Apr 10, 2023 • Filed to: Windows Computer Solutions • Proven solutions
Is Disk Drill a free data recovery program? What does Disk Drill do? How to use disk drill recover deleted files? There are many questions like these about Disk Drill when you are hoping to restore your precious files with the program. This post will explain all the questions about Disk Drill free data recovery software for Windows and Mac.
Part 1. What's Disk Drill？
Disk Drill is a freeware for data recovery that possesses a clean and easy to understand user interface, coupled with an efficient data recovery algorithm. This provides an easy way for users to scan the PC for lost, damaged, or corrupted files and preview them before undergoing the recovery process.
- It helps retrieve lost files from partitions that have been formatted or have failed to mount.
- It can scan hard drives, partitions that have been deleted or lost. External memory devices such as flash drives and SD cards can also be run through the Disk Drill for scanning and data recovery.
- Disk Drill is also able to pull out data from hard drives that have crashed.
- There are different scan options and scan capabilities that Disk Drill can do. For scan options, quick and deep scans can be made to look for lost, deleted, corrupted, or damaged files.
- Sorting and scanning by file type are also possible with Disk Drill.
Disk Drill is offered in 2 versions: Mac and Windows. These 2 versions are slightly different in data recovery.
Disk Drill for Windows
Like Disk Drill for Mac, the Windows version supports data scanning from various file systems, including NTFS/NTFS5, HFS/HFS+/HFSX, FAT/FAT32/exFAT, EXT3/EXT4 and more. It can recover data from formatted drive, too. However, Forensic features are missing in Disk Drill for Windows. Moreover, Disk Drill 4 for Windows allows users to recover up to 500MB data for free.
Disk Drill for Mac
Disk Drill for Mac can preview and recover protected data with all recovery methods. The deleted files can be labeled by metadata and previewed by thumbnails. iOS & Android Data Recovery are also supported in the Mac versions. However, in Deep Scan, only 300 file signatures can be scanned out, while 400 file signatures can be scanned in the Windows version.
Part 2. Is Disk Drill Safe?
So many features are listed to show what Disk Drill Data Recovery is. But the most important question should be "Is it a safe program to use?" Yes, Disk Drill can be used to recover deleted or lost files on computer safely. We tested the Disk Drill on 3 computers, respectively Windows 10, Windows 7, and MacBook Pro. When running the software on the computers, it works normally without causing any harm to them and hard drive data.
During the test, we also checked the computer condition, especially in the virus and malware infection. And the anti-virus software told that everything went normally.
Aside from this, the software has a Recovery Fault feature that protects partitions and consequently the files saved from within these parts. This feature makes it easier to recover data should they become corrupted or deleted.
Part 3. Is Disk Drill Really Free
Disk Drill Free Data Recovery claims that it is free for all the users to get data back. However, is it free? The answer is no. Both available for Mac and Windows, Disk Drill Data Recovery has 3 pricing plans, namely basic, pro, and enterprise.
Disk Drill Basic
Usually, Disk Drill Basic is regarded as Disk Drill Free Data Recovery. It has different recovery limitations for Windows and Mac users. Disk Drill Free Data Recovery only supports Mac users to scan and preview files for free. What if you want to recover data on a Mac computer? You have no other choice but to purchase Disk Drill Pro for Mac.
However, Windows users of Disk Drill Basic can not only free scan and preview files but recover up to 500 MB data for free on a Windows computer.
Disk Drill Pro
Disk Drill Pro is the paid version of Disk Drill Basic. By purchasing the Pro version, you can remove the limits of data recovery in the free version and unlock more features, such as rebuilding HFS+, searching lost partitions.
How much does Disk Drill Pro for Mac cost? It is $89 for 1 user up to 3 Macs according to the Disk Drill website. You can also further upgrade it to the lifetime license by paying an extra 29 dollars.
Disk Drill Enterprise
The Enterprise version is the premium version of Disk Drill for business uses. It supports data recovery for up to 10 devices.
Part 4. Disk Drill Review After Test
After learning what Disk Drill is, let's have a snapshot of its advantages and disadvantages.
What We Like
- Disk Drill has a concise user interface that allows even beginners to use the program without hassle.
- It supports data recovery on multiple platforms — this means that Disk Drill is compatible with devices that run with Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android operating systems.
- Support for multiple file types and file systems are available. Even obscure file types can be recognized by this file recovery software.
- Disk Drill has an impressive scanning speed. A partition with 500 GB can be run for only an hour using the deep scan function.
- Scans can be stopped, paused, and resumed at your convenience. The use of this software is flexible and easy because you take control of the scan time and schedule.
- The Recovery Vault, a very useful feature of Disk Drill, helps protect your data from total loss because it creates metadata that acts as an extended Recycle Bin for your device.
- It boasts more than file recovery — a full partition recovery is possible with Disk Drill.
What We Don't Like
- The file details aren’t effectively shown, so you do not get information about a file’s quality before recovery.
- Disk Drill only supports the preview and recovery of fewer than 400 types and formats of data, below the average.
- There is no portable version for Disk Drill. Installation of the software is required before you can run it and recover files. This increases the risk of file overwriting, thereby losing the data permanently.
- There is only a 500 MB of file limit for recovery in the free version. This means that you might not be able to retrieve all the files you need, especially if they come in a video format.
- Some users find bugs like difficulty startup of the software, and some incidences report app crashing.
- Some users also complained about staff support because it takes quite a while for them to respond to queries.
Part 5. How to Use Disk Drill Data Recovery?
To use Disk Drill, you would need to install the software first on your computer and run it accordingly, since there is no portable version of this. Here are the steps in recovering lost data using Disk Drill.
Step 1 Download Disk Drill from their website and install the program by following the instructions.
Step 2 Run Disk Drill once it finishes installing in your PC. This will show you all of the drives found in the computer system.
Step 3 Choose the specific driver that contains the lost files and click the "Recover" button.
Step 4 After the scan is completed, the window will show all the recoverable files found in that drive.
Step 5 Sort through them and review the files that you need to retrieve. You can also opt to recover all files by checking boxes to ensure that no lost or deleted file is missed.
Step 6 Wait for the recovery task to finish!
There is no other way to see if Disk Drill works than to try it by yourself. To recover files and ensure that you don’t suffer from crippling data loss, avail of the services offered by Disk Drill. If you want another alternative software that does data recovery efficiently, you may also try Recoverit Free Data Recovery, also available as a freeware and power-packed unlike most other data recovery software out there. What we most like is that Recoverit supports to recover more than 1000 types and formats of data from all devices.
Theo Lucia
chief Editor