Disk Drill is an excellent data scanning and recovery tool that lets you browse, search, preview, scan, and recover lost files from FAT and NTFS volumes. It supports hard drives, flash drives, memory cards, and more.
The tool can also recover hard disk partitions, with filtering options to help you find data fast and effortlessly. It has powerful data recovery capabilities and data backup and protection features.
Its intuitive user interface makes it easy to process data within no time. After scanning files, the software will mount the results as a folder. It uses advanced scanning algorithms.
However, Disk Drill has its limitations. You can only recover 500MB of data using its free version. Its scan results don’t include the file quality or condition.
The tool doesn’t have a portable version and doesn’t work on phones. The deep scanning algorithms for the software take too long, and you have to install them before you start running and recovering files. This heightens the risk of overwriting files, which can make you lose your data permanently.
That’s why we’ve compiled alternative data recovery tools for you to explore and select one that best fits your specific requirements.
Let’s delve in.
Also Read: Best Utility Software Examples
Our Top 15 Disk Drill Alternatives
1. PhotoRec
PhotoRec is a powerful data recovery tool – a Disk Drill alternative that runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. It helps you recover photos on your PC quickly at no cost. Its textual interface works wonderfully to ensure you get all your lost photos back.
The software searches for familiar file headers and recovers the whole file. It can recover a wide selection of file formats.
PhotoRec searches for data blocks for specific files and retains their values to make them readable and recoverable.
With PhotoRec, you can easily recover lost videos, archives, documents, and photos from CD-ROMs, memory cards, flash drives, hard drives, and other storage drives.
Since it’s distributed under the GNU license, it’s free and open-source, allowing you to run, study, edit, and share the software easily – something that can’t happen with Disk Drill.
PhotoRec uses a data recovery method that is non-destructive. This method prevents it from writing to similar storage devices that data is recovered from.
This tool also recovers fragmented files that are scattered. It comes with TestDisk, an application that lets you recover non-bootable disks and lost partitions.
It recovers almost 300 file families and is free to use.
Also Read: Best FreeNAS Alternatives
2. Wondershare Recoverit
Wondershare Recoverit is among the best data recovery tools available. It works with various storage devices, including hard drives, camcorders, USB drives, memory cards, formatted partitions, digital cameras, smartphones, and more.
The software accesses paths to all deleted files in the system before recovering them. It runs on Windows and macOS systems and can recover videos, audio, photos, documents, emails, and files. You can recover more than 1000 files with this tool.
Wondershare Recoverit has high recovery rates and is known for recovering data that other software can’t. It’s because of its advanced data recovery algorithm, which comes with deep scan and smart scan technology.
You also get to benefit from video fragment technology to retrieve your lost videos. It supports a wide selection of file formats with a general rule to recover file types that your operating system can view.
Besides recovering data, this tool also scans all drives with remarkable accuracy and security. It offers free technical support 24/7.
Unlike Disk Drill, this software can restore emails.
Wondershare has three pricing plans including the Essential plan at $69.99/year, the Standard plan at $79.99/year, and the Premium plan at $99.99/year.
Also Read: Best Glary Utilities Alternatives
3. Recuva
Recuva helps you recover files from memory cards, hard drives, iPods, floppy disks, flash drives, external hard drives, music, and more. If your drive was damaged or formatted recently, you can use this program to retrieve data. It helps to recover all media files.
Its pro version can help get data from virtual drives. Recuva is not file type limited; you can recover emails, text documents, spreadsheets, photos, videos, and more. It is developed by Piriform, a renowned company with some of the most high-grade tools like CCleaner.
The best thing about Recuva is its speed. Processes like set up, download, installation, and scan are pretty fast to accomplish.
It has a freemium model that lets you try it out before committing to its paid version. Its portable version lets you use it anywhere – in the office, at work, or on the go, to recover your files quickly. Disk Drill does not have a portable version.
Recuva has a user-friendly wizard that aids you in getting your files back quickly. You can use it to restore unsaved word documents and recover emails for MS Outlook, Windows Live Mail, or Thunderbird.
It supports 40 languages and all Windows versions. It has a beautiful, straightforward interface with a preview screen.
Recuva is free, with a professional plan that costs $19.95.
