How to Recover Data from Formatted Hard Drive on Mac OS X

It happens. You reformat a drive and then suddenly realize that you had a critical file on there that was not backed up anywhere. But don’t lose hope – Disk Drill can help.
Free Download
Upgrade to PRO
How to Recover Data from Formatted Hard Drive on Mac OS X
As long as you did not choose a “secure erase” option, your old data will remain on your drive until it is overwritten. So formatted hard drive recovery on Mac is still possible! Disk Drill can scan your drive and find invisible files that haven’t been erased yet.

It is actually pretty easy to recover formatted hard drive on Mac. Simply download the free Disk Drill Basic software, scan the drive and review the files. If you find your files, great! You can proceed with recovery. If not, all you’ve spent is a few minutes of your time.

#1 Before You Begin

Connect the drive to your Mac (if it is an external drive or memory card). If it is your internal hard drive that you have reformatted, consider using Target Disk Mode or Disk Drill's Portable Mode to increase your chances of data recovery on your Mac’s formatted hard drive. You can also create a bootable drive for data recovery with Disk Drill on any other Mac to recover the formatted system hard drive.
  • 1Download Disk Drill
  • 2Drag to Applications Folder
  • 3Launch Disk Drill

#2 Download and Install Disk Drill

Download the Disk Drill Basic app. Follow the installation instructions and launch the app. As we mentioned before, Disk Drill Basic is completely free and allows you to scan your drive and preview files.

#3 Scan Your Drive for Lost Data

Once the Disk Drill app is launched, it will show you the list of drives available for scanning. You will want to select the entire drive (not one of its individual partitions). This will ensure that Disk Drill scans the empty spaces of the drive where your old files might still exist. Click the “Recover” button and wait for the scan to finish.
How to recover deleted files on Mac
Mac data recovery from a formatted drive may take several minutes to several hours (depending on the size of the drive and number of files and the drive's condition). Scan Your Drive for Lost Data

#4 Formatted Data Recovery

Once the scan is complete, you can review the found files. Be sure to examine the files closely, because the correct file names may not have been recovered. You can filter files by file type and size to narrow your search. If you find the files you need, select them and click the “Recover” button to proceed.
How to recover deleted files after emptying the trash on Mac
That’s all there is to it! Disk Drill makes formatted card recovery on Mac as well as formatted hard drive recovery easy. Download Disk Drill Basic today to get started. Formatted Data Recovery

It is better to stay safe – protect your data now!

Disk Drill is outstanding in its protection options. They will keep your files safe and prevent data loss. Use S.M.A.R.T. Monitoring to constantly keep an eye on your hard drive performance. Guaranteed Recovery keeps invisible copies of the files that were moved to Trash and they can be restored whenever needed. Recovery Vault options saves the metadata, so that files can be restored with their proper names and locations.

Disk Drill is the best option to recover data from formatted hard drive on OS X

Disk Drill offers its Deep Scan feature for what can seem a hopeless case. The app will scan through the raw data on your drive and it won't matter whether it is FAT, NTFS, or other. Disk Drill works through the remaining structure of the files working them into a single piece. Once it discovers a file signature files are recovered even faster. XLS, DOC, AVI, MP4, JPG, and others are all supported.
The complete list of file types

Keep your important data well protected!

Disk Drill 3
Formatted Drives Data Recovery for Mac OS X
Free Download
Upgrade to PRO

Find More How To Articles Here

More on data recovery...
  • 10+ Million
    TOTAL DOWNLOADS
  • 500,000+
    PRO CLIENTS
  • BUSINESS & HOME USERS
    in 150+ countries

What others say about Disk Drill

  • Peter
    Just to let you know: everything is back. Including the names and the directories. Amazing! Disk Drill really saved me. Thanks a lot.
  • Angelique Malabey, SJSU
    In my field of study, data is important so protecting it is crucial. I needed a program that could help me recover sentimentally important pictures from an old hard drive that had been corrupted. I have tried many recovery tools but they were either inadequate or very expensive. During a class discussion, I was introduced to Disk Drill by CleverFiles and I decided to give it a try. Not only have I been able to recover most of my lost files, but also clean up my current hard drive. Disk Drill goes beyond just helping you recover files you can also establish a form of backup, clean up your drives by looking for and removing duplicates. I love how intuitive the program is as well as very user-friendly. I am still a novice when it comes to Disk Drill, but that is okay since if you do get stuck they came prepared and have help links just about every where. I look forward to recovering files from other devices such as old Android phones and iPhones. I love that the program can be used across the board with most of your devices. Disk Drill turned out to be more than what I had expected and I look forward to seeing what other things I can do with Disk Drill.
    Read more