Everyone knows the importance of backing up – yet still many of us are left with missing files, and no working backup. Thankfully, if you need to recover data from your Mac hard drive or solid state drive, there are a number of apps you can utilise.
All Mac data recovery apps work in the same way. As long as the directory indicating where the files were originally stored, the process is easy. If not, then the software will scan the data on your hard drive or solid state drive and look for patterns indicative of a particular file type. As long as the files haven’t been overwritten, there’s a high chance the data recovery will be a success. Here are some of the best apps for Mac data recovery.
EaseUS
We’ve spoken in length about EaseUS in the past, and for good reason – it’s a powerful data recovery tool. Available as an app on Macs as well as on Windows, EaseUS has a free version and a paid version. The free version of the data recovery app gives you 2GB of data recovery. While this might not sound like heaps of data, it’s more than many data recovery tools allow, and it lets you see if it can actually salavage your data. The paid version of the app is £69, and can be purchased in the App Store on your Mac. EaseUS is able to create a bootable USB drive for use when your Mac can’t boot up.
MiniTool
MiniTool Mac Data Recovery only allows you to recover 1MB of data for free, and then asks you to upgrade to the paid version of the app for £60. The plus side is the app offers a 30 day money back guarantee, so if the data recovery doesn’t go to plan, you can get a full refund. This data recovery software allows you to uncover partitions that you may have accidentally formatted over, and also has a “Digital Media Recovery” option, allowing you to recover data from external media like SD cards.
Data Rescue 5
This data recovery app costs £75, but Prosoft, the manufacturer behind Data Rescue 5, provides a free Deleted File Finder app to locate your missing files before you pay for the full software. As well as your Mac’s internal HDD or SSD, Data Rescue 5 can also recover data from SD cards and USB flash drives, as well as a Boot Camp partition.
Disk Drill
Disk Drill is another data recovery program we’ve written about previously, and the tool is available for Macs as well as PCs. You can use the free version of the data recovery app to find out what data is recoverable, and preview them to ensure they’re not corrupted, but to complete the recovery, you’ll need to pay £69 for the full version. The full version allows you to perform deep scans, as well as search lost partitions.