4. Stellar
Stellar is an excellent data recovery software that handles unbootable systems and completely crashed systems to recover data that was deemed unrecoverable. It helps restore audio, video email, photos from SSDs, USB drives, hard drives, and more.
As a comprehensive data recovery tool, Stellar will help you solve many data loss situations without the need for expert knowledge or experience. It supports multiple file systems and can recover more than 200 file formats like archive files, images, database files, songs, documents, videos, etc.
Unlike Disk Drill, Stellar lets you add new types of files manually. Its data recovery interface has a simple layout with clearly described options that help you determine the next action to take. The file recovery process is pretty straightforward.
It offers multiple data recovery capabilities, including lost partitions, inaccessible files from RAID hard drives, and drives that have been formatted, deleted, encrypted, or lost.
It lets you choose between deep scanning or regular scanning. The deep scanning process carries out a comprehensive file signature base search to recover files that can’t be found through regular scanning.
Other extra features include support for image creation from hard disks and volumes and a video repair feature that helps you reconstruct corrupted video and image files.
Pricing information is not available.
Also Read: Best SeaTools Alternatives
5. DiskGenius
DiskGenius is an all-in-one Disk Drill alternative for data recovery, backup, and partition solutions. Launched in 2010, this tool can also solve disk problems, including disk cloning, sector editing, file operations, and virtualizing Windows into a VMware virtual machine.
By combining data recovery and partition management, DiskGenius ensures that your lost data is recovered, whether deleted, formatted, or lost due to an OS crash. It also helps you solve partition loss and RAW drive issues so you can have your data back.
Its data recovery process is quite simple. Unlike Disk Drill, DiskGenius recovers data directly from Virtual Box, VMware, or Microsoft Virtual PC images. It also has a hex editor that analyzes raw disk data.
It offers free technical support and is free to download. Its free version has impressive data recovery functions for small enterprises. It has backup and restoration tools, partition management, disk utility and can highlight recovery success rate and the extent of the recovery options.
Pricing information is not available on its website.
Also Read: Best WinZip Alternatives
6. EaseUS Data Recovery
EaseUS Data Recovery is a reliable software with excellent data recovery performance. It lets you sort and filter deleted files ready for recovery. It also acts as a partition master that optimizes the performance of hard drives by making disk partition management possible.
Other features aside from file recovery and partition management include data transfer, data backup, and so much more. It has a data recovery wizard that helps retrieve lost data with a few clicks of the button.
Whether your files have been deleted or lost due to software errors, the data recovery wizard will restore them for you. Its video tutorial will guide you on how the platform works.
Although it has a free trial, the platform allows you to purchase a one-month license at $69.95 when you are tight on the budget to enjoy unlimited features. It supports multiple languages and file systems.
It’s user-friendly with an interface similar to Windows Explorer and a three-step data recovery process. It works on external and internal hard drives, memory cards, USB drives, and multiple partitions.
You can recover multiple file types and RAW partitions over a quick or advanced scan. Its free trial gives you up to 2GB of recovered data compared to Disk Drill’s 500MB. You can use it on all Windows versions, and import exported files that have already been scanned.
Other features include grouping deleted files with tags, enhanced FAT recovery quality, fast performance, and ease of sorting of specific file types and deleted files.
Check Out: Best Free ISO Makers
7. Minitool Power Data Recovery
Minitool is a Windows-based data recovery tool offering comprehensive data recovery for more than 100 types of files. It can restore all your deleted and lost data from multiple storage devices.
The software allows you to preview the file types you selected and filter them to be scanned faster. With this tool, you can recover raw data and common file types because it supports files including video and image extensions and rare file types.
It helps you scan all your internal and external storage connected to your computer, including your USB drives, external HDDs, SD cards, optical drives, and more.
File systems supported include FAT, NTFS, and many others. The tool also helps to create bootable USB drives so you can scan and recover data in failed hard drives that can’t be booted directly or are not listed in the recovery service.
With Minitool, you can scan specific file locations to locate and recover the files you need, unlike when using Disk Drill. This is helpful and time-saving as you don’t need to scan the whole drive.
Other features include recovering up to 1GB of data at no cost, an intuitive user interface, round-the-clock technical support, and more. Its inherent simplicity and efficiency, making it a worthy alternative to Disk Drill.
