difference between disk drill for windows and macos versions

Ever found yourself asking any of these questions? This article is here to give you the definitive answers.

First of all, yes, Disk Drill for Mac may differ from Disk Drill for Windows in both UI and the recovery backend, but not that much as it may seem. It is our ultimate goal to get Disk Drill for Mac and Windows as close as possible in terms of user experience and data recovery quality. The UI may stay different, or may get closer to one another, this is something we are still unsure of.

But it’s most likely that Disk Drill editions for different platforms will compete with one another at every point of time. This is mostly related to the fact that the two major end-user operating systems (macOS and Windows) are heavily different in the way they treat low-level data access. And Disk Drill is not a regular app like Instagram or Flappy Bird. Disk Drill is a data platform for all your system needs: backup, recovery, protection, disk health, space management and more. And to accomplish all of those low-level tasks successfully as a market leader it needs some serious backend power-ups, and that comes at a cost.

Disk Drill for Mac and Windows share many internal modules, but disk access inside each of them is a variable that cannot be easily cross-compiled. Multiple extra modules (like Clean Up) that you may be seeing in each of the editions are also platform-dependent. Additionally, the development micro-teams we organize behind each of our products are different. They may overlap in mind and code sharing to a certain extent, but for production quality reasons we strive to keep our experts dedicated to one solution per sprint or major release.

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These are some of the reasons why you may experience slight feature deviation between our two mainstream data restoration utilities that share the same name but work on different platforms: Disk Drill for macOS and Windows. Again, we do believe that both editions have to eventually offer the same features, but it’s not always possible to release the same functionality symmetrically for two very different eco-systems.

The following chart is here to give you a deeper understanding of how Disk Drill for Mac OS X and Disk Drill for Windows compare to each other.

Disk Drill 6 for MacDisk Drill 6 for Windows
Free versionUndelete protected data + Preview all recovery methodsRecovers 100 MB for free
OS supportmacOS 10.15+Windows 10+, Server 2016+ (only x64 editions)
Native ARM based devices supportYesYes
Version in comparison6.06.0
PRO version costUSD$89USD$89
Supported filesystems
Native scan of HFS/HFS+/HFSXYesPartial
(signature scan only)
Native scan of APFSYesYes
Native scan of FAT/FAT32/exFATYesYes
Native scan of NTFS/NTFS5YesYes
Native scan of ReFSYesYes
Native scan of EXT2/EXT3/EXT4YesYes
Native scan of BTRFSYesYes
Scans
Deep Scan: file signatures400+400+
Advanced Camera RecoveryYesYes
Scan to locate lost partitons
YesYes
Formatted DrivesYesYes
RAW devices scan
YesYes
RAID Recovery and reconstructionYesYes
NAS & Linux via SSH recoveryYesYes
FireWire/USB DrivesYesYes
Classic iPods (non-iOS)YesYes
iOS data recoveryYesBeta phase
Android data recoveryYesNo
Rebuild a corrupted HFS+ catalog directory
YesNo
Additional capabilities
Recovery chances
YesYes
Create and load disk images
YesYes
Save and load scan sessionsYesYes
Preview and recovery during scan
YesYes
Bad sectors managementYesNo
Bootable driveYes
(internet recovery boot mode)
Beta phase
Forensic featuresYesNo
Data loss preventionRecovery Vault & Guaranteed RecoveryRecovery Vault
Convenient file-to-file previewQuickLookPreview everything your PC can preview
Data view (HEX)YesYes
Mount recovery resultsYesYes
File labeling by meta-dataYesYes
Preview with thumbnailsYesYes
Filter by file typesYesYes
Search in resultsYesYes
(with masks)
Automatic convenient update processYesYes
Extra tools
Built-in Disk Clean UpYesYes
Disk Health MonitoringYesYes
Built-in Data ShredderYesNo
Built-in Erase Free SpaceYesNo
Built-in Duplicate finderYesNo
macOS InstallerYesNo
.updated: June 13, 2025 author: CleverFiles Team