DiskDigger
Lost your files? Dig them up!
This is the home page of DiskDigger — an all-in-one undelete and recover utility that’s simple, straightforward, easy to use, and most importantly, free! See the FAQ for more information, or continue reading below.
Find DiskDigger useful? Consider donating!
What is DiskDigger?
DiskDigger can recover files from any type of media that your computer can read. This includes USB flash drives, memory cards (SD, CompactFlash, Memory Stick, etc), and of course your hard drive. The types of files that it recovers include photos, videos, music, documents, and many other formats.
DiskDigger can even scan reformatted or badly formatted disks (disks to which Windows can’t assign a drive letter), and even disks with bad sectors. It bypasses the Windows file system drivers and scans your disk directly. It has its own built-in support for the following file systems: FAT12 (floppy disks), FAT16 (older memory cards), FAT32 (newer memory cards and hard disks), NTFS (newer hard disks), and exFAT (Microsoft’s new successor to FAT32).
DiskDigger is also very compact and portable. The entire program is a single executable file that you can run from anywhere. There’s nothing to “install,” and the program doesn’t leave any trace of having been run.
You may find DiskDigger useful if…
- you deleted one or more photos from a memory card by accident, and want them restored.
- you deleted one or more photos from a memory card on purpose, but now want them restored.
- you deleted some documents from your USB flash drive, and want to recover them.
- you came across an old hard drive of yours (or someone else’s) that’s been reformatted, and would like to see what its previous contents were.
- you’ve “securely wiped” your media, and want to make sure that your media has actually been wiped correctly.
- you’re just curious about what old deleted files are still present on your memory cards or hard drives.
DiskDigger is also a work in progress. This means that new features will be added very frequently, including support for more file formats, more configuration options, etc., so check back for updates.
How does it work?
DiskDigger has two modes of operation which you can select when scanning your media for deleted files:
- Scan the file system for deleted files (dig deep). This scans the file system that is present on your media, searching for deleted file entries. Supported file systems are FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, exFAT, and NTFS. The advantages of this are:
- Very fast
- Recovers all file types
- Recovers file names
And the disadvantages are:
- Doesn’t support all possible file systems (see above for supported file systems)
- Doesn’t scan entire disk (only scans what the file system is aware of) - Scan the disk surface for traces of lost files (dig deeper). This thoroughly scans every sector of your media, searching for traces of known file types. The advantages of this are:
- Scans entire disk
- Goes underneath the file system, therefore independent of file system
And the disadvantages are:
- Slower (sometimes much slower) than the first method
- Doesn’t recover file names or fragmented files
- Only supports certain file types
- Finds ‘existing’ files as well as deleted files
What isn’t DiskDigger?
It’s not magic. It can’t recover any arbitrary file from any amount of time in the past. When trying to recover lost files, you should be realistic. In a real-world situation, you’ll have a good chance of recovering your files only if they were deleted very recently. The more you keep using your disk to work with new files, the slimmer your chance of recovering deleted files. Of course it’s always worth a try.
It is not a “repair” utility. It cannot repair a broken memory card or disk. DiskDigger is a strictly “read-only” tool, and never changes the contents of the media you scan. It will, of course, scan unformatted (or badly formatted) media, but it won’t attempt to fix the formatting of the media.
Features:
- DiskDigger scans for many different types of files, including photos, videos, music files, and documents, and displays what it finds as it scans in real time.
- You can preview most of the files found by DiskDigger without having to save them to a different location first. More than that, you can preview files while DiskDigger continues scanning!
- DiskDigger scans any type of media that is readable by your computer, including USB flash drives, memory cards (SD, CompactFlash, Memory Stick, etc), and your hard drive(s).
- It can undelete files from all types of FAT partitions (including the new exFAT file system), as well as NTFS.
- It can go underneath the file system to scan for traces and remnants of lost files.
- DiskDigger does everything in memory, meaning that it never writes any temporary files to your disk or other media (unless you choose to save files that it recovers).
- Since DiskDigger is a completely self-contained program, it leaves no trace on the computer where it is run. It does not save any settings to the registry. There is nothing to “install,” and the entire program is a single executable file.
- For advanced users, DiskDigger allows scanning disk image files.
How to Use
I hope that using DiskDigger should be intuitive enough for most people to use without a written guide (if it’s not, let me know how I can make it better). However, if necessary, you can check out this excellent step-by-step guide from TechRepublic.
