Even though your Macbook/iMac is connected to iCloud, you know that it's not the panacea to prevent data being deleted. For most occasions like emptied trash bin, unintended deletion, format, broken or lost partition, etc., what you would have done is to turn back the clock.
- Select the disk location (it can be an internal HDD/SSD or a removable storage device) where you.
- Disk Drill is your best friend in Mac file recovery task. CleverFiles file recovery software is simple and efficient.
Disk Drill for Mac 4 features updated FAT32, NTFS, HFS+, and APFS recovery algorithms that can improve recovery efficiency by up to 200 percent compared with the previous version. You can now easily recover many new image, video, and audio file formats, which brings the total number of supported file extensions to well over 400.
will do just like that, helping you recover data from HFS/hard disk, partition, flash drive and more. In this guide, we've tested 3 most popular data recovery for Mac. Check the comparison on best Mac data recovery utility below.Recovery
Mac Data Recovery provides two scanning modes, Quick Scan & Deep Scan, so that you can have a comprehensive scanning on the Macbook/iMac. Before scanning, you can choose which type of data to scan if you want to restore only a specific kind of file, as well as select the concrete location in Mac instead of the whole device. This will shorten the scanning process and save your time a lot. After the scanning, all media files will be displayed with thumbnail, so that you can easily find the one you need. Then, you can recover deleted data from Mac selectively or in bulk.Disk Drill Mac Recovery Tool
>CleverFiles Disk Drill allows you to scan the hidden drive, but you have no option for the quick or deep scan mode. No matter you lost data owing to Disk Utility error or corruption, the software can also get it back to your macOS X. You can select the target disk to scan deleted data from, but you cannot choose the specific type of file.Prosoft Data Rescue 4 enables you to start new scanning and resume the previous scanning process. Besides quick and deep scan mode, it also allows you to only scan for deleted data. Similar to Disk Drill, you can only choose the hard drive/disk, flash drive as the location where your files deleted from, but not the data type.
Additional Features
Mac Data Recovery have a function to scan for lost partitions and recover data from it. The software also gains RAID support, the ability to work with more than one scan, and reveals the total number of files in selected folders.CleverFiles Disk Drill also features as all-in-one tool, helping you backup data from Mac, find duplicated files and clean up them, as well as create boot drive.
Prosoft Data Rescue 4's clone function allows you to copy a hard drive or volume to another hard drive or volume, so that the copy may be scanned, reducing the wear-and-tear on the original hard drive.
Compatibility & Requirements
Mac Data Recovery is compatible with Mac OS X 10.13(High Sierra), 10.12(Sierra), 10.11(El Capitan), 10.10(Yosemite), 10.9(Mavericks), 10.8, 10.7, or 10.6, 256 MB or more of RAM (1024MB Recommended).
CleverFiles Disk Drill works well with Mac OS X 10.8.5 or later, with 22MB disk space is required.
Prosoft Data Rescue 4
Read up here, you may have a basic knowledge on 3 best data recovery utility for Mac. Choose the one meets your need and give it a shot. Also, if you have any other software recommended, please share with us.
Related Articles
| Editor's Rating |
|---|
| Overall |
| Features |
| Price |
| Customer Service |
Positives
- Deep and effective scan
- Support for a very long list of file types
- Excellent filtering options
- Future data loss protection
- iOS scan and recovery, even via Wi-Fi
- Affordable pricing
Negatives
- Can't recover files from SSD
- Clean-up utility is confusing
If you have ever experienced the moment when your Time Machine drive failed, then you already know what it means to lose the work of a lifetime or important files. No one wants that, and it's an issue that CleverFiles' Disk Drill Pro addresses. Thanks to its support for a continuously growing variety of file types and signatures, the data recovery software is very effective on hard drives and can even narrow down the scan results using its neat filters. The company behind the Atlanta, U.S.-based 508 Software takes a clever approach to customers looking for data recovery software: Disk Drill can be downloaded for macOS and Windows for free to check whether the files you are searching for are recoverable. It's only if this is the case that you are then invited to upgrade to a lifetime license for $89.
Features
Disk Drill's user interface is simple and easy to understand, with all major features only one click away. The main window displays all the disks that the software recognizes, with immediate options to recover data or continue within the software. A handful of additional tools are bundled in with the software, too, such as a disk health checker, duplicate finder, and data backup – making Disk Drill a complete package.
macOS System Integrity Protection
But when it comes to just data recovery, Disk Drill for Mac isn't short on options either, with a host of functions open to users dependent on availability:
- Undelete Protected Data.
- Rebuild HFS+ Catalog File.
- Universal Partition Search Scan for Lost HFS+ Partition.
- Quick Scan.
- Deep Scan.
Most interesting of all is the software's ability to protect against future data loss with its additional data protection feature. Activating this will allow users to restore files sent to the Trash or a specified folder for up to a year after their deletion. This is dependent on various settings at the time, but a massive boon for those worried about losing important files.
