Top 6 Best Hard Drive Repair Software

Usability

Basic and advanced users alike will find Disk Drill easy to use and navigate. All of its features are prominently displayed and it’s easy to determine what your next action is. Instead of forcing users to perform multiple scans to gather as much recoverable data as possible, Disk Drill combines multiple scan types into a single click to make it more convenient without sacrificing effectiveness. Furthermore, the recovery results screen can be tailored to your liking with filters to find specific files or folders without sifting through thousands of files manually.

Tool capabilities

Disk Drill has a lot going on under the hood which makes it a great recovery tool, especially the fact that it can recover data from corrupted, malfunctioning, and RAW hard drives. While its main focus is data recovery, it also includes some additional features that can help you protect your data against data loss. For instance, its Data Protection feature allows you to add an extra layer of protection to specified data. Its S.M.A.R.T. Monitoring feature is also helpful, as it actively checks the health status of your hard drives and lets you know of any issues that arise, allowing you to take action if data loss is probable.

Value

You get good value for your money if you use Disk Drill to recover lost or deleted data from your hard drive. The $89.00 price tag gives you a lifetime license, allowing for unlimited data recovery and full access to any other additional features it includes. And, as we found in our Disk Drill review, the program is very versatile and performs well in almost any data loss situation. It’s a useful tool to have in your hard drive repair toolkit for emergency situations.

Usability

TestDisk isn’t known for its usability. In fact, usability is one of its worst areas. However, as a one-man project, you have to cut it some slack. The program uses a command-line interface to perform partition recovery. As you’d expect, you’re quite limited in what you can do. Recovery results cannot easily be sorted and because you’re recovering entire partitions using a command-line interface, you cannot preview the data on them. 

Tool capabilities

In addition to the ability to recover your partitions, TestDisk can fix your partition table and rebuild boot sectors. It’s supported by all major operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and Linux. One of its biggest flaws, however, is that it doesn’t have a signature scanner. Partitions can only be recovered if your file system is still intact. Otherwise, the program will have no way of finding it.

Value

Most likely the best part about this software: it’s free. TestDisk is offered as a free HDD repair software tool, but donations are welcome on the download page. As a portable application, that means you can download and begin using the software in mere seconds. Of course, as a free solution, you shouldn’t expect the world from it. Even so, it’s a very capable solution for those who need to recover their partitions but can’t afford to put down some money on a paid alternative.

Usability

DiskGenius isn’t winning any awards for its user interface. It favors function over aesthetics. The outdated interface has a lot going on, and many features are oddly named so it can be difficult to find what you’re looking for. The crowded space floods the user with an abundance of information, which would otherwise be a good thing if it was executed well. Some good things include the use of multiple scanning methods without intervention by the user and the ability to sort and search the scan results.

Tool capabilities

The program gives you a lot of control over how you manage your drives. Even the free version is quite generous and allows users to back up or restore their partition table, erase the sectors on an entire disk or partition, and quickly switch their disk to MBR or GUID. In our DiskGenius review, we found that its quick scan was fairly good but its signature scan had some issues recovering certain file video types, like MP4, MXF, and some versions of MOV. Even so, other features like its support for BitLocker-encrypted drives and recovery from disk images help make the tool more appealing.

Value

DiskGenius is great value for money if you make use of all of its features. It’s offered at a fair price point and all of its licenses are one-off payments. If you’re looking purely at its ability to recover data, there are other applications out there that would give you better recovery performance for your money. However, all of the additional features you get with it help make it a decently well-rounded disk management and recovery solution.

Usability

AOMEI Partition Assistant is easy enough to use. It offers a more pleasant experience than what you’d find with DiskGenius, but the layout can make it feel a bit cramped now and then. Nevertheless, all features are accessible and easy to use, even for beginners. Technical details that would otherwise be an eyesore are managed well and the device source menu makes it easy to differentiate disks from partitions.

Tool capabilities

The program focuses on giving you a toolkit for managing your disks and partitions. With it, you can manipulate partitions by resizing, splitting, cloning, formatting, deleting, wiping, and converting them. Much of the same can be done with your disks. Hard drive users can run disk defragmentation and delete junk files to improve performance and free up space. Some recovery features are included too, like the ability to recover lost partitions and data, but it’s more of a secondary feature.

Value

The Standard edition alone gives you generous access to many features for free. You can upgrade to the Professional edition for $49.99/year for two PCs or for a one-time payment of $59.95 for two PCs. Both include free upgrades to the newest version of the software. Basic users can probably get away with the Standard edition, but professionals and advanced users may find the aptly priced Professional edition to be more suitable for their needs.

Usability

Usability is one of Hard Disk Sentinel’s weak points. The user interface looks really old and many of the features only have labels that appear when you hover over them, which is annoying until you can associate the icon with the feature from memory. Regardless, the main screen where you can view different aspects of your hard drives is easy to navigate, with each area being split into tabs you can quickly switch between. The program is also available in a portable form if you can’t risk writing the application to your hard drive.

Tool capabilities

There’s no doubt that this program is rich in features. You get a complete overview of everything related to the health of your hard drive. The tool runs in the background, actively monitoring the status of your hard drive or solid-state drive using S.M.A.R.T. data. When something of concern is detected, the application can notify you and optionally perform actions like running a backup. The active monitoring allows you to get a headstart on anything that could negatively affect your hard drive performance.

Value

Lifetime licenses start at $22 for the Standard version, or $33 for Professional. The demo version will last for 30 days and give you a good chance to try some of what the software has to offer. Basic users who only want to know the essentials may prefer a completely free alternative like CrystalDiskInfo, but advanced users will really benefit from the features that Hard Disk Sentinel has to offer.

Usability

As a free tool, don’t expect too much for the user interface. It’s very basic and only seeks to be functional at best. You can navigate to the different areas of the program with the prominent buttons at the top of the application.

Tool capabilities

We consider Victoria HDD Utility to be the best bad sector repair software because it’s simple but effective. While its Test & Repair feature may appear intimidating with the number of options and settings that are available, it allows you to control the surface scan you perform on the drive. It also gives you a visual representation of the sectors on your hard drive and allows you to ignore, erase, repair, or refresh them based on what you’re trying to achieve.

Value

Value is pretty easy for this one. Since the program is completely free, we don’t have much to comment on here. You can do a lot with what the tool has to offer and there are few other options that give you such control over finding and repairing bad sectors on your hard drive for free.