Disk Drill 6.3.2326 Mac

Disk Drill is a macOS data recovery tool that scans internal drives, external disks, cameras, phones and memory cards for deleted files and lost partitions. The current version 6.3.2326 brings BitLocker partition detection, new file format support and several scanning fixes.

Recovery across devices and file systems

The app recovers data from a wide range of storage: internal hard drives, external USB drives, iPhones, iPads, Android devices, Kindles and camera memory cards. On iPhones and iPads, it can pull back call history, contacts and messages alongside regular files. The latest update adds detection and recovery of lost BitLocker partitions, improves handling of encrypted APFS volumes and fixes a byte-to-byte DMG scanning bug. File format support now extends to .p8 and .pfx certificates, and the ACR module recognizes .m4a audio. A previous failure to detect .dng raw photo files has also been resolved.

Beyond recovery: cleanup and monitoring tools

Disk Drill includes several utilities that go past file retrieval. A disk cleanup tool finds and removes clutter, a duplicate-file finder reclaims space wasted on identical copies, a backup creator builds byte-level disk images for safekeeping, and a disk health monitor watches for early signs of drive trouble. The recovery engine also handles ReFS partitions with sparse files more reliably as of version 6.3.2326, making it useful for drives formatted on Windows systems.

Gatekeeper blocks the installer for some Mac users

One of the first hitches users encounter is launching the app on a Mac with strict Gatekeeper settings. The installer ships inside a disk image. After mounting it, you run the opener file — the one labelled Gatekeeper friendly — which opens a Terminal window. Pressing Enter executes a quick bypass so the app can launch without a quarantine flag. A small step, but skipping it leaves the app stuck in the dock doing nothing.

Another frequent trouble spot: scanning an external drive that macOS reports as unreadable. If the volume does not mount, Disk Drill still sees the physical device. Select the whole disk in the device list, not the greyed-out volume. A deep scan in that mode reads raw sectors and often pulls up files the Finder cannot touch. The scan takes longer — hours for a 2TB spinning drive — but the results are more complete.

People also run into confusion with the preview pane. The app builds previews for many file types, but large video files and some raw photo formats need a moment to render. If the preview window stays blank, give it ten or fifteen seconds. The .dng detection fix in version 6.3.2326 resolved a specific bug where those files appeared in the scan list but refused to preview at all. That should now work on the first click.

Recovering files to the same drive you are scanning is the classic mistake. The app warns about it, but the warning is easy to dismiss in a hurry. Writing recovered data back to the source volume can overwrite the very sectors you are trying to rescue. Always target a different physical disk — an external drive, a USB stick, anything but the one under recovery. For boot drive recoveries, that means having a second Mac or an external enclosure ready.

Disk Drill’s iOS recovery module trips up some users because it expects the device in a specific state. Connect the iPhone or iPad via USB, trust the computer when the prompt appears, and unlock the screen. If the device locks mid-scan, the connection drops and the scan aborts. Keep the display awake for the duration. The ACR module grouping fix in version 6.3.2326 also means photos and videos from iPhones now sort into sensible clusters instead of sprawling across the results list in no discernible order.

Extra cleanup tools give it an edge over EaseUS

Stacked against EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac, Disk Drill feels more tightly integrated with macOS. Both recover deleted files and scan formatted volumes, but Disk Drill leans harder into its extra utilities — the duplicate finder, the disk health monitor, the byte-level backup tool — where EaseUS sticks closer to a pure recovery workflow. EaseUS offers a slightly faster quick scan on APFS volumes in casual testing, though the gap narrows on deep scans of mechanically damaged drives.

PhotoRec sits at the other end of the spectrum. It is free, command-line driven and remarkably effective on raw file carving. PhotoRec finds things that Disk Drill occasionally misses, especially obscure file signatures. The trade-off is usability. PhotoRec dumps recovered files into folders with numeric names and no original filenames, no previews, no folder structure. Disk Drill preserves folder hierarchies and original names when the file system metadata is intact, and the preview pane alone saves hours of sifting through mystery files. For a one-off recovery of a heavily corrupted SD card, PhotoRec is worth running alongside Disk Drill. For daily disaster recovery, Disk Drill is the tool you actually want to open.

Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac splits the difference. It matches Disk Drill on interface polish and adds some RAID recovery features that Disk Drill lacks. But Stellar’s file format support lags behind in a few corners — BitLocker partition recovery, the new .p8 and .pfx certificate handling, and the ReFS sparse-file improvements in Disk Drill 6.3.2326 give it an edge for anyone who shuffles drives between Mac and Windows machines. Stellar’s scan speed on encrypted APFS volumes is comparable, though Disk Drill’s recent improvements to that module make the results more predictable on macOS Sequoia installations.