Scanning
Running the recovery scan requires users to disable System Integrity Protection (SIP) on machines running macOS Sierra or later. Although this sounds like a no-no for security-conscious users, it's important to know that Disk Drill does not affect any of the files in the system and that if SIP is enabled, then Disk Drill is unable to scan the disk. This is because with this protection active macOS enables the file system to not only protect files but also to protect the integrity of the drive itself.
Scanning an External Drive
Weak Results
Save Scan Results
Disk Drill Data Recovery (windows & Mac)
We deleted the test files that included the most common file types (such as JPG, XLS, AVI, DOC, PDF) days before we ran the tests on both the internal SSD of the MacBook Pro and an HFS+ formatted 500GB external drive. Despite being able to identify more than 300 different file types, Disk Drill wasn't able to recover any data from our SSD drive. A test with a handful of recently deleted items returned results mostly showing ‘plist' files.
This was quite the opposite when testing the HDD, however. While the results were quite limited with the quick scan option, we were able to recover most of our data by running the lengthy deep scan. Big o notation examples. For some reason, though, Disk Drill wasn't able to identify the MP3 files that we had deleted for this test, nor the AVI file. The scan took more than 10 hours, so we chose to pause and then resume the scan as time allowed without any issues. We also saved the session for later reuse, which turned out to be useful since it saved us 17 hours of our time.
Data Recovery
However, with the data protection feature enabled, everything changed. This neat feature of Disk Drill always delivers successful data recovery results, although the major problem with it is that consumers usually turn to data recovery software after they have experienced data loss and want their files back, not before. In other words, while it is very handy and highly useful with 100% recovery results – again, depending on your data protection settings and the time between the data loss and running the recovery scan – it only works if the user already has Disk Drill installed and guaranteed recovery enabled.
Disk Drill Guaranteed Recovery
Google interview prep cheat sheet.
Big Thumbnail Preview
All data recovery has its limitations because its success depends on multiple variables, particularly functions like secure erase on hard drives and TRIM on solid-state drives (SSDs). As such the software developer admits that SSD data recovery is due in the future as the current abilities of Disk Drill (and its peers) aren't enough, which is something that our tests confirmed.
Utilities
CleverFiles Disk Drill works well with Mac OS X 10.8.5 or later, with 22MB disk space is required.
Prosoft Data Rescue 4 can be run in macOS 10.8 or later, and a secondary Hard Drive and Internet connection is needed.
Read up here, you may have a basic knowledge on 3 best data recovery utility for Mac. Choose the one meets your need and give it a shot. Also, if you have any other software recommended, please share with us.
Related Articles
| Editor's Rating |
|---|
| Overall |
| Features |
| Price |
| Customer Service |
Positives
- Deep and effective scan
- Support for a very long list of file types
- Excellent filtering options
- Future data loss protection
- iOS scan and recovery, even via Wi-Fi
- Affordable pricing
Negatives
- Can't recover files from SSD
- Clean-up utility is confusing
If you have ever experienced the moment when your Time Machine drive failed, then you already know what it means to lose the work of a lifetime or important files. No one wants that, and it's an issue that CleverFiles' Disk Drill Pro addresses. Thanks to its support for a continuously growing variety of file types and signatures, the data recovery software is very effective on hard drives and can even narrow down the scan results using its neat filters. The company behind the Atlanta, U.S.-based 508 Software takes a clever approach to customers looking for data recovery software: Disk Drill can be downloaded for macOS and Windows for free to check whether the files you are searching for are recoverable. It's only if this is the case that you are then invited to upgrade to a lifetime license for $89.
Features
Disk Drill's user interface is simple and easy to understand, with all major features only one click away. The main window displays all the disks that the software recognizes, with immediate options to recover data or continue within the software. A handful of additional tools are bundled in with the software, too, such as a disk health checker, duplicate finder, and data backup – making Disk Drill a complete package.
macOS System Integrity Protection
But when it comes to just data recovery, Disk Drill for Mac isn't short on options either, with a host of functions open to users dependent on availability:
- Undelete Protected Data.
- Rebuild HFS+ Catalog File.
- Universal Partition Search Scan for Lost HFS+ Partition.
- Quick Scan.
- Deep Scan.
Most interesting of all is the software's ability to protect against future data loss with its additional data protection feature. Activating this will allow users to restore files sent to the Trash or a specified folder for up to a year after their deletion. This is dependent on various settings at the time, but a massive boon for those worried about losing important files.
Scanning
Running the recovery scan requires users to disable System Integrity Protection (SIP) on machines running macOS Sierra or later. Although this sounds like a no-no for security-conscious users, it's important to know that Disk Drill does not affect any of the files in the system and that if SIP is enabled, then Disk Drill is unable to scan the disk. This is because with this protection active macOS enables the file system to not only protect files but also to protect the integrity of the drive itself.
Scanning an External Drive
Weak Results
Save Scan Results
Disk Drill Data Recovery (windows & Mac)
We deleted the test files that included the most common file types (such as JPG, XLS, AVI, DOC, PDF) days before we ran the tests on both the internal SSD of the MacBook Pro and an HFS+ formatted 500GB external drive. Despite being able to identify more than 300 different file types, Disk Drill wasn't able to recover any data from our SSD drive. A test with a handful of recently deleted items returned results mostly showing ‘plist' files.