Keeping Up
Suggestions? Comments? Questions? Send them here!
Become a fan of DiskDigger on Facebook, and drop a line!
Revision History
Version 0.8.3 (download this version)
- Added support for .WPD (WordPerfect) file format.
Version 0.8.2 (download this version)
- Improved error handling and saving of large files.
Version 0.8.1 (download this version)
- Improved detection of disk drives. Added logical disk drives for scanning.
- Added ability to select a disk image file for scanning.
Version 0.8.0 (download this version)
- Added functionality to actually undelete files from FAT and NTFS file systems.
- Updated manifest file to automatically ask for admin privileges.
Version 0.6.3 (download this version)
- Added support for Rich Text Format (RTF).
Version 0.6.2 (download this version)
- Added progress indicator when saving multiple files.
Version 0.6.1 (download this version)
- Added support for saving multiple files at a time.
- Added “select all” right-click menu option.
- Fewer false positives for MOV files.
Version 0.6.0 (download this version)
- Initial release to the Web.
December 28th, 2009 at 8:38 am
Thank you DiskDigger, because of you I was able to recover lost pictures of my parent’s holiday trip. Simple as 1,2,3…just connect the camera to the laptop, select ’search deleted files’, select pictures you want to recover and just save them on the laptop! you have no idea how grateful i am! =)
December 29th, 2009 at 12:03 am
I was trying to recover a htm file but it didn’t seem to be on the list. Thanks for making this available.
d
December 29th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Thank You So Much! With your help I was able to recover the photo’s of christmas that a 6 year old deleted on accident playing with something he shouldn’t have been playing with.
I tried a dozen different software packages. One recovered about a third of the pictures correctly and the rest were corupt.but none of them could restore all of them. I even tried downloading some JPEG repair programs to get the corrupt files repaired with no success.
Disk digger was so so quick and simple it was hard to believe. 100% success!
Thank You Thank You Thank You
January 2nd, 2010 at 9:53 am
You have my love! DiskDigger recovered all the deleted photos from my camera’s SD card and I am not even a techie to begin with, diskdigger was a cinch to use
January 2nd, 2010 at 10:05 am
Thank you very much! I recovered my career project document with DiskDigger. I had it in a pendrive and I erased accidentally. There were like 35 hours of work in it. I tried some recovery programs but I couldn’t get back my document with them. But then I got DiskDigger and it saved me
Thank you again!
January 2nd, 2010 at 2:07 pm
[...] ו DiskDigger -תוכנות המאפשרות שחזור קבצים שנמחקו [...]
January 2nd, 2010 at 7:30 pm
Brilliant. DiskDigger found all my accidentally deleted photos from the camera’s SD card, too easy! Saved my neck and marriage
Recommended!
January 4th, 2010 at 10:54 pm
Tanks DiskDigger por existir, você salvou minhas fotos deletadas do meu cartão de memória.
J Rod Silva
from São Paulo – SP – Brazil
January 5th, 2010 at 4:16 am
Thank you for this excellent tool. Normal FAT recovery tools failed, but DiskDigger in “dig deeper” mode recovered hundreds of pictures from a field trip to Africa which were irreplaceable. Highly recommended. Paul W, UK.
January 5th, 2010 at 7:31 am
[...] for Windows If you are confused as to which one to choose, I suggest you start with Recuva and DiskDigger…both are popular among many users and have been recommended by experts…. Restoring [...]
January 5th, 2010 at 3:50 pm
[...] Descargar [...]
January 6th, 2010 at 3:05 pm
[...] DiskDigger v.0.8.3 jQuery(function($) { var o = $('div#showHideCommentsWrapper'); var s = $('a#showHideCommentsShow'); var h = $('a#showHideCommentsHide'); s.click(function(e) { e.preventDefault(); s.hide(); h.show(); o.show(); }); $('a#showHideCommentsHide').click(function(e) { e.preventDefault(); h.hide(); s.show(); o.hide(); }); }); Click here to leave a comment Click here to hide the comments Posted on Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 2:00 pm in recovery [...]
January 6th, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Thanks a lot, you made a happy evening out of a dreadful afternoon when I found out that I formatted my card without copying the pictures on the laptop.
January 6th, 2010 at 4:49 pm
[...] DiskDigger v.0.8.3 [...]
January 7th, 2010 at 7:58 am
[...] [...]
