Disk Drill for Windows for data recovery

Disk Drill for Windows is a free data recovery software for the Windows operating system. The Disk Drill program recovers data from a hard drive, external storage media (external hard drive, flash drive, memory card, etc.). Supported file systems: HFS/HFS+, FAT16/FAT32, NTFS, EXT3, EXT4 and others.

You can lose data from your computer due to accidental deletion, formatting, damage to the drive, loss of a partition, emptying the recycle bin, etc. It happens that very important information is lost, so it becomes necessary to recover deleted files.

The task of data recovery is solved by special programs with which the user can try to recover lost files. Why try? Because it is not always possible to restore files if the files are damaged or completely overwritten. This must be taken into account.

Disk Drill PRO for Windows is a special free version of the program for the Windows operating system. Disk Drill is well known to Mac OS X users. Two versions of the application are available for Mac OS X: the free Disk Drill Basic and the paid Disk Drill PRO.

Disk Drill has three recovery modes:

• Undelete – cancels the deletion of files from a disk or media protected using the Recovery Vailt mode.
• Quick Scan – quick scan.
• Deep Scan – deep scanning.

Disk Drill PRO program runs on Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Vista, XP operating systems. You can download Disk Drill from the official website of the manufacturer: the American company CleverFiles.

Next, install the Disk Drill application on your computer, and then launch the program.

Disk Drill Interface

After launch, the Disk Drill program detects for some time all the disks of the computer: hard drives, external drives connected to the computer. Disk Drill has a very simple English interface.

The main Disk Drill window displays a list of drives on this computer: hard drive, external drives connected to the computer: flash drives, external hard drives, memory cards, etc. Opposite each drive there is a Recover button, then there is an arrow for entry to the context menu, with additional recovery options.

To protect this disk, using the “Protect” button, the “Recovery Vailt” mode is used. Using the button “Extras” (Advanced) you can create a disk image in DMG format, in order to recover data from the image, and not directly from the computer disk.

Data recovery in Disk Drill

Before restoring, close all programs currently running on the computer. When recovering, save the data on another drive to increase the chances of a positive result. Remember that it is not always possible to recover files, because files can be damaged or completely overwritten.

Of particular difficulty is the recovery of large files due to disk fragmentation. Fragments of a large file are located in different places on the disk. After the file is deleted, new data is written in place of the fragments. Therefore, data recovery programs are often unable to restore the entire file. Monitor the state of your computer, defragment regularly .

Select a computer drive or external drive to restore files. A computer hard drive can have multiple partitions. In order not to scan the entire hard disk, but to immediately select the desired partition, click on the triangle-shaped button located to the right of the disk name. Select the desired hard disk partition.

To start file recovery, click on the “Recover” button, in this case, all recovery methods will be used. If you need to choose the recovery mode yourself, click on the arrow next to the “Recover” button. In the context menu that opens, select the desired action:

• Run all recovery methods – run all recovery methods (default).
• Undelete protected data – Cancel deleting files using the Recovery Vault mode.
• Quick Scan – quick scan.
• Deep Scan – deep scanning.

After choosing a method, the search for deleted data on the selected disk will begin. For scanning, I chose an external USB drive (flash drive). The status of the scanning process is displayed on the panel in the program window.

The Disk Drill program window will display a list of detected files that are located in folders. Scanning can be stopped using the “Pause” button, or canceled by clicking on the “Cansel” button. The “Save Sessions” button saves data about the scanning session.

If the scanned disk is large, the scanning process will take a long time.

After the scan is completed, you will see folders with found files in the program window. By default, a list of all found files (All files) is displayed. The results can be filtered by file type: pictures (Pictures), video (Video), documents (Documents), audio (Audio), archives (Archives), by size (…by size), or by date (…by date).

Next, open the folder to familiarize yourself with the detected files. Detected files in Disk Drill may be under different names, the size and format of the file is displayed.

Unfortunately, not all files can be restored, or completely restored. This must be taken into account when restoring information.

Click on the magnifying glass to view the file. The files to be recovered, such as images, you will see in the viewer.

For example, this image can be restored without problems.In Disk Drill, you can recover an entire folder of files, or just individual files. In the Disk Drill window, mark individual files or folders for data recovery.

I selected the “Pictures” folder with images. By default, the program saves the recovered data to the “Documents” folder in the user’s profile. If necessary, you can change the directory for saving the recovered files. To do this, click on the button in the form of a folder, which is located on the panel opposite “Recover to:”.

To start the recovery process and save data, click on the “Recover” button on the panel.

After the recovery process is complete, go to the Documents folder (or other folder). The “Pictures” folder contains folders named after the image format, in this case “jpg”. When you open the folder, you will see the recovered pictures.

Using Recovery Vault Mode

When using the Recovery Vailt mode, all files on the disk are indexed, the location of all fragments is recorded. This mode significantly speeds up and increases the chances of successful data recovery.

To enter the Recovery Vailt mode, click on the “Protect” button, which is located opposite the desired drive (hard drive, removable media, etc.).

After that, a window will open in which you can enable or disable the Recovery Vailt mode using the buttons: “ON” and “OFF”.

In the window you will see two options:

• Choose folder to protect – select a folder to protect.
• Choose files to exclude from protection – select files to exclude from protection.

Using the “Add folder” button, you can add files for protection. By default, some folders are added for protection in Recovery Vailt. You can remove a folder from the list of protected folders using the “Delete” button.

In a similar way, you can add files to exclusions that do not need to be protected from deletion. This option has also added some settings.

After clicking on the “Reset to defaults” button, you can reset the Recovery Vailt mode settings to default, in each option separately.

To go to the main window from the Recovery Vailt mode, click on the “Back” button.

Article Conclusions

Disk Drill PRO for Windows is a free file recovery software. With Disk Drill, you can recover lost data from your computer and external drives connected to your computer: images, video, audio, documents, archives, disk partitions, etc.