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Disk Drill 3

Free Mac File System Recovery

When considering Mac OS X data recovery, much depends on the formatting (also called the file system) of the drive. But whether you are looking for HFS recovery for Mac, file recovery for Mac FAT32 system, NTFS recovery for Mac, Disk Drill can help.

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In this how-to, we've broken up the steps by file system. HFS and HFS+ are typically encountered in native Mac OS X drives. FAT systems are found on many different types of devices from flash drives to camera memory cards. NTFS is the file system used with most Windows operating systems. It is possible to scan other file systems as well, such as the Linux EXT3 and EXT4, but we'll focus on the above three for this article.

All of these drives, regardless of their origin, can be scanned for deleted files by Disk Drill. None of these scanning techniques are very difficult to use, but they do vary in approach. Read on for a brief overview of the steps. For more tutorials, see How to Install Disk Drill and How to Recover Lost Files with Disk Drill Basic in our Knowledgebase.

#1 Download and Install Disk Drill

First download Disk Drill, Mac file system recovery software. Installing is as easy as dragging it to your Applications folder and authorizing Disk Drill to scan your drives. You'll need to enter your administrator password for this. Optionally, drag the Disk Drill application to the Dock for easy access.

1Download Disk Drill
2Drag to Applications Folder
3Launch the app

#2 Select the Drive to be Recovered

When you first open Disk Drill, you will see a list of all drives, memory cards and devices currently connected to your Mac and available for scanning. This is where you will scan your drives for deleted files and attempt an NTFS recovery on Mac, HFS recovery on Mac OS X, or file recovery on Mac for FAT32 system.

How to recover deleted files on Mac

Click on the name of a volume to reveal the partitions inside it. Select the one that harbored your deleted files. Scanning techniques that are unavailable due to the nature of the drive will be automatically grayed out.

#3 Recover HFS Partition on Mac

HFS recovery on Mac OS X is easy if you've had Disk Drill's Recovery Vault or Guaranteed Recovery features enabled prior to your data loss. Just click the Recover button and select the Undelete Protected Data option. In mere minutes, Disk Drill will scour its database and present a list of all salvageable files that were deleted while Recovery Vault was active, preserving the original locations and file names. It's the best option for HFS recovery on Mac OS X, and it's the feature that separates Disk Drill from the pack.

Even if you didn't have these data protection modules enabled before your data loss, you can still perform a Deep Scan to look for deleted files and folders. Deep Scan will take a lot longer to complete, but is sure to find every file that can still be saved. On the downside, Deep Scan will not tell you the original name or location of the files. Unless it locates a recoverable partition, which is also highly possible.

#4 FAT/FAT32 and NTFS Recovery for Mac

USB flash drives and external hard drives are likely to run on FAT or FAT32 file systems. Drives with FAT file systems are supported by all of Disk Drill's recovery techniques: Undelete Protected Data, Quick Scan, and Deep Scan. When you need to recover NTFS partition on your Mac, Quick Scan and Deep Scan can be used, but the Undelete Protected Data option is not available.

For FAT or FAT32 recovery for Mac, try Undelete Protected Data first. It actually works very similarly to Quick Scan, but keeps better track of the deleted files and is able to present results more quickly and reliably. But this option is not available to recover NTFS data with your Mac.

How to recover deleted files after emptying the trash on Mac

Quick Scan is the second-fastest method for FAT and NTFS recovery, and uses the file system's own logs to quickly present a list of deleted files that might still be undeleted. It's a great way to scan for files that were deleted very recently.

If data protection wasn't enabled, or the files were deleted too long ago to reliably use Quick Scan, Deep Scanning the drive is a solution. This will take the longest time to complete and won't retain the file names, but it is very thorough in sniffing out deleted files to complete FAT and NTFS recovery on your Mac.

Have you thought of protecting your data?

Disk Drill has some unique protection possibilities to make sure no data will be lost. Those are Recovery Vault and Guaranteed Recovery features. Recovery Vault draws a "map" for Disk Drill to find lost files, while Guaranteed Recovery is always keeping track on files and in case they are moved to Trash it saves their invisible copies to ensure successful recovery whenever needed.

#5 Deep Scan Any Volume or File System

Deep Scan might be the slowest scanning technique that Disk Drill offers, but it's also the most thorough and universal one. Even if your hard drive has been formatted or corrupted, Deep Scan will be able to put together a lot of the files that went missing. Of course, the more damaged your drive is, or the more time has passed, the less likely Disk Drill will be able to save your files and handle an effective FAT, FAT32, NTFS or HFS+ recovery. But Disk Drill Basic is free – so why not give it a try?

Disk Drill is an excellent
Mac file system recovery app

Disk Drill offers Deep Scan that is exceptionally effective for the situations with hardly any file structure left. Doesn't matter if it is HFS recovery on Mac OS X, or NTFS, or FAT32, Disk Drill will apply its great knowledge of file signatures to find the correct ones and restore all your files including XLS, DOC, AVI, MP4, JPG, and others.

All supported file types

Always protect your partitions!