte-to-byte backups for creating pristine clones of storage volumes.
• Recovery Vault, for monitoring drives for changes and automatically storing deleted file metadata, drastically improving the chances of future recovery attempts.
• Clean Up to quickly locate "storage hogs" that eat up a storage device's free space.

It's also worth noting that Disk Drill can not only create but also "attach" disk image backups as virtual devices, granting access to their contents.

Comparison With Competitors

With dozens of data recovery solutions available, why should anyone choose Disk Drill over them? The simple answer is that Disk Drill achieves a unique balance between features, usability, and results.

Let's see some more specific examples:

• Unlike Disk Drill, Recuva and PhotoRec cost nothing. However, Recuva's interface is limited, while PhotoRec's is somewhat unfriendly. Both apps come with zero extra features.
• UFS Explorer and R-Studio have an excessive number of features built into them, which also hurts their usability. As a result, their interface feels complicated and somewhat cramped. Plus, extra features translate to dramatically higher costs for their "feature-complete" versions.

Disk Drill Real-life Test & Recovery Results

For this article, we've extensively tested Disk Drill under three real-world scenarios using widely available hardware. This way, we can ensure we've covered most bases and can present a thorough Disk Drill software review covering the app's major pros and cons fairly.

Testing Setup

Our testing platform for this article was a custom-made PC with a Ryzen 9 5900X CPU on an ASUS TUF X570-Pro motherboard, using its onboard storage controllers. We tasked Disk Drill (v. 5.4.844.0) to recover lost data from an otherwise healthy 4GB Intenso USB Flash Drive after:

1. Permanently deleting files from it.
2. Performing a full format.
3. Corrupting its file system beyond recognition.

To ensure one test wouldn't affect the others, each time:

• We re-formatted the drive.
• We re-flashed a backup image of our collection of test files on it.

Let's see how it performed in those scenarios.

Test 1: Permanently Deleted Files

Permanently deleted files differ in that they skip the OS's Recycle Bin/Trashcan, rendering a typical "un-deletion" impossible without using an app like Disk Drill. Thus, instead of "merely" deleting them, we used the Shift+Delete combo on them.

With our files gone...

1. We downloaded the app from Disk Drill's official site, installed it, and ran it. Then, while on the Storage Devices > Hardware Disks page, we selected our drive with the deleted files from the app's Device/Disk list and clicked Search for lost data to have Disk Drill scan it.

2. Disk Drill completed its scan after a while, and we clicked Review found items to see if it found our files.

3. We located our files among the results, checked their Recovery Chances (they were High), and ensured we had the correct files by previewing them.

4. We marked our files for recovery and clicked Recover.

5. Disk Drill remembered our preferred recovery target folder from a previous scan. Still, we could choose another one with a click on Change destination. We stuck with the same target as before and clicked Next.

6. The recovery process took less than five seconds. Soon, we had our "lost" files back—although in a different folder than their original location. All that was left was to move them back to their initial spot.

Note: If recovering from an SSD or M2 drive, you should act swiftly, and recover your files before a TRIM process runs automatically "to clean and optimize your drive". If it does, it will "shuffle" the drive's free space and many file chunks, rendering your permanently deleted files unrecoverable.

Test 2: Formatted Drive

The actions we had to take for our second test were practically identical to the first one. We didn't have to choose different options or customize the scan process for our formatted drive.

1. We ran Disk Drill and selected our formatted drive from the app's Device/Disk list.

2. Disk Drill automatically went through both a quick scan and deep scan process to locate as many files as possible.

3. We chose to Review found items, reviewed the results, and marked the files we wanted to recover. Since we weren't using a purchased version, we could only select up to 500 MB of data for recovery.

4. We previewed the files to ensure they were the right ones and proceeded to their recovery.

As before, soon after, Disk Drill had brought back all the files we'd marked for recovery.

Note: Since you can recover files after a Quick Format with Disk Drill, does it work just as well with fully-formatted devices? Unfortunately, the answer's negative - for all data recovery solutions. It's impossible to recover data after a Full Format. A Quick Format marks a storage device as empty when it isn't. The actual file removal happens while using the drive, and new files overwrite the data that already exists on it. In contrast, a Full Format ensures the entire drive's space is available by overwriting all existing data, rendering all existing files unrecoverable.

Test 3: Corrupted Storage Device

Although the USB Flash Drive we used for this article wasn't corrupted, we didn't want to use a different device for our tests since it would be the equivalent of introducing a new factor that could affect the results.

So, we corrupted it manually by HEX-editing the drive to remove huge chunks from its file system descriptor.

Windows wasn't only unable to offer access to our USB Flash Drive's contents but also to format the device (without using a third-party specialized tool).

Thus, we were ready to go.

1. We fired up Disk Drill again and selected our now practically unusable USB Flash Drive from the app's Device/Disk list. Then, we had Disk Drill scan it as before, with a click on Search for lost data.

2. Although we expected Disk Drill to require more time to access our inaccessible drive, in practice, it completed its scan in minutes, as with our other testing scenarios.

3. As before, we went through its results, and Disk Drill had seemingly found everything. We located and previewed the files we prioritized, marked them for recovery, selected the target folder where we wanted them stored, and voilà: there they were, mere seconds later!

Verdict

Disk Drill impressed us by locating all the files we'd otherwise deem lost under all three of our testing scenarios.

It didn't matter if they were permanently deleted (we must stress: with Shift+Delete, not merely stored in the Recycle Bin), removed from view after a Quick Format, or inaccessible because of file system corruption: Disk Drill found them, and brought them back to us.

We prioritized that since a data recovery solution that cannot achieve such a feat isn't really "a solution" to data loss.

To sum everything up, Disk Drill is safe to use in all data loss scenarios in which we've tested it, producing more than satisfying results. The extra features and easy-on-the-eyes interface are excellent bonuses, too!

FAQs

Can Disk Drill be trusted?

Those wondering if Disk Drill is trustworthy should remember that it's been tried and tested by dozens of popular sites and thousands of users. Most of them paint it in a very positive light. Plus, its creator, CleverFiles, has years of experience in the field of data recovery. So, the answer has to be "yeah, Disk Drill's legit"!

Does Disk Drill have a recovery limit?

The free version of Disk Drill is unrestricted and comes with all its features unlocked, but it allows recovering only up to 500 MB of files. Purchasing a license removes that limitation.

Can Disk Drill repair corrupted files?

Although Disk Drill is often updated with new features, it doesn't support repairing corrupted files. Some apps advertise such features and claim they can. However, they cannot fully repair files with missing data since they can't conjure non-existing data from thin air. At best, they attempt to render files with missing chunks semi-usable, like reassembling 10 minutes from an hour-long video.