DMDE Software Reviews 4

I stored my Photos Library on a SanDisk 2TB Extreme Portable drive and have not opted for iCloud phone back up. The disk would not mount, I tried DiskDrill (recommended by ChatGPT), the GUI was simple and I was able to see that it was only able to recover individual files visible in a "Preview" pane. But, after starting the recovery scan, it told me that if I wanted to continue with the recovery I would need the paid version and it was expensive, almost £80. I went back to Chat GPT and looked for advice on alternatives, DMDE was recommended (but make sure you get the correct one, there is also a "Dmde" listing). In short, although there isn't a preview feature, the software wasn't that difficult to install or use. And after some time it recovered a working Apple Photos library. Very impressive, as it had identified some errors, which I just told it to ignore. Despite the errors, it recovered a working library file (103GB) and for just over £15. I recommend giving DMDE a try, based on this very positive experience.

Suffered $MFT & $MFTMirr failure on both 16TB primary and 16TB backup drive during a sync. OS was unable to access the drives. I felt defeated since I had taken steps to eliminate a single point of failure.

The software seems complex, but is easy to adapt to and learn, the help files provide a cornucopia of information. If the files name has been lost, you can search by size (if known) of files, filter and narrow down search results and recover those, then examine the file, either by opening it or comparing hashes.

In my case, the $MFT corruption was distinctly different enough across both drives; that deep scans produced enough results for me to recover nearly 95% of my data. So many memories, projects, rare disc backups, the list goes on. Still recovering data and reorganizing it, but just glad to have most of it.

Thank you DMDE!