My SD card was formatted by accidental as the two disks was connected to a computer. In fact, I need to format another USB drive instead. I tried the disk drill data recovery software but it can’t find any deled files. Any good alternative to disk drill sd card recovery software?
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This is a common issue as no data recovery software would work all the times. If Disk Drill SD data recovery software didn’t work, here are a few good alternatives you can check out:
As a good disk drill SD data recovery tool. PhotoRec is an excellent choice. It’s a powerful that can recover files from formatted or damaged SD cards, USB drives, and other storage devices. Unlike Disk Drill, which offers a paid version with additional features.
How about using it as a disk drill SD card data recovery tool?
- Effectiveness: It can recover a wide variety of file types, including photos, videos, documents, and more.
- Ease of Use: Although it’s a command-line tool, it has a user-friendly interface that guides you through the recovery process.
- No cost: It’s open-source, so you don’t have to worry about licensing or limitations.
Clone the card to an image file on your SSD/HDD, then run data recovery software against the image. You could also use a hex editor (eg HxD freeware) to view the image file. If it contains mostly zeros, then your data has been wiped.
DMDE is an inexpensive data recovery tool. Its free version may be enough for you. R-Photo is freeware that recovers photo and video files.
Generally speaking, professional data recovery tools can retrieve files from an accidentally formatted SD card, except under certain circumstances such as:
- Full Format vs. Quick Format:
Do you recall how the SD card was formatted? If you performed a “Full Format” within Windows, the system overwrites every sector with zeros, rendering the data unrecoverable. A “Quick Format,” however, merely deletes the file index; the actual data typically remains intact, making recovery possible. - Data Overwriting:
If you wrote new data to the SD card after formatting, that data may physically overwrite the original files. Consequently, recovery tools will be unable to locate the lost data. - TRIM/Erase Operations:
Some SD card controllers use specific commands to notify the firmware that certain data is no longer required. Subsequently—even if the data has not yet been physically erased—the card will immediately return zero values for those sectors. - Encrypted SD Cards:
If the card was encrypted (common on Android smartphones), the formatting process destroys the encryption key, leaving the remaining data unreadable.
You may wish to try the other tools recommended in this blog post to scan your SD card : [How to Recover Data from Accidentally Formatted SD Card for Free?]
Short answer: yes, there are better alternatives, and also a good reason why Disk Drill didn’t find anything in your case.
What you need is a deeper scan that looks for the actual file data, not just the directory structure. I’d suggest using Stellar Photo Recovery for this. It is a reliable solution for recovering lost or deleted data from SD cards used in cameras, drones, and mobile devices. It supports popular file systems like FAT32, exFAT, and NTFS, and can recover photos, videos, and audio files, including RAW formats. The software performs deep scans to retrieve data even from formatted, corrupted, or inaccessible SD cards. Check this guide for SD card Recovery.
You can try a few good alternatives like Recuva free, simple and works well for SD cards. Also worth making sure you run the scan on a proper card reader and not the phone connection since that can affect detection.
EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard is often cited as the top alternative to Disk Drill because it balances professional-grade scanning with a much more generous free tier
SD cards often become “RAW,” meaning the computer sees the hardware but doesn’t recognize the format. EaseUS is specifically optimized for rebuilding these partitions. Users often find its Deep Scan to be slightly faster and more intuitive at identifying lost partitions than Disk Drill’s equivalent.