Deep scans can push memory use past 500MB

On an Apple Silicon Mac, Disk Drill launches cold in under two seconds and idles at roughly 80MB of RAM with no scan running. That figure climbs fast during a deep scan — 400MB to 600MB is typical on a 1TB SSD — as the app builds its file index in memory. CPU usage during a quick scan hovers around 25 to 35 percent on a single efficiency core. A deep scan pushes all performance cores to about 70 percent, which is enough to spin up the fans on a MacBook Air after twenty minutes. The app remains responsive throughout; you can browse previews in the results list while the scan continues in the background.

Stability is generally solid. The byte-to-byte DMG scanning fix in version 6.3.2326 squashed a reproducible crash that occurred when creating disk images of certain external enclosures with odd sector sizes. Since that update, Disk Drill has not beachballed or quit unexpectedly during a week of mixed use across three different Macs — one Intel iMac on Monterey, two Apple Silicon machines on Sonoma and Sequoia. The disk health monitor runs quietly in the menu bar and has no measurable impact on system performance. It polls S.M.A.R.T. data every few minutes and only nudges CPU activity when a drive reports an attribute change.

Memory card scans are notably quick. A 64GB SD card full of RAW photos and 4K video completes a quick scan in roughly four minutes on a Thunderbolt 4 card reader. Results list population is near-instant once the scan finishes, with thumbnail previews streaming in over the next minute. The duplicate finder tool is the slowest of the extras — scanning a cluttered 500GB home folder can run for twenty minutes — but it runs at low priority and does not bog down foreground work.

The menu bar monitor warns of failing drives early

Turn on the disk health monitor first thing. It lives in the menu bar and keeps an eye on S.M.A.R.T. attributes for every connected drive. Early warnings about reallocated sectors or pending failures give you a window to pull data before a drive dies completely. That alone makes it the most useful extra tool for anyone who stores work on external disks.

Run a quick scan on your boot drive as a dry run. You do not need to recover anything. The exercise familiarizes you with the scan interface, the preview pane, and how results sort by file type, date and size. Knowing how the tool behaves before you actually need it cuts the panic when a real crisis hits. The quick scan finishes in under five minutes on most modern Macs.

Set up a byte-level backup of any external drives that live on your desk. The backup creator tool builds a .DMG image sector by sector, so even if the drive’s partition table gets scrambled later, you have a snapshot of every recoverable bit. Disk images are large — the same size as the source drive’s total capacity — so point the backup at a drive with plenty of headroom.

Resist the urge to run the duplicate finder and the cleanup tool on day one unless you have an immediate space crunch. Both tools are effective but benefit from a bit of curation. The duplicate finder flags files by checksum, which means two identical photos with different names get grouped correctly. But it also flags things like application support files that look identical but live in different app containers. Review the results before you delete en masse.

Byte‑level backups live completely outside Time Machine

Disk Drill works alongside Time Machine without conflict. It does not interfere with local snapshots or backup schedules. The byte-level backup tool creates a separate disk image that exists entirely outside the Time Machine ecosystem — useful as a secondary safety net for drives that hold working project files rather than system backups. Restoring from a Disk Drill image does not require the app; the resulting .DMG mounts natively in macOS.

Finder tags and Spotlight metadata survive recovery when the file system structures are intact. Quick scans on APFS volumes often bring back files with their original tags attached. Deep scans that rely on file carving do not — carved files come back without metadata — but the filename and extension are usually enough to rebuild a folder structure manually. The preview pane helps identify carved files that lost their original names.

For photographers, the ACR module ties into common raw workflow tools. Recovered .dng, .cr2 and .nef files open directly in Lightroom and Capture One after recovery. The .rwl support added in version 6.3.2326 covers Leica raw files, which previously required a separate pass through Adobe DNG Converter before editing. The .m4a support in the ACR module means voice memos recovered from iPhones land in the Music app or Logic Pro without format conversion.

Windows compatibility is stronger than many Mac utilities offer. The BitLocker partition detection and ReFS sparse-file improvements in the current version mean a drive pulled from a Windows laptop — even one with BitLocker encryption enabled — shows up as a scannable device. You still need the recovery key to decrypt the data, but the partition itself is no longer invisible to the scanner. For IT support staff juggling mixed environments, that removes a major headache.

Version 6.3.2326 detects and recovers lost BitLocker partitions and adds support for .p8 and .pfx certificate files. The ACR module now handles .m4a audio, encrypted APFS partition processing is improved, and a bug in byte-to-byte DMG scanning has been fixed. Detection of .dng raw image files, which previously failed, now works correctly.

• macOS 10.15.7 or later
• Apple Silicon and Intel Macs