Data Recovery for Photographers: DiskDrill, EaseUS, Stellar, Recoverit Compared

After the great Western Digital MyBook Live debacle of 2021, many photographers have lost years worth of images. In this video, I compare four popular data recovery programs to see how easy they are to use and how well they recover the files on my brother-in-law's formatted hard drive.

Ultimately, I found that I was able to recover a majority of the lost files with all of the programs. Stellar had a significantly harder time with Canon RAW files, and Wondershare Recoverit was slightly behind DiskDrill and EaseUS for recovering .MOV files, but I didn't have the resources to determine how they compared when recovering JPGs.

=Index=

0:00 Backstory
2:21 Ease of Use Tests
2:29 EaseUS
3:45 Wondershare
4:38 DiskDrill
6:13 Stellar
7:24 Ranking
7:59 Data Overview
9:02 JPG Findings
10:02 MP4 Findings
11:03 MOV Findings
13:50 DOCX Findings
14:31 MP3 Findings
15:02 RAW Findings
16:30 File Repair Options
17:01 Summary
18:53 Recommendation

Software Links:

=Music=

"Tricks" by BoxCat Games, courtesy of Monstercat.

"Sadbot" by PIXL, courtesy of Monstercat.

"Against the Wall" by BoxCat Games, courtesy of Monstercat.

"Conflict" by F.O.O.L., courtesy of Monstercat.

"Locke" by PYLOT, courtesy of Monstercat.

[MatthewGore]

Luckily, this is the last video I'll be doing about random computer stuff, for now, and my next video will be a lens review! Hope that one or two of you find this useful, though.

[DevinMazzara]

this video was awesome so thorough you killed it now we just need your favorite repair software

[Helly]

Thanks a lot for your amazing video. I feel very lucky because I saw your video at the correct time when I was greatly in need of file recovery software. I tried Stellar free edition and it recovered my data but as the limitation was 1GB so, I upgraded to its paid and it recovered all my files.

[raviduprasanna]

really appreciate men♥ i know how challenging those software comparison. i do tried myself too it always keep top Easeus recovery but after i used my comparison wasn't accurate because i rated how many files recovered but there was a duplicate ones but i didn't attempt to try again i know how hard and time consuming it was

[andrassabe]

this was a GREAT review!, helped me a lot to chose the one i need! THANK YOU!

[PORRFNK]

Thank you, been looking for a good review of all available recovery software

[HBFaisal]

Very Informative video and @Matthew Gore working very hard in this video.

[thinkingfortomorrow]

Excellent attempt to compare all four programs I mean recovery software. Thanks a lot.🙏

[EduardoRodriguez-ccot]

Definitely this is like a web page where it is very clear and in an excellent way how each file recovery software works as well as how they behave in a real case, I subscribe and what a good video quality.
just what I was looking for a share without any kind of sponsorship to avoid altered results

[superdavetn]

Very well done and well explained - Thank you!!

[Giftmagic]

really great
i appreciates your handwork

[JamesHeigh]

I am curious about which took the longest. I figured there would be a time spent breakdown but then there wasn’t. Also I really appreciate your time taken on this as I am looking to recover data in a semi-pro way and there are not simple videos like this breaking down the options.

[uludelu]

Hello good video! Was wondering does any of those software when data were recovered they were back in they initial folders before being lost ? Or everything was mixed and you need to sort them all ?

[MeganQuist]

Very helpful! I have 11 hours to go on my scan fingers crossed ❤

[manojkvarma_films]

you helped alot of people mate thanks from india

[NoEggu]

@4:40 -- Disk Drill:
I lost a partition. In your review, I did not see an option for choosing a drive that has no partition (presumably, you did not have a drive in that condition?).
Will a drive, that has no partition, show up in the list of available drives to scan?

If yes, will it fix the bad/lost partition, and moments later you have your files back?
Is that risky, because it will perform a "write" operation on the source drive? So is it safer to copy all found files to a different drive?

I want to use this software on my laptop. Naturally, I cannot plug in a 3.5" SATA drive.
But I have SATA / USB adapters.

Will Disk Drill work with such an adapter?

Basically, I have a 3.5" SATA drive that lost its partition. I want to either recreate the partition, or be able to copy its files to a different drive, via my laptop and the SATA / USB adapters.

The files I want to recover are all 461 GB. But they were written contiguously. Will files of that size be a problem?

Excellent review, and very good analysis of results.

[foodfornoobs]

Hi Mr Gore, thanks for this instructive video. I am thinking of purchasing Diskdrill to recover Word documents and Excel spreadsheets (for my work) I had stored on a usb key. One of my major concerns is the safety of the aforementioned files. Do you know if Diskdrill is safe/does it make copies of your data? Or is the process all done locally? All the best.

[riyapant]

This video is really informative, as I was looking for a data recovery software on the web, luckily I saw your video, and this video helps me to take the decision of choosing the best data recovery software. I think Stellar will be my preferred choice amongst all.

[marcosmos]

which one can i use for a samsung sd card?

[barryfredrick]

Quick question Mathew. 🤔
As newer versions of phones and computers come out plus considering all the updates these devices do must we also continue to upgrade our recovery software❓