Configure File System Protection in macOS 10.13+

Check the success by typing ‘csrutil status’ in Terminal at any moment. You should see something like this:

Alternatively, you can use Disk Drill’s Recovery Boot Drive to avoid using Terminal yourself, Disk Drill will then offer another tiny app, SIP Manage, that will run the needed commands itself in the background.

If you are concerned with your security while SIP is partially disabled, you may take your Mac offline by disconnecting from your wired or wireless network. Though it’s not that necessary, as your file system (the protection of which you just disabled temporarily) is not accessible to anything from outside of this computer.

To complete data recovery from the startup disk on macOS 10.13+, we also recommend connecting your Mac in Target Disk Mode or running your data recovery from a boot drive.

We are aware of similar cases when users can’t access their internal drives even though their computers boot from external storage devices. When this happens, most probably your internal drive still happens to be under active protection of SIP (System Integrity Protection). This is exactly why you are reading this guide. Just disable SIP on your Mac for the time when you need to recover data from your internal drives. It’s simple and totally safe, you can re-enable it back after your files are recovered.