Recover Deleted Data with Disk Drill

IT’S SOMETHING THAT HAS HAPPENED to all of us at some point—the horrible realization that a file you need has vanished, maybe deleted, and the Recycle Bin emptied.

With Disk Drill 2, you can get your data back. MaximumPC readers can download a full copy of this advanced file recovery tool and use it for 18 months completely free of charge—check out the tutorial below to find out how. If you are impressed by what Disk Drill 2 is capable of, we’ve teamed up with CleverFiles to bring you the latest version, Disk Drill 4, with even more advanced features, at a 30 percent discount.

To take advantage of this offer, download the trial version of Disk Drill 4 from www.cleverfiles.

com/disk-drill-windows.html, then opt to upgrade it to the full version, using the discount code (MaximumPC) at the checkout. –MARK WYCIŚLIK-WILSON 1

DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL Readers Disk Drill of 2 MaximumPC from the developer’s can download website—just a special go version to http:// of

win.cleverfiles.com/disk-drill-win2.msi in your web browser. Once you’ve downloaded the file, double-click it to start the installation, and click “Next” to continue. Make sure you opt to install the software to a partition other than the one you want to recover data from, then complete the installation.

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ACTIVATE At first, Disk Drill 2 runs with limitations, such as only being able to recover up to 500MB of data. As a reader of MaximumPC, however, you can unlock the full version for 18 months. Click the “Activate” button in the splash screen or the settings menu (the gear/cog icon), and select “Enter activation code.” Type in “22485-59692-589F6-5A537-42521” without the quotes [ Image A], then click “Activate.”

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SELECT RECOVERY DRIVE You now see a list of all of the hard drives you have installed in your computer, and all of their partitions [ Image B]. Choose which drive or partition you want to scan for recoverable data—either specific files you know the location of, or just to hunt for anything that is recoverable. Click the down arrow next to the corresponding “Recovery” button, and you’ll see a list of available options.

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PERFORM A QUICK SCAN Try a quick scan of your selected drive first—click this option in the menu. Despite the name, this process may take some time, but just how long depends on the size of your hard drive and the amount of data on it. You can continue to use your computer while the scan is running, but if you find the scan slows you down too much, you can click the “Pause” button [ Image C] to temporarily halt it.

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PERFORM A DEEP SCAN A more thorough option is to perform a deep scan—this can take significantly longer than a quick scan, but Disk Drill is far more likely to be able to find recoverable data this way. There is little for you to do except sit back and wait while the progress bar lets you know how things are going, and in the upper-right corner, you’ll see an estimate of how much time is remaining [ Image D].

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SAVE AND RESTORE SCANNING SESSIONS If a scan is taking a very long time, and you’d like to save it so you can come back later, pause the scan, then click “Save Session” at the top of the screen, and enter a name for the saved session [ Image E]. You can return to this at a later date by selecting the “Continue” option from the main drive selection screen.

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BROWSE SCAN RESULTS Once the scan is complete, any files that have been found are grouped by type. You can browse these results just as you would files and folders in Windows Explorer, and you can mark individual items for recovery by checking the box next to them. You can also treat file types that are grouped together as a folder, checking the relevant box to select all of a particular type of file [ Image F].

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FILTER AND SEARCH RESULTS If you are having trouble locating a particular file by browsing, there are various ways to home in on them. You can use the “by size” and “by date” options to the left [ Image G] to filter files according to how big they are and when they were created—useful if you know when you saved a file. You can also use the search box to the left to look for specific files by name.

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RECOVER DATA With one or more files selected, click the folder icon to the right of the blue bar. You can then select the folder—ideally on a different hard drive or partition—to which the recovered files should be saved. Click the “Recover” button at the upper-right of the program window, and your lost files will be restored, ready for you to view and work with again [ Image H].

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DISK DRILL PROTECTION Disk Drill includes a handy feature that can be used to secure your files against loss in the future. On the main screen, click the “Protect” button to the right of a drive, and click “OK” when asked. To the upper-right of the screen, toggle the “Recovery Vault” switch to the “On” position. Your “Documents” folder is protected by default, but you can add more if you want.