It offers three pricing plans including a monthly subscription at $69, one PC license at $8/year, and a Perpetual License at $99 for three PCs.
Also Read: WD Elements vs My Passport – Which Is Better?
8. R-Studio
R-Studio is a popular data recovery solution for experienced users who can explore the powerful, more extensive features it offers. It is renowned for its capability to retrieve data from different file systems.
The software combines various data recovery techniques to help recover data from a collection of file systems, including APFS, HFS/HFS+, FAT 12/16/32, NTFS, and exFAT. Its advanced recovery algorithms help retrieve data from damaged, formatted, or deleted partitions. It’s great for tech-savvy users.
Apart from recovering data from computers and other devices, you can use the app to repair your damaged hard drives and unsupported or corrupted file systems. It has multiple advanced file recovering algorithms from various file systems.
R-Studio features excellent performance, an intuitive user interface, and a robust set of data recovery features. It has an excellent feature layout that makes navigation swift and simple. It’s easy to gain access to the specific features you need.
The app allows you to select the scan view you prefer between the simple and detailed views. When your drive is unsupported or badly damaged, R-Studio will search for the specific file signatures, documents, or images for you. It also lets you add new signatures.
R-Studio has a unique feature that lets you create a virtual RAID with similar processing to the actual RAID. The feature includes support for non-standard, standard, and nested RAID levels.
Its RAID reconstruction module supports parody delays in all levels and customer-specified RAID layouts.
What makes it stack against Disk Drill is its ability to recover data found on networked computers with Windows, Mac, UNIX, and Linux operating systems.
Its SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) attributes help to display hardware health so you can avoid unnecessary work when you see the warnings.
R-Studio has a disk sanitization feature and is also available as a bootable ISO image. It sorts recovered files by extension, creation and modification time, access time, and more. It offers you the freedom to perform multiple data recovery tasks simultaneously in separate tabs.
R-Studio pricing is available upon consultation.
Also Read: Best NzxtCAM Alternatives
9. Ontrack EasyRecovery
Ontrack is a legendary data recovery solution developed in 1987. It can recover files from RAID, hard drives, tape, servers, mobile devices, emails, and more.
It also provides recovery solutions for data erasure software and hardware. It’s available on Windows, Linux, and Mac. It scans for data in corrupted, deleted, damaged, and reformatted drives. Compared to Disk Drill, Ontrack also scans and recovers data from iPhones.
At Ontrack, you can pause and save your scan results to optimize your workloads. It includes standard and advanced features to choose what suits your needs.
Users utilize this tool to monitor the health of their drives and create disk images that are critical to business continuity. Its professional edition has cloning and repair features for videos and photos.
It’s a powerful solution that is lightweight and straightforward to use. It also has outstanding customer service and offers high scalability and managed services.
It has a selection of pricing plans which you can find on its pricing page.
Explore: Best Revo Uninstaller Alternatives
10. Cisdem Data Recovery
Cisdem Data Recovery is another great alternative to Disk Drill that offers data recovery solutions for macOS. It helps you retrieve various file types from internal and external storage devices.
The software is easy to install and use. To use Cisdem, you have to turn off the System Integrity Protection on your Mac. Cisdem supports various file formats and recovers data on USB drives, SD cards, mP3 players, iPods, digital cameras, smartphones (except iPhones), and hard drives. You can preview your data during and after the scan.
With Cisdem, you have multiple data recovery options including retrieving files from formatted hard drives, Mac, deleted files from the Trash folder, and other external sources.
It supports a variety of file formats and systems including audio, photo, video, archive format, documents, and more. It even helps you recover gm5, veg, cdt, bin, win, or z2d files, unlike when using Disk Drill.
It enables you to get back more than 200 file types including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, iWork Keynote documents, and more.
Its pricing plans for Mac include a license for one Mac at $49.99/lifetime, a license for two Macs at $74.99/lifetime, and a license for five Macs at $137.99/lifetime.
11. Prosoft Engineering Data Rescue 6
Prosoft Engineering runs on Windows and Mac where it lets you view the history of scanned data, create bootable disks for file recovery, and clone hard drives.
When scanning files, you are allowed to specify the external storage with Scan Source and use Quick Scan for those systems that are struggling to mount. When the files in your trash bin have been emptied, you can use the Deep Scan feature to recover them.
