You are getting more tools with Disk Drill Pro, but you’re paying for it. Disk Drill Pro is $89, which is $40 more than the Stellar software that I reviewed last time. Whilst these are all listed as “free tools” on their website, I think that’s just marketing speak because realistically they must be factoring in all these other features into the cost.

You can actually scan any drive or device and find all kinds of files, including hidden system files.ĭisk Drill Pro also comes with a whole slew of additional tools for managing your drives, such as drive health monitoring, drive cleanup, duplicate finders, boot disk creation and drive duplication. Since we are a photography site, I’m going to be concentrating on recovering photos from the memory card, but be aware that this isn’t a limitation of the software at all. I’m going to perform a recovery of some photos from a compact flash card with Disk Drill, and then I’ll perform the same recovery with Stellar Photo Recovery and compare the results to see which one is better. This time I’m taking a look at Disk Drill, an application that is available for both Mac and PC via the Disk Drill website, and also available on the Mac App Store. In the past I have reviewed Stellar Data Recovery, which is an excellent application and did a great job in my testing. There’s quite a few applications out there that can help you find these lost images and bring them back from the dead. Essentially your camera, or a computer, would stop seeing the file, but the data is actually all still there. When you use the file delete option, and even the format option on a memory card in your camera, it actually doesn’t remove the image at all, merely destroys the part of the file system that shows where it is. If you fall into the second category, there’s actually a good chance that you can get your files back with a minimum of effort and only a relatively small cost.

All of these things are stories that I have heard! Perhaps you were a bit overzealous with the delete or card format button on your camera, or just used the wrong import options in Lightroom and put your photos on a disk that you later emptied. The second thing that can happen is accidental deletion of photos from your disk or memory card. If your disk or memory card won’t even mount to your computer, or it is making a catastrophic noise, this is really your only option and there’s no guarantees that it’s going to work.

If you do find yourself in a situation where you’ve lost some photos or other files, you have a couple of options: Firstly, if it’s a hardware failure such as a dead disc platter, you’re only option is to send it in to a data recovery specialist and pay a large amount of money. Accidents happen, and unfortunately the vast majority of people don’t have a safe photo backup strategy like mine.

Disk drill professional review