Hard Drive Recovery on Mac: Recover Files from Internal or External Drives

So you downloaded your copy of Disk Drill hard drive recovery software for Mac, and deployed it to your Applications menu. On the first launch you will need to install the new driver, which is required for correct hard drive recovery on Mac OS X. Enter your administrator password. After that you are ready to go!

As mentioned before, physical damage to your storage device is no help with software-based data recovery. If the target disk got bad sectors, or electronic controller fails in some operations, it's not much that can be done by Disk Drill with data stored in affected disk areas. However, before that happens, if you suspect an improper disk behavior, ticking sounds, slow read/write operations, we recommend using Disk Drill's supplemental free tool that helps anyone create a byte-to-byte disk image in a DMG (or ISO) format.

Just proceed with "Backup / Backup into DMG-image". The unique aspect of the byte-to-byte backups is the fact they actually store the contents of data sectors that were marked as empty, not occupied by data. Yes, you get it right, the sectors where your lost data can still reside. Once the backup disk image is created, you may start your hard drive recovery from the image instead of the real hardware. This will ensure the final failure will not occur while Deep Scanning, more data stays safe and potentially recoverable.

If you are planning to do hard drive recovery from your system Mac drive, the one you are booted from, chances are more recoverable data gets lost completely by overwriting with various system activities being run in the background when you boot, launch apps, etc. If you cannot connect the hard drive with lost data to another computer and run the recovery there, we recommend creating a bootable data recovery drive and running Disk Drill off it. The "Create boot drive" wizard will guide you through the process. It takes a few minutes to maximize your data recovery chances. If creating a bootable Mac USB drive is not an option, proceed in a regular way.

When recovering an external device, you need to connect the external HDD or SSD to your computer. Your selected drive will be displayed in Disk Drill’s list of volumes available for recovery. Clicking on the drive lets you view specific partitions on the disk. Be advised that recovering an SSD requires additional steps when performing the recovery which we outline in the FAQs at the end of this page.

Disk Drill has several powerful methods for hard drive recovery on Mac OS X. The ones available to you will be determined by the file system of the hard drive and whether it is formatted at all or not. You can choose to scan the entire drive or just one partition. If you choose the whole drive, Disk Drill will use Deep Scan to analyze the whole disk as one entity with a raw file system, meaning it'll analyze every bit of it in a binary mode. However, this takes the longest, so if the partition that contained your deleted data is available, you may want to select that first.

If you are just learning how to recover from a Mac hard drive, the simplest way to start the recovery process is to click the "Recover" button next to the volume you want to scan. It will automatically go through all available scanning methods one by one. But if you have a particular scanning method you wish to try, you can click the drop-down arrow on the “Recover” button to select an individual scan.

As discussed in the previous step, you can either go on with Deep Scan (which takes the longest but is the most thorough) or Quick Scan (if your data was recently lost and you have an APFS, HFS+, FAT, exFAT or NTFS disk). If you had Disk Drill installed before you lost data, and you had Guaranteed Recovery or Recovery Vault enabled, you may be able to use our most reliable recovery method: Undelete Protected Data.

Depending on the scanning method you selected you will need to wait from 1 minute to may be several hours, if you are using Deep Scan to recover your hard drive. The scanning speed may also be slower if you need to recover files from external hard drive on Mac. Since Disk Drill reads every bit of the hard drive, scanning might be long, but as effective as possible.

If the external hard drive was connected to your Mac when the files were lost, you may be able to get them back from your Mac’s Trash Can. Just follow these steps:

1. Click on the Trash’s icon to open it.
2. Locate the item you wish to restore.
3. Right-click on the file or folder and select Put Back to recover it to its original location.

If using Disk Drill didn’t work for recovering files from our internal or external hard drive, then we can also try restoring from a hard drive by using Disk Utility. I would recommend trying this after you’ve attempted using Disk Drill as when you use Disk Utility, you will be taking an entire volume and replacing your current one whereas Disk Drill allows you to search and recover files.

1. Plug-in your external device that you would like to restore from.
2. Launch Disk Utility on your Mac.
3. In the sidebar of Disk Utility, choose the volume that you want to restore from, then select the Restore button. This will be the volume that is erased and becomes the exact copy.
4. Within the Restore pop-up window, choose the volume that you would like to copy.
5. Click Restore, and then Done.
6. Wait for the restore to finish and then you’re all set!

Recovering lost data from backup media is a solution that requires you to have created a copy of your data. The macOS provides a free backup and recovery tool called Time Machine that you should consider using if you are not doing so already. To recover deleted data with Time Machine, use the following steps.

1. Connect the storage media with the Time Machine backup to your computer.
2. Open a Finder window and navigate to the folder that contained the lost data.
3. Click on the clock icon on the menu bar to open Time Machine and select the Enter Time Machine option.
4. Find the items and specific versions of the item you want to be recovered from within Time Machine.
5. Choose the item you want to recover. You can hit the Spacebar if you want to preview the file before recovery.
6. Click Restore to restore your data.

Physical damage can make it impossible for your Mac’s operating system to recognize a disk. In these cases, your best bet is to use a reliable data recovery service. These are the basic steps to follow if you need to perform this kind of recovery.

1. Contact the recovery service to get details regarding shipping the drive to the vendor. At this time you should be able to get an estimate of the recovery cost.
2. Ship the device to the service center. The center’s technicians will use specialized equipment in an environmentally-controlled clean room to disassemble the device and clone it to recover its data.
3. Once recovery is complete, your data will be returned and the original device will be destroyed. There will be no charge from a reputable recovery service if they fail to recover your data.

1. Click the Apple logo at the top left of your screen.
2. Select Restart.
3. Hold down the Command and R keys until the Apple logo or spinning globe appears.
4. Select Disk Utility from the macOS Utilities screen.

1. Click the Apple logo at the top left of your screen.
2. Select Restart.
3. Hold down the Command and S keys until you see the command prompt.
4. Type fsck -fy.

1. Open Disk Utility which is in your Mac’s Utilities folder.
2. Select the disk from the list of volumes presented.
3. Click on First Aid.
4. Click Run. Disk Utility will attempt to repair errors found on the disk.

Connecting the drive to another computer may allow you to access the device. If so, you can use Mac utilities to repair the drive or data recovery software to restore its data.

Try formatting the drive with the HFS file system so it can be reused with these steps:

1. Open Disk Utility from your Mac’s Utilities folder.
2. Select the drive you wish to format.
3. Click the Erase button.
4. Choose OS X Extended as the file system.