Eschewing a flashy website, DMDE - DM Disk Editor and data recovery software gets to work telling you exactly what to expect from its handy recovery tool. With five licensing options beyond the free tool, DMDE is a bit of a mystery, offering multiple languages on its website (including French and Russian) but no idea where it came from, apart from its 2008 release. Their "About" page only explains the software, rather than the company and developers. Sales support is available in Canada and the United States, although the two agencies appear to be operating under license, with different websites. All of this makes DMDE quite enigmatic. This mystery aside, how well does DMDE recover your lost files?
DMDE offers a free version, as well as several other editions (Image credit: DMDE Software)
Free versus other options
DMDE is available in several editions. Before you buy, the developer recommends using the free edition to "make sure you can retrieve and open the files you need." DMDE Free Edition can recover up to 4000 files at a time, making it useful for small-scale recovery jobs. It's less useful for recovering disks and partitions, however, that's where the paid options come in.
You can choose a package for one operating system or upgrade to one that covers several (Image credit: DMDE software) There are five different licenses available, tailored to specific uses. A one-year Express license costs €20 (€14.85), while a standard license for DMDE costs €48 (€29.69). Both options are for a single operating system (Windows, macOS, Linux). There is also a standard license for multiple operating systems (€67.20 / €41.65). DMDE Professional costs €95.00 (€58.70) for one operating system or €133 (€82.19) for multiple operating systems. DMDE also offers a discount for multiple licenses.
You can even manage partitions on your computer with DMDE (Image credit: DMDE software)
Key recovery features
Using DMDE Free Edition to recover data gives you the ability to recover up to 4000 files at a time. It also offers partition management, as well as disk imaging and cloning. DMDE Free Edition finds lost data through deep volume search, and Disk Editor allows you to browse and explore various disk structures.
DMDE supports NTFS, FAT, exFAT and many other formats (Image credit: DMDE Software) The tool supports NTFS, FAT, exFAT, Ext, HFS+/HFSX, ReFS, APFS formats and can scan and manage partitions in these formats.
Find files with DMDE Free Edition
To test the capabilities of DMDE Free Edition, we used a Windows 10 laptop (Dell 5505) with a 16 GB SanDisk Cruzer Blade USB drive attached. This device had lost and deleted files and was impossible to mount under normal circumstances. When starting DM Disk Editor and data recovery software, the Select Disk/Task dialog is displayed, also available from the Disk menu. From there, select the device to scan and click OK. In the next window, you can choose any partition of your chosen drive, view the relevant data about it, and click Full Scan to start the recovery. The list of recoverable files is accompanied by a preview pane, where you can assess their integrity. To recover a file, check the box, right-click and select Recover. You can select multiple files (as shown, up to 4000 files) and click the Recover Data button. The recovered data is saved in a specific directory. Verification of logical drives, disk images, and RAID disk creation are available in the Select Disk / Task window.
Scanning 16 GB USB stick in less than 15 minutes, DMDE - DM Disk Editor and data recovery software is relatively fast. Although slower than some alternatives, the depth of the recovery was considerable. Some files were long gone and completely unrecoverable, but are still listed. The recovery feature was just as effective, making the whole process simple. The recovered files work and DMDE - DM Disk Editor and data recovery software do not seem to list the data that cannot be recovered, although the results can be sorted by quality. Equally impressive are the various extended features of DMDE - DM Disk Editor and data recovery software. As we investigated further, we took the time to create a disk image of the drive in question, while it was still removable. The image was easy to create, resulting in a mountable BIN file that was recoverable. You will appreciate the benefit of having this feature and using it on an old hard drive that is about to fail.
A manual is available on the DMDE Software website (Image credit: DMDE Software)
Support
There is hardly any support for DMDE - DM Disk Editor and data recovery software. While the website offers 10-point FAQs and a detailed online manual (also available in PDF format) with Polish and Russian translations, technical support is only available via direct email.
You can also contact us via a contact form (Image Credit: DMDE Software) Feedback can be sent via the website, but it lacks a detailed and searchable knowledge base and chat support. There is no reference to any social media account or Reddit page. In short, if you choose to use DMDE to recover your lost data, other than manual, the process can be slow if you run into any issues. Hopefully that won't happen, but given the depth of options this software has, it seems odd that more detailed support isn't available.
Final verdict
With so many recovery tools on the market with varying skill levels, speed, features, and prices, it's easy to be wary of DMDE - DM Disk Editor and data recovery software. But it is a feature-rich recovery tool with a free mode that is ideal for all but the most devastating recovery scenarios. 4000 files per recovery session is enough in most cases, and that's before you consider the paid options that are surprisingly affordable compared to others. While the user interface presents information that can be confusing to the uninitiated, it does offer features that other tools miss, they can handle RAID compilation and create disk images. The Express license alone is a good deal, DMDE - DM Disk Editor and data recovery software is available for Linux and macOS, as well as Windows, making it perhaps the best free and paid recovery solution available. .