Data Clinic Recovery for Hard Drives

No. It opens the drive strictly read-only and never writes to, repairs or formats it. The one caution: if a drive is physically failing, ANY reading — by any software — involves the failing hardware doing work. That’s why the tool checks the drive’s own health report before every scan, and stops and tells you when it sees failure symptoms.

No — and neither can any other software, whatever it promises. When a drive re-uses space, the old data is gone. This tool tells you per file when that has happened, for every file its quick scan finds, rather than selling you false hope.

Quick scan reads the drive’s file tables — fast, with names, folders and dates (recovered copies are dated the day you recover them). Deep scan does the same first, then reads every sector, finding files by their content even after a format, so it always finds at least what a quick scan finds. Files found only by content come back with numbered names like Rescued_0001.jpg in a [Found by content] folder; a file found both ways is listed once, by name. After a quick format, the old folder listings of an exFAT or FAT32 drive bring many files back by name, under [Old folder listings]; on NTFS, names can’t come back after a format, because Windows clears the file table. On a large drive a deep scan takes hours; you can stop at any time and keep what has been found.

It reads every sector of the drive once and saves an exact copy to a file on another drive; scans and recovery then work from that copy. Use it whenever a drive is showing any sign of trouble — read errors, slow patches, a caution on its health report — because every extra read of a degrading drive risks making it worse, and imaging is the ONE read it gets. Sectors the drive refuses to give up are left blank in the copy and shown on the surface map; the copy is never “repaired”. A partial image can still be scanned for what it holds. A drive whose health report says it is failing is referred to our lab instead of imaged.

Yes — plug the stick in and it is listed like any other USB drive. Two things differ from a hard drive: a stick has no health report to read, so the health check will say it is not available rather than “healthy”; and a stick that Windows shows as 0 MB, or that keeps disconnecting, is physically failing — stop using it, software cannot fix that. A stick Windows asks to format is different: that is usually a damaged file system, which is exactly what the deep scan is for — don’t let Windows format it. Memory cards from cameras and phones are handled by Data Clinic’s separate, free Memory Card tool (a card in a USB card reader is also listed here and can be scanned).

It scans them, with one honest limit: most SSDs erase deleted data themselves within minutes (TRIM), and a quick format on an SSD erases the whole drive the same way, so deleted and formatted files are usually gone for good. The tool checks each deleted file and marks any the drive has erased. Files lost to a damaged file table can still be found.

Yes — APFS, HFS+ and HFS, on Windows, including files the Mac had deleted where an old copy of the file table survives (APFS and HFS+). FileVault-encrypted volumes are identified but cannot be read; APFS Fusion Drives are referred to the lab.

It can’t read BitLocker-encrypted drives, Windows dynamic disks (spanned or striped volumes), RAID arrays that need rebuilding from their member disks, or ReFS, Linux and FAT16 file systems. Recovered files are dated the day you recover them, not their original date. The deep scan doesn’t find Fujifilm, Olympus or Panasonic raw files. The program needs administrator rights each time it starts, and the licence key is saved per Windows user, so another account on the same PC needs the key entered again. When it starts and the computer is online, it tells you if a newer version is available; new versions are downloaded from this page.

Version 1.0.2 (October 2026): the deep scan now keeps names and folders. It reads the drive’s file tables first, so every file they still list comes back with its name into its original folder, just as after a quick scan. Files found only by their content (after a format, for example) are recovered into a separate [Found by content] folder instead of being mixed in with everything else, and a file found both ways is listed once. Install it over 1.0.1; your licence key carries over.

Videos are big, so drives often store them in fragments. Deep scan finds a video’s start but cannot always reassemble scattered pieces — a recovered video may be incomplete or refuse to play. That’s a limit of how drives store data, not something more scanning can fix.

Because writing to the drive could overwrite the very data you’re trying to rescue. The tool enforces this — recovered files must go to a different drive.

Stop using the drive immediately — every further read attempt risks making the data loss worse, and software cannot fix physical failure. Data Clinic’s lab images failing drives every day with hardware built for it: book an assessment at dataclinic.co.uk/online-diagnostic-tool/ or call 0800 151 2207. If you bought a licence, it counts: a Personal licence fee comes off the lab’s price if you send the drive within 90 days of buying, and a Business licence gets 10% off (see the refund policy).

First, the free scan tells you what it can see before you pay, so you won’t buy a licence for files that aren’t there. If the drive itself is failing, the software says so and stops, because more reading can make it worse. That’s when our lab takes over: a Personal licence holder who sends that drive to us within 90 days of buying gets the licence fee off the lab’s price, and a Business licence holder gets 10% off every lab job. The lab tells you honestly what’s possible before any work starts.

No. Each job gets one or the other: the Personal licence credit or the Business 10%. We check your order or licence before we quote.

Only what you choose to send — a problem report from the Help menu (your description plus the program’s technical log, which can mention your drive’s volume names and size), or a request for us to contact you from the failure screen (with the drive’s model, size and symptoms) — plus two small automatic checks. When the program starts with a licence key in it, it sends the key and the program’s version to dataclinic.co.uk to ask whether it has been renewed or refunded. When it starts and the computer is online, it also asks dataclinic.co.uk whether a newer version is available; that request contains nothing about you or your drives. It never sends the contents of your files.

No. The licence key is verified on your PC. You need to be online only to buy — and, for a yearly licence, the program picks up your renewed key by itself the next time it starts online.

13 languages: English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Russian, Hindi, Japanese and Chinese (Simplified). The software follows your Windows display language, and you can change it in Help → Language (it switches the next time you start the program). Job reports are in English.

Because Data Clinic is a data recovery company, not a software company. Data Clinic Ltd has been recovering data in the UK since 2002: our engineers work on failed hard drives, SSDs, RAID systems, phones and memory cards every day, in our own lab, with our own clean-room and imaging equipment. This software is built from what that work has taught us — which is why it checks the drive’s health before it scans, never writes to the drive, and tells you plainly when a file is gone or a drive needs the lab rather than more software.