CleverFiles Software has updated Disk Drill, a data recovery solution for Mac OS X, to version 1.3. The free update for registered users adds a number of new file signatures to the recovery list.

Disk Drill helps recover lost data, deleted files, and also strives to prevent unexpected data loss. It lets you recover from HFS/HFS+, FAT, NTFS and other file systems -- even from initialized and formatted disks.

Disk Drill offers support for Apple-related data like PAGES, MOV, etc), scanning session management, live preview while scanning, iPod recovery (non-iOS devices only), portable mode and more. It also features S.M.A.R.T. monitoring and now helps you prevent hard disk's failures by constantly checking a number of parameters provided by hard drive manufacturers.

If your disk gets unmounted by itself during scanning due to bad blocks, or produces ticking noise and is likely to go offline for good before you get all your data back from it, Disk Drill lets you back-up any disk into DMG, which can be mounted in your Mac for delayed recovery. The main difference here is the fact that this disk image is created byte-to-byte, meaning even the empty space is copied, so you can recover from this image as if you were recovering from the real media, which might be no longer available, according to the folks at CleverFiles.

Disk Drill is compatible with any PowerPC or Intel Mac running Mac OS X 10.5 or newer and is 64-bit ready. Since Apple released Mac OS Lion (10.7) Developer Preview, this version of Mac OS is also officially supported. Disk Drill is offered in a number of editions: Basic (free), Pro (US$89), Expert ($169) and Enterprise ($299). Details can be found at http://www.cleverfiles.com/mac-data-recovery.html .