How to Recover Data from a Broken Hard Drive Mac

How to Recover Data from a Broken Hard Drive Mac

There are several ways to recover your Mac’s broken hard drive.You can try to recover your hard drive by these following options,

Use the Mac disk utility

  • Disk utility can help you repair or resolve the hard drive damage.
  • Reboot your Mac system.
  • The moment the black screen appears, press the command key + R key simultaneously.
  • Your Mac device will now enter the recovery mode.
  • You will see four options in the recovery mode; Restore from time machine backup, Reinstall macOS, Get help online, and Disk Utility.
  • Click the Disk Utility option.
  • Choose your Mac HD and perform the First Aid to repair the disk errors.
  • There are either of the two outcomes after the disk utility,
  • If the first aid option shows Operation Successful, click Done.

Repair with F.S.C.K. command (FILE SYSTEM CONSISTENCY CHECK)

  • You can try to recover by repairing using the non-G.U.I. Mode on Mac OS.
  • The process is called the F.S.C.K., and it’s user-free.
  • Here are the following steps to implement the F.S.C.K. mode,
  • Turn off your Mac.
  • Power on your Mac.
  • Hold the command + S buttons.
  • It will bring the Single user mode on your Mac from where the repairing Mac starts up and you can recover all the files from your hard drive.
  • Enter the command line /sbin/fsck - fy. Hit Enter.
  • The Mac will initialize the command and run the process.
  • It will return a message as per the action performed.
  • If the Mac HD is healthy, it will read the message, “The volume appears to be OK.”
  • When the FSCK manages to repair the broken/damaged hard drive, it will read the message “File system was modified.”
Repair with F.S.C.K. command

Look for Backup

  • Since the Mac systems are all inbuilt with the backup application Time Machine check to see if you have any data stored in your time machine application.
  • If you do not have data from the hard drive in your time machine, it is safer to recover it to an external hard drive.

Use of third party applications

  • You can make use of some popularly used third-party applications that are available for download online.
  • Some commonly used third-party applications are 
  • Recoverit
  • Easeus
  • Stellar Info
  • Wondershare
  • Diskdrill
  • 7datarecovery
  • All the above third-party applications have the same options for recovery.

Since the use of Recoverit is quite widespread these days, let’s see how to use it.

  • Open your browser and type recoverit.wondershare.com in the address bar.
  • The page will directly take you to its official website.
  • Scroll down to a specific portion of the web page.
  • You will see two sets of options to download the Recoverit software; Download for Windows, and Download for Mac
  • Click on Download for Mac.
  • You can also drag and drop the Recoverit software to the application window on your Mac.
  • The file will be downloaded. Run the downloaded file.
  • The Recoverit will open the number of drives available on your Mac.
  • Select the drive you want to recover the files.
  • Once you select the drive, Recoverit will show a preview of the files present in the drive.
  • Choose the files you want to back up, and click on Recover.