(There’s no support for recovery from iCloud backups, but this feature is in the works.) More speed, supportĪlthough Disk Drill 3 won’t win awards for the iOS recovery speed, in almost every other regard, the software is faster than previous versions, and works harder at discovering files for recovery-up to 30 percent more, according to the developer. Although the actual recovery happens quickly, I’d recommend importing an existing iTunes backup to expedite the process.

Instead, it’s tucked away in the user’s Library, temporarily consuming valuable space on your system drive. The resulting backup doesn’t appear alongside others created in iTunes. Judging from status updates, a lot of unnecessary time was spent scanning my entire iCloud Photo Library a better solution would be an option to skip this content entirely, since it’s already backed up in the cloud. My 128GB iPhone 6s Plus was about 80 percent full and took several hours to scan before recovery could take place. In the absence of an iTunes backup, Disk Drill 3 first creates one, a time-consuming process for those of us with larger capacity devices. There is some sleight of hand involved, however. Recovering from an iOS device is largely the same as any other volume-select the desired data and click Recover to copy it to your Mac. (Android devices are also supported when rooted or in USB mass storage mode.)

It works the same: plug in the iOS device, click Recover, then select Camera Roll photos, videos, contacts, calendar, Voice Memo recordings, Notes, bookmarks, Messages chats, or call history data to resurrect. There’s also full support for macOS Sierra 10.12 (it works with OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.5 or later), including the ability to create a bootable USB recovery drive in a few clicks.ĭisk Drill 3 adds the ability to recover data from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, which is handy when an iOS update fails without a current backup available or an older device stops working because of water or other physical damage. Like previous versions, Disk Drill 3 offers data recovery as a free download, which includes a handful of tools for monitoring disk health, identifying and removing unwanted files, performing data backups, and more. New in Disk Drill 3 is the ability to recover data from iOS devices, but it’s a time-consuming process without an existing iTunes backup.

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