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

Before you download Disk Drill hard drive recovery software for Mac, ask yourself if you need to recover an external or internal hard drive. It's important to install Disk Drill on a different storage device than the one you are trying to recover from.

Why? Because it prevents overwriting any recoverable data on the affected drive. For instance, if you're recovering files from your Mac's internal hard drive, install Disk Drill on an external drive (drag the Disk Drill icon to a Finder window with a suitable location opened). Similarly, if your external drive needs recovery, make sure Disk Drill is installed on your Mac's internal storage (you can drag Disk Drill to your Applications folder) or another external device.

You can then launch the Disk Drill application and complete the initial installation process. During this process, you will be asked to let Disk Drill access your internal or external drive without any restrictions, which enables it to recover data from a Mac hard drive in the most comprehensive manner possible.

If your hard drive shows signs of physical damage or extensive corruption (like strange noises, slow read/write operations, or bad sectors), then it’s essential to back it up because the drive could fail at any moment, making data recovery impossible.

Disk Drill includes a free, convenient tool for creating a byte-to-byte backup. This tool generates a comprehensive disk backup image in DMG (or ISO) format, capturing even the sectors that are currently unoccupied but may contain recoverable data. You can select this tool from the left pane (it’s called Byte-to-byte Backup) and then simply tell it which storage device you want to back up.

After creating this backup disk image, you can initiate hard drive recovery using the image instead of the actual hardware. The latter approach is safer as it minimizes the risk of further drive failure during scanning.

For this step, open Disk Drill and go to the Storage Devices tab. Here, you'll see a list of all available devices. Select your hard drive from this list. To achieve the best results, choose the entire storage device rather than just a single partition. Once selected, click on "Search for lost data" to start the scanning process. Disk Drill is capable of recovering data from all commonly used types of partitions (see the technical information below for more details).

When it comes to recovering a system drive, Disk Drill will require the installation of a system extension (kext). This extension grants Disk Drill low-level access to your system drive's file system. Without the kext, Disk Drill will be able to only allocate existing data, scan local Time Machine snapshots, and display non-file entries like contacts stored locally on your drive.

The duration of the scanning process by Disk Drill varies depending on the type and size of your hard drive. Larger drives or those with slower read/write speeds, like external hard drives, take longer to scan.

During the scan, Disk Drill continuously displays the number of files found to keep you informed of the progress.  You have the option to click the "Review Found Files" button at any time to preview the results, even while scanning is still ongoing. You can also pause the scanning process and resume it later. Just know that we guarantee the best results when the scan is completed fully without interruptions.

If the internal or 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 in the Dock 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 Disk Drill was unsuccessful in recovering files from your internal or external hard drive, another option is to restore your data from a backup drive image using Disk Utility. This method is best tried after attempting recovery with Disk Drill because it involves replacing an entire volume with a copy from your backup drive. Here’s how it works:

1. Connect the external backup drive that contains your disk copy.
2. Launch Disk Utility on your Mac.
3. In the sidebar of Disk Utility, choose the volume you want to restore, then select the Restore button. Within the Restore pop-up window, choose the backup image whose contents will replace the contents of the selected volume.
4. Click Restore, and then Done.
5. Wait for the restore to finish and then you’re all set!

If you've previously backed up your data using Time Machine, a free incremental backup tool included with macOS, then you can easily restore lost or deleted files. Time Machine keeps a record of how your system looked on any given day, allowing you to revert to a previous state or retrieve individual files. Here’s how you can begin the restoration process:

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.

Restarting your Mac in recovery mode can help repair a corrupted system drive and restore access to the operating system:

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.
5. Choose the problematic hard drive and repair it using the First Aid tool.

If you have an internal or external drive whose integrity has been compromised, then you can check its consistency using the fsck tool:

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. Now, use the appropriate fsck tool for the file system type. For HFS file systems, use fsck_hfs (use fsck_apfs for the APFS file system) and run it against the device identifier: fsck_hfs /dev/disk1s2
5. Wait for the consistency check to finish.

Running Disk Utility's First Aid on your Mac is an effective way to diagnose and repair issues with your internal and external disks:

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.

If your corrupted drive no longer contains any important files that you haven’t successfully recovered, then you can format it to start from scratch:

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 APFS as the file system.