Recovery tool Disk Drill updated to version 1.2
updated 06:15 pm EDT, Mon March 21, 2011
Offered in free and pro versions
Developer Cleverfiles has released what it calls the first "official" version of its data-recovery and file-protection software Disk Drill -- version 1.2 -- which recovers damaged and deleted data from hard drives, memory cards, iPods and other devices as well as protecting files with its Recovery Vault technology. The program is offered in free and pro editions for consumers, with two other editions aimed at business and enterprise customers.
Disk Drill Basic (free) offers the Recovery Vault, as well as scanning and S.M.A.R.T. monitoring hard drives and backing up failing partitions as "byte-to-byte" exact copies onto disk image (DMG) files, but does not offer any "forensic" data recovery. The Pro edition ($89) adds recovery features from a wide variety of drive types, including non-iOS iPods. The company says it can even recover files from formatted drives.
The new version 1.2 greatly increases the number of file types that can be recovered using Deep Scan, adds support for Quick Scan to HFS+ partitions, can now search for lost partitions, can open non-mountable DMG files, improves the accuracy of S.M.A.R.T. monitoring, allows users to choose which disks will have their temperture displayed, and adds scanning session management.
In addition to the new features, v1.2 also allows "un-deletion" from the Recovery Vault in portable mode, scan session saving and loading is more than 10x faster than in the previous version, adds support for recovering Microsoft Office file types in Deep Scan, detects and handles "bad blocks" better, offers the option to hide the disk monitoring menu bar item, sorts results of scannig and recovery actions, now offers resumption of scanning if target drive should go to sleep, and adds the ability to reset the Recovery Vault. A few bugs found in v1.1 were also addressed, a "disk not mounted" error that didn't give enough time for slower disks to mount, and other minor issues.
Disk Drill works with any PPC or Intel Mac running OS X 10.5 or later, and is 64-bit ready. In addition to the Basic and Pro versions, there is a $169 Expert version aimed at commercial users that adds multiple Macs to the single-user licence, and a $299 Enterprise edition that adds unlimited users as well as unlimited Mac installs.