For scanning, users can specify external storage like USB and SD devices with Scan Source, use Quick Scan for systems or Deep Scan in the event of an emptied trash bin.
Its Professional edition offers security tools that allow you to preview files, optimize RAID configuration, erase drives, and recover unlimited files and system activations.
Unlike Disk Drill, it has cost-efficient pricing rates accompanied by self-learning file type support (FileIQ). Its scanning capabilities are pretty efficient, with high-powered file recovery for both novices and professionals. It also comes with tools for bootable drives and advanced search functionality.
Data Rescue 6 offers multiple pricing plans including the Standard licensing that offers free data recovery services. You can also pay for the files you need to be recovered for a price as low as $19. The professional unlimited offers an Annual subscription upon request.
12. SysTools Data Recovery Software
SysTools is an extensive data recovery solution with products and functions that aid digital forensics, data recovery, and cloud backup. It has powerful recovery functionality that supports RAID data, USB drives, external disks, and hard drives for macOS and Windows operating systems.
It works with formats like exFAT, FAT (16 and 32), and NTFS. You are allowed to search and preview particular files, restore data that has been permanently deleted, recover data that is corrupted, and extract and save all your recovered files.
Unlike Disk Drill, SysTools can recover cached contacts from Outlook.
Its interface is user-friendly, with fast data recovery processes and an automated backup function. It offers 24/7 chat support, with additional resources to help you navigate swiftly.
It has extensive pricing options depending on the specific locations of the data you want to restore.
13. TestDisk
TestDisk recovers and restores lost or deleted partitions, non-booting disks, and NTFS and FAT boot sectors from backups. It also undeletes files from different file systems.
The tool is ideal for technicians working on onsite recovery, it offers robust compatibility and support for its users. It’s a perfect solution for data loss scenarios that require urgent recovery.
It focuses on entire file partitions and systems and can repair boot sectors, restore partition tables, and help you access your lost files. You can use it to undelete files from xt2/ext3/ext4 file systems, NTFS, exFAT, and FAT formats. It runs on Linux, Mac, Windows, BSD, SunOS, and several other OS.
Its interface is based on command-line and the best part is that TestDisk is free and open-source, unlike Disk Drill which is not completely free. Since it’s under a GNU license, developers continue modifying and updating it for better performance. It can recover different partition schemes and file systems.
14. Remo Recover
Remo Recover is another Disk Drill alternative with a simple but modern interface that helps you identify and restore your lost files quickly. It is not only detailed, it works fast to deliver the results you are looking for.
Once you identify the data you need scanned, Remo will display a folder-based breakdown of the system so you can filter by file type like audios, documents, images, videos, emails, and more. It will perform a deep scan if you can’t find the file you’re looking for and ensure you locate and restore it.
It has recovery tools for Android, macOS, and Windows and offers multiple file storage options.
File types supported include photos, videos, audios, PST files, partitions, and more from hard drives and other external storage devices.
It also recovers lost emails from outlook and resolves and fixes issues from corrupted outlook PST files, a function that is not available in Disk Drill.
Its pricing plans are varied. Check the pricing page for details.
15. Tenorshare 4DDiG
Tenorshare 4DDiG runs intensive deep file recovery scans and partitions to deliver accurate results. It can even pull out long-lost files from different repositories.
The tool supports a large number of file types and has a granular search mechanism that saves you time and drive wear. I consider it a winning combination of data recovery solutions that get the job done. It can retrieve your photos, audios, videos, documents, emails and website files, archives, and more.
Tenorshare 4DDiG offers free lost file discovery and partitioning that saves data even on a failing hard drive. It is 100% secure with advanced algorithm support to retrieve your data and real-time preview.
It reaches places unreachable by Disk Drill, such as websites and email data.
Wrapping Up
To our evaluation, EaseUS data recovery is easy to use. It meets the needs of both individuals and businesses. It is enriched with features that help you recover lost, deleted, or corrupted data quickly.
The intuitive interface allows even a beginner to get started quickly. EaseUS can scan average dives in a short amount of time. It recognizes RAW partitions and will transfer and back up your data without any problem.
Its data recovery wizard simplifies the data recovery process, and it groups files with tags. Its overall performance is incredible, compared to Disk Drill.
