One of the most popular data recovery tools on macOS, Disk Drill is now available for Windows. With a variety of features and a choice of free and premium versions, Disk Drill is designed to recover data from hard drives, SSDs, USB drives, SD/CF cards, digital cameras, and even smartphones. The Disk Drill website boasts that any type of lost data file can be recovered from almost any data loss scenario you can imagine. But does Disk Drill rediscover the deleted data you expected?
Disk Drill offers three different plans to meet your data recovery needs (Image credit: CleverFiles)
Plans and prices
There are three versions of Disk Drill available. The free option allows you to recover files up to 500 MB. Beyond that, the software cannot function without an update. Recovered data is stored in a Recovery Vault, with disks backed up with "byte-for-byte" recovery. All recovery methods can be used. For the PRO version, you will have to pay €89.99 (€78.35) or €118 (€103.88) with lifetime updates and for the price you will get unlimited recovery for one user with one activation. On up to three devices. Aimed at home users with high data recovery demands, PRO features include fast and deep scan, Smart FAT and NTFS algorithms, and search for lost partitions. All types of storage and file systems are supported. Business users can take advantage of all of the above, 10 user licenses and infinite activations, and priority support for €499 (€439.28) or €598 (€526.44) with lifetime updates. At the time of writing, a two-for-one offer gets you a copy of the free version of Disk Drill for Mac along with the PRO version for Windows.
Whether you're trying to recover pictures, videos, documents, archives, or other types of files, Disk Drill has you covered (Image credit: CleverFiles)
Features
A large collection of file formats can be recovered with Disk Drill, including (but not limited to) AVI, FLV, and MP4 videos, MP3 and AIFF audio files, and BMP, JPEG, JP2, GIF, and PSD images. Additionally, DOCX, PDF, and XLSX document formats can be recovered, as well as ZIP, RAR, and DMG archives and image formats. Disk Drill will work with Windows systems with internal or attached hard drives made by HP, Samsung, Seagate, Toshiba, WD, LaCie, Intel, and others. USB drives from SanDisk, Samsung, Kingston, Corsair, and others are also supported, and you should even be able to recover data from SD/CF cards from SanDisk, Transcend, Toshiba, PNY, Kingston, and others. Disk Drill also claims to be able to recover data from digital cameras, iPhones, and Android phones.
Disk Drill also supports a wide variety of devices (image credit: CleverFiles) Whatever media you're collecting, Disk Drill gives you the tools to find it. In addition to detecting internal devices and USB drives, Disk Drill allows you to attach disk images in a variety of formats, including IMG, ISO, and even VMDK disks from VMware Virtual PCs. Detect drives that wouldn't mount otherwise, with options to quickly and deeply scan, discover lost partitions, and even restore protected data.
Find files with Disk Drill
To test Disk Drill, we used a 16GB SanDisk Cruzer Blade USB flash drive, which had recently become unmountable in Windows 10, though it's mostly used for the occasional copy of data between PCs and media boxes. This plugged into a standard USB 2.0 port on a Dell G5 5505 SE laptop. Out of the box, Disk Drill does something Windows 10 can't: it detects the drive.
Disk Drill's user interface makes it easy to find your drives and their files (Image credit: CleverFiles) Disk Drill's main screen lists connected devices. You will see all the internal storage as well as all connected peripherals such as USB sticks and SD/CF cards. The option to attach a disk image is also here, useful if you have an image of an old disk drive where vital documents may be stored. Recovery with Disk Drill is incredibly easy. Select the drive or partition you want to recover, click the recovery type dropdown menu on the right, choose the recovery type, and then click the Search for lost data button. Disk Drill offers the option to use individual or all recovery methods. A quick scan obviously completes faster than a deep scan, but whichever option you choose, Disk Drill displays a status page to show the progress so far. Once this is done, simply select the files you want to recover, using the filter in the left panel to find specific file types, click Recover, and then select where to save them.
Several factors affect performance when using recovery software. The size of the disk, its state, the type of connection, and the type of restore chosen all contribute to the time required. As expected, a 250GB SATA drive can be scanned and data retrieved faster than a 1TB hard drive. During testing, Disk Drill repeatedly returned the contents of the removable 16GB USB drive within five minutes. This is a good result, indicating similar performance on larger devices, assuming optimal conditions.
Support
Disk Drill is fast and easy to use. But what happens when you run into problems? To assist you, a full selection of tutorials are provided on the website, covering everything from data recovery for specific device types, platforms, and file types. If these documents don't solve your problem, Lost File Recovery Detailed University (Disk Drill Knowledge Base) surely will.
You can contact support by filling out a form or via live chat (Image credit: CleverFiles) Alternatively, a live chat service is available and you can also contact Disk Drill on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and LinkedIn. In short, all contact options are available to help you troubleshoot recovery issues.
Final verdict
Disk Drill for Windows has lived in the shadow of the original macOS for quite some time. From what we've seen in testing, this seems unfair. Disk Drill's comprehensive collection of features for every platform and scenario imaginable is impressive enough. Its ability to effortlessly mount and read a previously removable USB drive and recover data from it in a relatively short amount of time proves that Disk Drill is a recovery tool you should consider. The price of the PRO version is unfortunately not ideal for home users, but other than that, Disk Drill is a great recovery option for Windows.