Can I Recover Apple Mail (mbox) Email Files?

Can Disk Drill recover mbox data – the files used by Apple’s Mail app?

The short answer is – yes, but only in certain situations. There are limitations because mbox is not actually a file — mbox is a folder where all emails are stored in a plain text format. Since Deep Scan is not capable of recovering text files you have to rely on Disk Drill’s other recovery methods. Recovery is possible in the following situations:

1. If your Mac was protected with Recovery Vault when the deletion occurred. Folder and plain text file recovery are major benefits of having Recovery Vault enabled.
2. If you are able to launch Disk Drill immediately after deleting the Mail files. Quick Scan may be able to recover it in this case. Mac internal hard drives don’t keep this information for long though, so if any time has passed, Quick Scan will probably not work.
3. If the Mail files were lost due to lost partition or catalog error. By clicking the universal Recover button next to the disk where your mbox data was stored, Disk Drill will run through all of the partition find/rebuild modes. If a partition is found, it will then Quick Scan it and may be able to recover the mbox files.