Disk Drill 5: Mac Data Recovery That Actually Works

Data recovery tools for Mac are a dime a dozen these days. Though most of these tools make some incredible claims, only a few deliver.
But you need more than a powerful recovery engine when you need to recover a variety of data types that you have deleted or lost from your Mac. Most importantly, you need an intuitive UI with additional utilities.
This is where Disk Drill enters the scene.
What does Disk Drill do?
Disk Drill is a complete data recovery solution designed for Mac and Windows. A product from Cleverfiles, it lets you recover data that you have deleted/lost/damaged from a variety of devices and drives. The Mac app is a great way to scan the macOS drive or your iPhone/Android smartphone.
Compared to the typical data recovery utilities we come across, Disk Drill offers a refined set of features. For starters, you get an intuitive UI that everyone can use without any prior experience.
Key features
You get a comprehensive set of features with Disk Drill 5 for Mac. All these improve your chances of getting data back from a compatible device.
- Disk Drill for Mac lets you recover a variety of file formats, including documents, photos, music, video, compressed files, etc. It can scan for and reconstruct over 400 file formats.
- You can recover data from your Mac or external storage devices, including HDDs, SSDs, tablets, iPads, memory cards, digital cameras, and RAID arrays.
- A Scan and Preview option makes Disk Drill suitable for recovering specific files from an entire drive. It means you do not need to recover anything you don’t need.
- Thanks to session management and categorization options, Disk Drill for Mac can handle additional data recovery tasks easily.
- Disk Drill for Mac also ships with additional utilities such as Disk Health, Mac Cleanup, Data Backup, Data Protection, and Recovery Drive.
Key specs
- macOS 10.15.7–15.x (macOS Sequoia ready), with just 60.0 MB of space required. For older systems, use Disk Drill 1/2.x/3.x/4.x (compatible with OS X 10.5+).
- Supports recovery from internal and external storage devices, including iOS, iPadOS, Android, and sources with ReFS 3.14 file systems.
- Fully optimized for both Intel-based Macs and the latest Apple silicon, including M1, M2, M3, and M4 chips.
- Premier solution for recovering deleted data from external drives and system disks, even on Macs with Apple T2, M1, M2, M3, and M4 chips.
- Improved RAM allocation and more stable SSH connections for seamless operation.
Disk Drill review (TheSweetBits take)
Disk Drill 5 claims reliable data recovery rates thanks to these features. At first look, this data recovery tool is a cut above the typical finds in the market. But we need to see how this performs in real life. So, we have been testing the latest version of Disk Drill for Mac for over a week.
During this time, we installed Disk Drill 5 on an M2 MacBook Air and tested the multiple options for recovery and disk management. In particular, we attempted to recover data from various devices like USB drives and external SSDs.
Based on this experience, we have added our insights into the following aspects.
Setup & getting started
Installing, setting up, and getting started with Disk Drill 5 is pretty effortless. Of course, you need to provide the app with permissions like Full Disk Access and Accessibility to ensure seamless functionalities. Once this part is done, you are good to go.
We noticed that Disk Drill 5 has minimal impact on the RAM/CPU power of the Mac. So, even when the data recovery utility is running in the background, you can multitask efficiently.
When you open Disk Drill 5 for the first time, you can see a list of connected devices. If you haven’t connected any external device, you will still see your Mac’s hard drive. You can also see a detailed sidebar on the left, which offers easy access to connected devices and features.
You will find this sidebar handy while handling multiple device types, such as smartphones, tablets, and USB storage drives. Because Disk Drill 5 lets you recover data from Time Machine backups and some other rare sources, those options are also present in the quick-access sidebar.
Overall, you don’t need any prior experience to get started with Disk Drill 5. Instead of worrying about tech-savvy terms or concepts, you can use the intuitive UI design to navigate between the options. In a minute or two, you can start the data recovery process.
The data recovery experience
You already know that Disk Drill 5 is primarily a data recovery tool. Therefore, the package contains multiple features that help you recover the most data from your Mac, removable drive, iPhone, or digital camera. To understand how effective the process is, we used Disk Drill 5 to recover data from a wider variety of devices that use different file systems.
Compatibility
The compatibility of Disk Drill 5 with devices and file systems is pretty impressive. For one, you can recover data from sources other than your Mac. It could be your smartphone, tablet, digital camera, or USB drive. It also lets you import Time Machine backups to recover data from them.
The sidebar helps you categorize all these options, too.
When it comes to file systems, Disk Drill 5 works with almost every option you can come across. The list has APFS, NTFS, ExFAT, HFS, HFS+, FAT, and EXT3/EXT4. So, even if you have a corrupted NTFS drive from a PC, you can use Disk Drill 5 to recover data from it on your Mac.
