Disk Drill for Mac Review – Powerful Features in an Easy-to-Use Wrapper

Disk Drill is one of the most popular data recovery tools on the market, covering both Windows and Mac platforms. Many users dealing with various data loss scenarios prefer this application since its well-thought-out design makes data recovery look like a piece of cake. But what does the tool have to offer aside from a user-friendly interface? Let’s find out!

TL:DR; The Disk Drill for Mac review has concluded that this data recovery tool is not just another application with a nice-looking interface, it actually is a powerful tool capable of solving complex data loss scenarios. The features that Disk Drill offers speak for themselves: advanced scanning algorithms and high scanning speeds, file support for over 400 different file types, and impressive device compatibility.

Data Recovery Process

We’ve tested Disk Drill for Mac beginning with the little things and finishing with a complete data recovery process. For you to get a better understanding of how this tool works, we performed a recovery of a few files that we purposely deleted beforehand. Here’s what we did:

• ⬇️ Download and install Disk Drill on the Mac. We went to the official Cleverfiles website and clicked the Disk Drill download link. After that, we followed the onscreen instructions to finish the installation.
• 💽 Choose the needed device and initiate the scan. The first thing that you see once you launch the app is a list of available drives, so to start the scanning process, all you need to do is click the needed drive and then click the Search for lost data button.
• 🖼️ Preview the discovered files. The tool has a simple yet incredibly useful navigation system that makes it easy to find the needed file. To narrow down your search, you can use the search field to type in the file’s name or extension, use the filters to focus on a certain file specification, or choose the file type on the sidebar. Also, you can preview a file to see if it’s the needed one by clicking the eye icon near it.
• 🔄 Recover the missing files. Once you’ve selected the data that you wish to recover, all you need to do is click the Recover button. Also, after that, the app gives you the opportunity to choose a preferred destination for the recovered data.

Disk Drill was supposed to locate 2 GB of deleted data from Mac’s internal hard drive—and it did. All of the files were successfully discovered by the scan and restored. So we can claim without any doubt that this data recovery tool really is what everyone says about it: powerful, effective, and easy to use.

But Disk Drill still has a few drawbacks. We also tried to recover a few different partitions using this tool and while it did an outstanding job recovering HFS+ and APFS partitions, it didn’t give such results with the EXT4 partition.

Features

The first thing that you notice when launching Disk Drill on your Mac for the first time is its well-designed interface. But what features are hidden behind that wrapper? Here’s what we found out about Disk Drill’s features.

Data Recovery Performance

It’s impossible to overestimate the capabilities of this data recovery tool. Thanks to its advanced scanning algorithms, you can be sure that Disk Drill will be able to recover your files even in complex cases (unless the missing data has already been overwritten).

Disk Drill offers a number of scan types to get the best results in different situations: Clever scan, Quick scan, Native deep scan, scan for lost partitions, etc. Basically, this tool can help in any data loss scenario.

File Types

Disk Drill for Mac can discover and restore over 400 different file types. So you can definitely be sure that Disk Drill will be able to easily recover almost all of the major file formats. Here are some of the most commonly used file formats that are supported by Disk Drill:

• 🌅 Images: JPG, PNG, NEF, CR2, PSD, SRW, AI, etc.
• 🎞️ Videos: MP4, MPG, AVI, DIR, CRM, M4B, etc.
• 🎶 Audio: MP3, M4A, AA, etc.
• 📄 Documents: DOCX, EMLX, HTML, PAGES, NUMBERS, PPTX, etc.
• 📚 Archive: JAR, ZIP, MBX, PST, etc.

Device Support

Disk Drill can recover files from Intel-based Macs and Macs powered by Apple’s M1 chips. Moreover, the tool can also be used with other devices that can get connected to your computer. Here’s a list of devices supported by this data recovery tool:

• 💽 Internal and external hard drives
• ⚙️ Internal and external solid-state drives
• 💾 Memory cards
• 🔌 USB flash drives
• 🍏 iOS devices
• 📱 Android devices

Moreover, Disk Drill’s Deep and Quick Scans can recover data from almost any partition, such as HFS+, APFS, NTFS, FAT32, and others.

Extra Features

Disk Drill is more than an ordinary data recovery tool. Aside from the usual features, it comes packed with some handy additional utilities. A great example of such a feature is the tool’s ability to monitor S.M.A.R.T. status on basically any drive (internal HDDs, external HDDs, and SSDs).

This tool also comes with a set of features that can help the user to tidy up their Mac and remove unnecessary files. A few of those features include file duplicate finder, disk cleanup, erase free space tool and secure data shredding.

Some other Disk Drill’s extra features include:

• Byte-to-byte disk copies creation
• Guaranteed Recovery and Recovery Vault for data protection
• macOS installation disks creation
• Boot drive

Plans & Pricing

Disk Drill for macOS offers three plans: free trial version (basic plan), Pro, and Enterprise. Here’s a short description of what they have to offer:

• 👨 Basic: It’s a free Disk Drill version that allows you to scan your device for lost data and also preview the discovered files. However, if you wish to recover the found files, you should get a paid license.
• 👩‍💻 Pro: This plan has no limitations on how much data can be recovered and costs $89.00. But only one person will be able to use it.
• 🧑‍🎓 Enterprise: With this plan, you also get unlimited data recovery. And along with that, up to 10 users are allowed to use the tool. Moreover, you get some extra bells and whistles, such as priority technical support and forensic data export. All for the price of $499.00.

Also, with the paid plans, you get a Disk Drill Mac and Windows tool version for the price of one plan. It’s a pretty nice perk, especially if you’re using both macOS and Windows-based computers. And if you pay a little extra, you’ll get lifetime updates for the app.

User Feedback

Disk Drill has been on the market for over a decade now, and since its release date, it has established itself as one of the most popular and effective data recovery tools. When surfing the Internet, you can see that the majority of the users’ reviews and comments about their experience with this tool are positive.

TechRadar gives the following verdict about Disk Drill:
“Its ability to effortlessly mount and read a previously unmountable USB flash drive and to recover the data from it within a comparatively small timeframe proves that Disk Drill is a recovery tool that you should be considering.”

Reddit user says the following about Disk Drill:
“It’s very good – I just restored a dead drive with 5+ years of backups with it. The free version lets you scan for lost data and the paid version will recover anything it can.”

It’s nearly impossible to find negative comments about Disk Drill’s performance and capability. Only a small portion of the comments claim that they wish this tool would’ve had a few more additional features like disk cloning and photo/video repair.

FAQ

Verdict

There are a lot of factors that make Disk Drill such a popular data recovery tool: superb performance, impressive compatibility, incredible file support, fair pricing, etc. This tool is definitely worth it since, aside from the usual data recovery features, Disk Drill comes with an abundance of extra utilities that pushes this tool to the top. So you can be sure this application is not just about looks.