January 8th, 2010 at 4:22 am
[...] [...]
January 8th, 2010 at 8:17 am
Dear Dmitry Brant:
I thank God for the brilliant things you have done. May God bless you and your family.
January 8th, 2010 at 9:40 pm
Dear Dimitry,
My sincere congratulations for the excellent tool. It really works.
On the other side, I have to say that still some work to do as identify directories, files size, and so on (all that is done by the DDR software “USB drive data recovery”). I know that your program is free and DDR´s is 20usd, but what I am sure is that as very talented man, you can upgrade your tool to make it the reference in the WWW!
I have seen some pieces of software done by low resources people like you to be the best in the world (irfanview.com as example), and you can do too!
Best wishes from Madrid, Jose
January 10th, 2010 at 3:51 am
thanks b-coz of diskdigger i recover my late father pictures. may God bless u.
January 10th, 2010 at 10:58 am
muchisimas gracias por el programa, me ha sido totalmente útil
January 11th, 2010 at 8:58 am
OMG!!!! thanks a lot!!!!!!! it’s easy and it’s cool!
January 13th, 2010 at 3:02 pm
[...] http://dmitrybrant.com/diskdigger [...]
January 13th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
DD locates files and shows the “sector location” where files are but does not offer the option to delete files forever. Does anyone know how to actually locate where on the disk a certain file is (the path) so that I can delet it forever, and not just recover? Does the “sector location” information help with that?
January 13th, 2010 at 7:04 pm
Great program, in my experience. (I contributed, and hope others do the same.)
January 18th, 2010 at 3:57 am
Any chance of adding .swf, .fla, and other Adobe CS files? Thanks
January 19th, 2010 at 5:42 am
[...] 2. DiskDigger [...]
January 22nd, 2010 at 6:16 am
HELP! Trying to recover a movie file (.mov).
DD has found it but I get an “External Exception EEFFACE” error message.
(It is 1490816KB – is there a s size restriction?)
January 22nd, 2010 at 8:27 am
[...] o menos bien. Pero por si acaso la bajé a mi máquina desde el blog de su creador, Dmitry Brant ( dmitrybrant.com/diskdigger ), y la probé. DiskDigger hace dos cosas. Por un lado, el bien conocido undelete que depende [...]
January 23rd, 2010 at 10:28 am
[...] DiskDigger [...]
January 24th, 2010 at 11:08 pm
[...] ), PC Inspector File Recovery ( http://www.pcinspector.de/Default.htm?language=1 ) y DiskDigger ( http://dmitrybrant.com/diskdigger ), para asegurar que lo que almacenamos en la memoria flash no se pierda. « Mapas [...]
January 26th, 2010 at 6:09 pm
[...] You can get DiskDigger here. [...]
January 30th, 2010 at 11:14 pm
Disk Digger saved my life, affter trying and failing with multiple programs, a ruined hard disk was saved.
Kudos
February 1st, 2010 at 5:31 pm
IT’s a great tool, I love it, thanks for the effort you have put on in, it’s worth it.
February 1st, 2010 at 5:37 pm
I cannot find the word next after I unzip the files on DiskDigger to recover my photos from my E drive that I accidentally deleted.
Your help PLEASE! Chris
February 2nd, 2010 at 6:33 pm
Sure, this program has found heaps of files but why does it take 2 minutes from when I click the “Save Picture” button until the “Save As” dialog appears? And this on a good system with 2.4 GHZ Processor and 2GB RAM!!!
February 4th, 2010 at 5:31 pm
[...] DiskDigger, es un software gratuito que permite recuperar fácilmente fotos, videos, música, documentos, etc erróneamente eliminados de un dispositivo extraíble o de cualquier tarjeta microSD. [...]
February 8th, 2010 at 12:44 pm
Hello,
Of all the ‘free’ utilitys I have tried so far Diskdigger is giving the most responsive results.
However it keeps getting stuck on .63% of the job. (it has already found many files that others could not find at this point.) I am very happy with your product so thanks.
What can I do to let Diskdigger proccess the entire disk?
(it is a 1tb western digital drive that has been reformatted with absoloutly nothing written over the top of it ever.)
How can I get Disk Digger to process the entire drive or piece by piece?
February 8th, 2010 at 12:45 pm
(i am using a dual core 2.3 with 4 gig ram, i have set the priority of disk checker to ‘high’)