Disk Drill Media Recovery Ratings and Reviews

After a mishap with a drive used for both backup and a large media library (note to self: in Carbon Copy Cloner, ALWAYS make sure that “Protect Root-Level Items” is turned ON), I tried several different recovery apps to try to bring back some of the 3TB of data I accidentally deleted. Disk Drill was one of the only ones that would even launch (apparently the other apps didn’t like one of my external drives). The interface is great—clean and professional. Over the three days required to scan such a large drive, Disk Drill found a massive list of files (hard to say if it’s really all of them, but it’s gotta be close). Luckily, unlike some other recovery apps, you can pause, save, and resume your scanning progress at any time, so my laptop didn’t have to stay in one place for three days straight. Once the scan is over, recovering the files is easy—just select the ones you want and click the “Recover” button. My one major gripe is that, for some reason, it changes .MKV video files to “.webm” files. As far as I can tell, the only way to fix this is to use one of the many third-party MKV utilities to restore the proper container. Though I’m happy to have those files back at all, the conversion process can be time consuming, and I hope they’ll fix this issue in a future update. Bottom line: until human error and equipment malfunction are a thing of the past, Disk Drill is a must have.

When my 128gb Usb Pen Drive that had all my Mac’s needed Software and Games backed up on it became unusable on my Mac, I didn’t think I would be able to get any of my files back at all. All was lost until I found Disk Drill, it didn’t recover everything that was on the drive completely as some the stuff just was to far corrupted but what it did recover were my most important files that I could not have recovered with out it. It is a real life savor and it even gave me a good point of where to look to recover the other files that couldn’t be saved from my Pin Drive. With out which I would have no way of knowing what all the files even were that I lost, relying on my memory alone I would have been at a real loss. If you need a solution to save your lost files or data on a non functioning drive Disk Drill is the tool worth having. It took about two hours to scan my Usb Drive but I was able to preview the recovery process and see that it was working to bring back many of my lost files and that they were intact and recoverable by Disk Drill. I was immediately sold when I realized what it could do, I give it Five Stars. I think it is the best Recovery Tool there is, Thank You, Disk Drill and cleverfiles..

I was shooting some 4K footage for a documentary and 384 gigs of footage disappeared when one of my hard drives took a dive. Worse yet, the footage was of the main subject of the documentary who was only available for one morning for a sit-down interview. A reshoot was out of the question. I had a few days before I had to deliver the footage and I’m sweating bullets. Then I remembered that Disk Drill had gotten me out of a similar jam a few years ago. I fired up the app and let it scan the dead drive. It took about an hour, but then it showed me a directory of all the missing files. (A nice feature is the ability to save a scan session if you’re not recovering all your files at once.) You can preview files before recovering them if you’re unsure of what you’re looking for, which is pretty handy if you’re searching through a gazillion image files with unhelpful file names. You can also tell Disk Drill to search for only certain types of files to save time. I found the folders for the missing footage and then started the recovery process. Disk Drill recovered every single frame! I went from total despair to elation, breathed a sigh of relief, and thanked all the higher powers that Disk Drill exists. Thank you, everyone at CleverFiles!

For the second time…I did the unthinkable. With numerous external storage devices connected, I mixed them up and formatted the wrong one. No big deal, only my full music library, picture library, and tons of other data…ouch. The first time, I used different tool. While it did a decent job at recovery, the data was an absolute mess when it came back. I spent hours upon hours sorting, organizing, and trashing the gigs of data it returned.

Disk Drill is a different beast entirely. It not only found data the other tool didn’t, but it brought it back much cleaner, far more organized and much more intact from its original form. Highly impressed, definitely recommended. If you’re running an APFS filesystem, this is one of the only tools you can rely on to do the job. Thankfully it does it incredibly well.

Data recovery is not a fast process, and it does take some time. Be patient and trust Disk Drill to get the job done. Hopefully this will be the last time I ever need this tool, I’ve definitely learned my lesson and am backing things up better going forward. But…if I do need it again, I will know exactly what to do.

I am indeed a professional photographer, and have used many file recovery programs in the past that did not work (with exception of PhotoRec/TestDisk)...... My specific scenario is I mysteriously lost half of a wedding (the Nikon files disappeared, whereas the Sony files remained), and Lightroom didn't even have a record of them even though I sent Nikon file previews to my client earlier in the month. Also, crazily enough CrashPlan did not have a record of them either. For reference, I did not format the drive, and the drive continues to be in good working order..... Anyway, the point is I recovered the files, and while they don't contain the original file name(s), the RAW files and corresponding MPO files were recovered.