This was quite the opposite when testing the HDD, however. While the results were quite limited with the quick scan option, we were able to recover most of our data by running the lengthy deep scan. Big o notation examples. For some reason, though, Disk Drill wasn't able to identify the MP3 files that we had deleted for this test, nor the AVI file. The scan took more than 10 hours, so we chose to pause and then resume the scan as time allowed without any issues. We also saved the session for later reuse, which turned out to be useful since it saved us 17 hours of our time.
Data Recovery
However, with the data protection feature enabled, everything changed. This neat feature of Disk Drill always delivers successful data recovery results, although the major problem with it is that consumers usually turn to data recovery software after they have experienced data loss and want their files back, not before. In other words, while it is very handy and highly useful with 100% recovery results – again, depending on your data protection settings and the time between the data loss and running the recovery scan – it only works if the user already has Disk Drill installed and guaranteed recovery enabled.
Disk Drill Guaranteed Recovery
Google interview prep cheat sheet.
Big Thumbnail Preview
All data recovery has its limitations because its success depends on multiple variables, particularly functions like secure erase on hard drives and TRIM on solid-state drives (SSDs). As such the software developer admits that SSD data recovery is due in the future as the current abilities of Disk Drill (and its peers) aren't enough, which is something that our tests confirmed.
Utilities
Browsing through results would be a hassle without Disk Drill's advanced filtering options. Alongside the file type, the software lets you select data by size and the approximate time frame of when it was deleted. If this still doesn't uncover what you're looking for, the search field is of great help. Combine that with the big thumbnail preview and you have a great user experience.
Besides data recovery, Disk Drill for Mac includes utilities such as a duplicate finder, which does a pretty good job – delivering decent results in our testing – and the clean-up feature. We tested it using the startup disk of test MacBook Pro, but the results weren't as easy to understand as they would be with Mac optimization software.
iOS Data Recovery Details
Disk Drill Trash Protection
Clean Up Findings
How To Use Disk Drill Recovery
An interesting and noteworthy addition is the iOS and Android device recovery. Disk Drill recognizes mobile devices connected via Wi-Fi and lets you scan them for lost data. It is limited in its capabilities, however, and so for speed and security purposes it's better to connect the device via cable.
Disk Drill for Mac also includes a neat feature called 'Disk Health', a S.M.A.R.T. monitoring service that visualizes the health of the targeted drive.
Pricing
Disk Drill for macOS comes in three flavors, Basic, Pro, and Enterprise, all serving different types of users. The free version, Basic, is essentially software that only serves the purpose of checking whether is possible to save the data of a failing startup disk or external drive. If a scan shows positive results in this regard, then users become ‘eligible' to upgrade to the Pro version, which costs $89 per lifetime license for a single user on up to three Macs. Add $29 more and you'll instead get a lifetime upgrade.
Those using Disk Drill at a professional level by offering data recovery services can opt for the Enterprise version at $399. This provides an unlimited number of users, activated Macs, free lifetime upgrades, and a forensic data export.
- Personal
- Data protection: recovery vault, guaranteed recovery
- Backup failing disks into DMG
- Preview all recovery methods
- —
- —
- 1 user, up to 3 Macs
- Data recovery for home users
- Quick & deep scan
- Rebuild HFS+
- Lost partition search
- All media types and file systems
- Lifetime upgrades +$29
- Unlimited users, unlimited Macs
- Full-featured commercial data recovery package
- —
- —
However, it's possible to save money on Disk Drill by moving over from a competing service, allowing you to get a license for half price. There's no need to worry about payment methods, either, since the company accepts all major credit and debit cards as well as PayPal, PayNearMe, wire transfer, checks, and purchase order.
Customer Support
When it comes to recovering lost data, it's good to have answers quickly. Disk Drill's extensive help section seeks to address that need by providing various options. Users can search through the knowledge base using the search field or, if they need assistance in getting started, can browse the same section by categories such as basics, data protection, data recovery, and more. The live chat connects users with a real person who can assist them both with their purchase and technical questions.
Disk Drill Contact Form
Disk Drill Data Recovery Mac
If chat is not your preferred way of getting an answer, then the tutorials will help in the troubleshooting process. 508 Software even has its own YouTube channel where it briefly explains the software's features. But most surprising is how promptly the company answers emails sent to support, with our email being answered within a few hours. The web form, however, didn't really work.
Bottom Line
Disk Drill for Mac is one of the best options that customers have for data recovery. The free version first checks whether the data is even recoverable, and it's only when needing to recover that data that the Pro version for $89 is necessary. Don't expect it to work on an SSD, though – that's currently still impossible unless you enable the neat data protection feature, which is to protect against future data loss not recover data already lost. Depending on your settings, you may have up to one year to recover deleted data, though the amount of storage is also a factor since the software needs to store a copy of the files you send to the Trash or a specified folder.
However, the advanced filtering options contribute to the long life of millions of neurons, helping to eliminate any guesswork and help users whittle down thousands of results to just a few. If you are looking for a decently priced data recovery software that has the added benefit of future protection, then Disk Drill is a service worth considering.