Performance
By the word performance, we refer to how well the data recovery process works. To begin the process, you need to select the device from available options and start the Scan. Disk Drill 5 provides ample information about the drive before you begin. Once you hit the Search for Lost Data button, the scan will begin.
An area where I found Disk Drill truly impressive is how it recognized a hard drive I believed to be corrupted. I had dropped this HDD and it was not getting detected on my PC. When I connected the same to my Mac, the Finder displayed the message ‘Drive not available’, but Disk Drill 5 recognized the drive despite it being an NTFS drive. I really loved how effective the scans were. However, it is something else that data recovery from that corrupted drive took a few hours. After about 80 minutes, I had 996K files recovered.
The app was able to scan for recoverable data on all the devices we tested. It conveniently shows multiple sections: Existing and Reconstructed. So, you get to know what is already in the drive and what Disk Drill 5 has recovered.
The data recovery success rate estimates from Disk Drill 5 were also accurate. For every file that appears, you can see the chance of recovery: High, Average, or Low. Files with a lower chance of recovery were not available for Preview. It offers a preview for other files. This feature helped me save time because I did not have to attempt to recover files that would not have worked anyway.
We loved how well-arranged the recovery process is. It offers options to recover data that were deleted by users or other applications.
Recovery Success Rates
Full disclosure: Ultimately, recovery success rates depend on many factors, including the status of the drive. You face a low recovery rate while attempting to recover data from corrupted drives or lost partitions.
So, what we share below is based on the drives/devices we tested.
In our testing, Disk Drill 5 showed impressive data recovery success rates. It was able to recover data from a removable drive as well as the Mac’s internal drive. In both cases, Disk Drill successfully provided an overview of recoverable files, which was around 90%.
However, as I said, the success rates and required time for corrupted drives were quite different. In the case of most corrupted/damaged drives, I had to wait more than a few hours for the scan to finish. Even so, Disk Drill 5 was able to recover only a fraction of the data.
However, only 70% of files were given a High chance of data recovery. The others had a Low rating, meaning that we were not able to recover those files. On the bright side, Disk Drill 5 was successful in recovering files that we had removed from the Trash, which itself makes it worthwhile.
We had a better chance of recovering data such as contacts and calendars. General data recovery tools for Mac often fail to deal with platform-specific files. However, Disk Drill 5 dealt with these files pretty well. But some advanced algorithms are available only with its premium version.
Overall, Disk Drill 5 does an incredible job of recovering data from various devices. But it offers more.
Additional utilities
Additional utilities built into Disk Drill 5 make it powerful enough to replace multiple apps. Here, you have an overview of what you get from the package.
- S.M.A.R.T. Monitoring lets you keep track of what happens on a storage device, including power cycle count, HDA temperature, SSD Life, etc. Disk Drill presents all this data in an easy-to-understand design as well.
- The Data Protection module offers you guaranteed data recovery even after deleting the files from a system. You can also go for Recovery Vault, which will retain the metadata of deleted files, thus offering better recovery rates.
- You also get a macOS Installer module, which lets you create a bootable drive that installs macOS on a system. The process is easy and wants you to locate the package, choose the destination, and wait for a few minutes.
- Byte-to-Byte Backup is another impressive function of Disk Drill 5. This feature makes use of patented algorithms to create an accurate clone of your drive/device. However, the options may differ based on whether your Mac has a T2 Security Chip.
- Erase Free Space is an interesting addition to the collection of utilities. It lets you delete free space from a drive so that others cannot recover deleted information. It works better than shredding since you cannot shred files that you’ve already deleted.
- Disk Drill 5 offers a super-useful Duplicate Finder utility as well. It works as great as the many other duplicate finders we have come across. You can choose between multiple options and use the sidebar to navigate through the options.
Overall, Disk Drill 5 can easily replace 5-6 separate apps you may need on your Mac. In particular, the cloning and duplicate finder utilities were impressive.
Pricing
You can download Disk Drill 5 for Mac for free, but it contains a limited set of features. For instance, the free version supports only entire-drive recovery, not single-file/folder recovery. Yet, you have full access to added features like duplicate finder, disk space eraser, and macOS installer.
If you need access to the full features, you need to get Disk Drill Pro, which costs $89. You can ensure lifetime upgrades by paying an additional $19. Disk Drill 5 also offers additional discounts if you are a student or if you are upgrading from a previous version. This single license allows up to 3 simultaneous activations.
You can also get Disk Drill through a Setapp subscription.
I want you to remember that you get at least six different utilities in this package. So, no matter how you look at it, Disk Drill 5 is a worthy investment for most.