Straight up life saver, and for all of those people that are worried... this is one of the few legit recovery programs I've used. Impressed. How it would do iin a scenario where an SD card was formatted (PhotoRec works in this case confirmed), or a broken/corrupt drive/card I do not know, but for this specific scenario it was a flawless process.

I had a USB with photos and videos of my son from when he was a baby. (He is 8 now.) While it was plugged into my laptop, I somehow bumped the USB, and it gave me an error warning saying I didn't eject properly. when I tried to go back into the drive, it didn't have any photos or videos left! My heart sank and I felt so sick, as this was the only thumb drive I have of photos of him at that age. I really don't know much about computers and if there were any other way of finding those photos and videos…But I found this DiskDrill and figured it was my only hope. Thank God, because it pulled all my videos and pictures!!!! I spent hours trying to Google how to recover photos and trying to do it myself… just save yourself your day , and get this DiskDrill. It really didn't even take that long. And it is easy to use and understand!
And yes, I have learned my lesson. From now on I will backup my photos/videos and also put them onto CD's. I won't be making that mistake ever again.

The unthinkable happened . . . Formatting what I thought was my 32GB thumb-drive to put in my car stereo, I actually formatted my 5TB HDD! I was sick, it felt like a bad dream, 5TB!!! My music, pictures, videos all gone! But the music, that was hard. I had spent months ripping my prized CD collection to that disk.

I tried some other highly advertised/ reviewed competitors, they got back many of my pictures, videos and music but as a big, nearly random stacks of files! It would be an impossible task to sort through them all. Trying these other programs was no easy feat either, they ran from 11 to 34 HOURS each, 5TB is a lot of data!

Then I tried DiskDrill. . . it pulled back, as near as I can tell, all my files. And not just the music but the complete file tags and coverart were intact! It made relatively quick work of reorganizing my music. Thank you Disk Drill!

My external hard drive crashed and I thought I had lost my entire Lightroom Catalog. So I did some research and decided Disk Drill was my best option for data recovery. I wasn't disappointed. I recovered my ENTIRE LR catalog, all 40,000 images, over 1TB, 100% intact, no corrupted files. Everything is now on a new external drive and that drive is backed up as well. I'm a novice at data recovery so I kinda plodded my way through the process out of an abundance of caution, (I've been dying to use that phrase). In retrospect, it was much easier than I thought. The prompts guided me through the whole process. To be honest, it does takes a long time to recover, some 8 hrs, but well worth the wait. I actually went to bed at the three hour mark and woke up to a completely recovered catalog. Oh yeah! To put it mildly, I'm very pleased with this app.

I need to pull files off an old hard drive that was totally screwed up and was just making clicking noises when I plugged it in and mounted it using a USB drive harness. Disk Drill was able to successfully access and recover almost all the files of the drive, other than those that were screwed up by bad sectors.

Prior to trying Disk Drill I tried just about everything, including free software, mounting manually from the Mac single use mode, trying it with a Windows maching, and everything possiblie with Mac Disk Utility. Most things didn’t work at all, and the free software wasn’t really free and had a terrible UX. Disk Drill worked great! Highly recommended and way cheaper than taking my drive to some shop or Apple to recover the data.

I accidentally formatted an SD card but I could still see all the files. In my desperation I searched for the best app in the app store and got this. I bought it, used it and it recovered literally nothing. I contacted their tech support where I was told that the app store version isn't really the full version, they only sell that on their own site and wouldn't you know, it's $100 instead of $40. So, I bought the Pro version and figured, what the hell, I'll sign up for lifetime upgrades because I don't want to pay for it again. So, I get that version and do everything it says, still, not a single file recovered. I contact tech support again and they respond by telling me to do a Google search for "repairing mp4 files." You know, you could've told me that before I wasted my time and money on the upgrade. Worst $130 I spent ($40 in app store, $60 for pro upgrade, $30 for lifetime updates). I have to think they will go out of business with this product and I'll never see an new version in my lifetime. GARBAGE. Now I am looking into data recovery.