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Losing a partition as the result of accidentally formatting a disk can lead to a devastating data loss scenario. It’s not as bad as you think. Fortunately, there is an effective and efficient software tool that can recover data from a formatted drive on Mac. Read on to see how Disk Drill can restore your lost files and folders. macOS Sequoia Ready!
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.
To enhance data recovery safety, Disk Drill includes a tool for creating a byte-to-byte backup. This feature, available in the left pane as Byte-to-byte Backup, enables you to create an exact copy of your formatted drive. It's advisable to use this disk image for recovery efforts instead of the physical drive.
Download and install Disk Drill for Mac. Don’t use the formatted disk for the download to prevent files from being overwritten. If you have inadvertently formatted a partition on your main hard drive, perform the download and install on a different computer or an external storage device. If the formatted drive was an external device, use the main drive for Disk Drill.
Connect the formatted drive to your Mac and launch Disk Drill. In the application’s main window, select the drive from the list of available disks.
Click the Recover button to initiate the software’s scanning algorithms. You can select a Quick or Deep scan to recover as much data as possible. Scans can be paused and restarted at will and you can stop the scan at any time and recover found files. Scan results can be filtered to allow you to focus on the type of data you want to recover and not be overwhelmed with every file that can be restored.
Preview the files that have been found during the scanning process and select those you want to recover. Files found in a Deep scan may have generic file names appended to their file extension if the software could not recover enough metadata to specify their names.
Specify a safe storage location that is not on the formatted disk to avoid further data corruption. Click the Recover button again to perform the recovery. When the process completes, the recovery data will be in the storage location you specified.
Disk Drill can recover lost and deleted files from any type of formatted disk-based storage device. Here are some examples of the kinds of devices that the software tool supports.
Dell®, HP®, Acer®, Asus®, MacBook Pro®, MacBook Air®, Apple iMac® and more
HP®, Samsung®, Seagate®, Toshiba®, WD®, LaCie®, Intel®, Adata® and more
SanDisk®, Samsung®, Kingston®, Corsair®, Patriot®, PNY®, Verbatim®, Silicon Power® and more
SanDisk®, Transcend®, Toshiba®, Lexar®, Integral®, SP®, PNY®, Kingston® and more
Apple® HDD, Western Digital®, Toshiba Canvio Flex®, Seagate®, OWC® and more
Asustor®, QNAP®, Synology®, WD My Cloud®, RAID0/1/5/6/10, Apple RAID, Windows Storage Spaces and more
The reason you can recover files from a formatted hard drive on Mac is due to the way the operating system deletes data. When you delete a file or format a partition or disk, macOS marks the space occupied by the deleted data as available for later use by the operating system. The logical links that allow you to access the data are removed, but the information is still physically present on the storage device. Data recovery software scans the drive and repairs the logical links. This restores access and allows the files to be used again.
* How TRIM Affects SSD Recovery?
Many modern computers and most new laptops are equipped with solid-state drives (SSDs). They have become popular due to the speed and efficiency of the storage devices. SSDs store data using flash memory as opposed to the magnetic disks of traditional hard drives.
TRIM technology is an advanced technique that is used to automatically delete blocks of data efficiently. This can affect the chances of recovering the lost data with a software solution. If the storage cells have been zeroed out by TRIM, it is unlikely that you can recover the lost data with recovery software. You may need to use a backup or engage a professional data recovery service to get your information back successfully.
Disk Drill’s deep scanning algorithms recognizes and recovers over 400 different file signatures. This enables the software to recover virtually any type of image, video, audio, archive, or document file.
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.
Here are some tips that will help you protect the data on your Mac’s hard drive.
Regularly backing up the data on your hard drive is one of the most important measures you can take to protect its valuable information.
Infection with viruses and malware can lead to lost data on your Mac. Maintain updated antivirus software to minimize this risk.
Excessive heat and moisture can damage a hard drive and make it unusable. Keep your devices cool and dry to ensure the data is safe.
Human error is the number one cause of data loss. Take the time to check what you are doing when performing any activity that can destroy data.
Disk Drill provides free data protection tools. Recovery Vault and Guaranteed Recovery offer additional safety for your valuable data.
Strange sounds coming from your hard drive indicates it may be failing. Make a byte-level backup of the data for recovery purposes.
Once you determine you have lost data, stop using the device until you have recovered the drive to avoid overwriting files and folders.
Use a reliable software tool if you have to recover a formatted HDD on Mac. You may only get one shot at recovery so don’t take chances.
Updated on by Disk Drill Team
To recover files from a formatted hard drive on Mac:
You can try this procedure to recover a formatted Mac SSD with Disk Drill. The key is to attempt this recovery as soon as you realize you have formatted the SSD. Time is of the essence!
Use the following steps to recover a formatted hard drive on Mac.
Possibly. Data recovery software can scan the disk and may be able to recover some files that have not been overwritten by the operating system installation.
Follow these steps for using a PC formatted hard drive on Mac. Drives formatted for Windows will need to be reformatted before use on macOS or OS X.
To unformat a hard drive on a Mac, you need to use data recovery software to restore the data lost during the formatting process. Follow these steps:
Yes, it is possible. When a drive is formatted, macOS makes its space available for future use. It does not physically remove the files if you perform a quick format. The data still exists on the drive and can be recovered until it is overwritten. Using data recovery software, you can restore data from a drive after it is formatted.
Follow these steps to recover data from a formatted external hard drive:
Recovering formatted data on a Mac for free requires you to restore from a previously made backup. As a precaution against the problem of accidentally formatting the wrong partition or disk, you should always create a backup before performing a format operation on your computer’s disks. It is the only way to recover from formatting without using data recovery software.
The best software for recovering lost data from a formatted SSD are:
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macOS 10.15.7–15.x, 60.0 MB
Use Disk Drill 1/2.x/3.x/4.x for OS X 10.5+
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