Disk Drill 6.3.2326 — Mac version

Disk Drill is a Mac app that scans your drives and tries to get your files back when something goes wrong. Lost a folder, emptied the bin too fast, or got a partition that won't mount? That's where it comes in.

Pulling files off damaged partitions and recovering iPhone history

• Pulling files off damaged partitions without needing to understand the file system.
• Recovering iPhone call history, contacts and messages when you've no backup.
• Finding duplicate files, cleaning up clutter, and checking a disk's health — all in the same tool.
• Creating a byte-to-byte DMG backup before you start poking around, so you don't make things worse.

A hefty toolbox that might overwhelm single-file undeleters

• It's a hefty toolbox. If you only need to undelete a single document once a year, a simpler utility might feel less overwhelming.
• The extra modules — duplicate finder, cleanup, health monitor — are handy, but they don't replace dedicated tools you already trust.
• Recovery isn't magic. The sooner you scan, the better your chances, before the Mac overwrites those blocks.

When a morning's work vanishes

Picture a photographer back from a shoot. She plugs the SD card into a MacBook, starts copying the morning's RAW files, then — distracted — formats the card inside the camera before the copy finishes. The Finder shows an empty card and no trace of the session on the Mac's drive either. That gut-drop moment is exactly what Disk Drill is built for.

She launches the app, selects the SD card in the sidebar, and starts a deep scan. Ten minutes later a preview grid fills with recoverable .dng files — thumbnails she can actually flip through and check before committing to recovery. She picks a folder on the desktop as the destination (not the card itself — writing recovered data back to the same device is always a bad move) and lets Disk Drill pull everything back. The shoot isn't lost. It just took a detour.

One tool for external drives, memory cards, and Android phones

People who juggle several storage devices tend to click with Disk Drill right away. If you regularly swap external drives, memory cards, or hook up an Android phone to pull photos, having one tool that speaks all those formats saves real head-scratching. You're not learning three different recovery workflows — you learn one, and it covers the internal SSD, the USB stick in your bag, and the old iPod in the drawer.

IT support folk and repair café volunteers also warm to it. The byte-to-byte DMG tool means you can image a failing drive before you touch the original, then work from the image file. That's the kind of careful habit that stops a wobbly disk from dying mid-recovery. And because the interface doesn't assume you know what an APFS container is, you can hand it to someone less technical and talk them through the scan over the phone without too much translation.

If you're the sort who only ever uses the internal drive and deletes a file once a blue moon, you might find the extra modules sit unused. But for anyone who flirts with dodgy cables, old external enclosures, or borrowed USB drives, Disk Drill earns its keep by being ready for all of them.

macOS might refuse the first launch after dragging it to Applications

A few things catch people out, and they're worth knowing before you're in a panic.

The Gatekeeper dance catches newcomers. Mounting the DMG and dragging the app into Applications works fine, but sometimes macOS refuses the first launch with a curt "can't be opened" message. The fix is straightforward: open Terminal, type xattr -cr /Applications/Disk\ Drill.app and press Return, then try again. It's a once-only step.

Scanning large drives takes longer than people expect. A deep scan on a 2 TB external spinner can run for hours, not minutes. That's normal — the app is reading every block — but it's worth starting the scan when you've got time to leave the Mac plugged in and awake. The quick scan option is faster and often enough for recently deleted files, so try that first if the loss was recent.

Recovered file names sometimes come back as generic strings like "file001.dng" instead of the original name. That's not Disk Drill being sloppy; it means the directory entry that held the filename was already overwritten. The data itself is still intact, which is what matters. Previewing thumbnails helps you rename the important ones afterwards.

On Apple Silicon Macs, granting full disk access is a required step that's easy to miss. Without it, the scan sees less. Head to System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access and toggle Disk Drill on before you run the first scan. Otherwise you'll wonder why it's not finding everything.

Runs on macOS 10.15.7 or later, back to 2016 Intel Macs

Will it work on my Mac if I haven't updated in a while? If you're running macOS 10.15.7 or later, you're covered. That includes Intel Macs back to about 2016 and every Apple Silicon machine. Older than Catalina and you'd need a previous version — this build won't launch on Mojave or earlier.

Does it handle Android phones as well as iPhones? Yes, but the connection method matters. Android devices need to be in a mode that exposes the storage to macOS — usually MTP or PTP — and you'll need a USB cable that does data, not just charging. For iPhones and iPads, the app can recover call history, contacts, and messages directly, which is a different kind of recovery from file scanning.

Can I run it from a USB stick on a machine that won't boot? Disk Drill itself isn't a bootable recovery environment. If the Mac won't start, you'll want to pull the drive and connect it to a working Mac as an external device, then run the scan from there. The byte-to-byte DMG feature is useful in that scenario — image the ailing drive first on the working machine, then recover from the image at your own pace.

What's the deal with the duplicate finder and disk cleanup — are they just filler? They're functional extras, not afterthoughts. The duplicate finder is handy for spotting old copies of large video files eating space, and the cleanup module identifies temporary files and caches. They won't replace a dedicated tool like DaisyDisk for visualising storage, but having them under one roof means you can tidy up a drive before scanning it, which sometimes speeds things along.

If I download Disk Drill for Mac from a torrent, am I getting the full thing? The torrent copies floating around are usually the full Enterprise build, which includes all the modules and doesn't lock recovery behind a separate licence screen. You get the extra features — S.M.A.R.T. monitoring, duplicate finding, the lot — without restrictions. The TNT team handled the activation on this one, so there's no code to chase or trial expiry nagging you.

• Detects and recovers lost BitLocker partitions.
• Adds support for .p8 and .pfx files.
• .m4a support in the ACR module.
• Better handling of encrypted APFS partitions.
• Fixes byte-to-byte DMG scanning.

• macOS 10.15.7 or later
• Intel and Apple Silicon Macs