External Hard Drives are secondary storage devices most of us use to save data that’s important to us but that we don’t need to access daily. More often than not, external hard drives are used as backup destinations to hold copies of our critical data. Many people use external hard drives for the purpose of transferring files from one system to another too. Regardless of why a user needs an external hard drive, such drives are as important as the internal hard drives fitted on your Mac machine. Thus, if any danger befalls such drives, recovering the data stored on them is just as essential.
When it comes to flawless Mac external hard drive recovery, nothing compares to the performance of the reliable product Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac. Using this product is the best chance you’ve got to salvage your important data stored on failed Mac external hard drives. However, there are a number of things you can do as first aid (initial steps) to aid the process of recovery.
First Aid or Initial Steps for Mac External Drive Recovery
- Safely unplug the affected external hard drive from your Mac
- Reconnect it to your Mac and see if it gets detected. If you can’t see it pop-up on Mac desktop instantly, go to Disk Utility and check if it shows up there
- If it does, open up its information in the Disk Utility panel and double-check that everything is as it should be
- Now verify that the external drive is mounting by using the Terminal DISKUTIL CS command
- Check if the drive is making any clicking or unexpected noises. If it is, unplug it and contact manufacturer support for physical damage assistance
- Avoid saving any new data on the drive since that may overwrite your existing files
- Ensure you have a complete backup of all data saved on the drive. For this, you can clone your external drive using non-intrusive cloning software.
- Now download Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac to recover all data saved on the external drive.
Impeccable Mac External Drive Recovery using Stellar Software
Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac software acts as the one-stop solution to recover data that has been lost from Mac based external hard drives owing to physical damage to drive, drive failure, corruption, virus infection, accidental formatting, accidental deletion, mounting problems, etc. Through a series of carefully designed scan and recovery steps, this program helps users extract any instances of lost / formatted / deleted data from a number of file systems like APFS, HFS, HFS Plus, HFS Wrapper, NTFS, EXFAT, FAT, etc. You can use this application to regain files lost from Time Machine backup drives as well as password protected (encrypted) external hard drives too. Read Full Software Features
How to use this software for External Drive Recovery?
Download the trial of the latest version of Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac software. Ensure that your system meets the minimum software requirements and then install the program on your Mac using its intuitive installation wizard. Thereafter follow these steps:
- Connect the affected external hard drive to your Mac and then launch the software interface by double-clicking its desktop icon.
- To recover all file types, toggle the “Recover Everything” button to “On” state.
- If you wish to recover only selected files, toggle the “Recover Everything” button to “Off” state and only toggle the desired file types to “On” state.
- Click on Next button and select the external drive from which you wish to recover data.
- When you select a drive by single clicking on it, an icon will appear giving you the option to view drive information. Click on it to view detailed drive information. You may also choose to conduct a “Deep Scan” on the drive by toggling on the respective button.
- When ready to begin scan, click on Scan button. The following screen shows you the scan progress with a default preview of files being discovered. You can choose to turn off the Preview and view only scan progress if you desire.
- When scan completes, you’ll receive a prompt indicating the same and all recoverable files will be listed in a tree-view in the software’s left hand panel.
- Once satisfied with file preview, select the files to recover by marking the check boxes next to them in the software’s main panel and click on “Recover” button. You’ll be prompted to register your product at this point. Activate your software with a valid license and then save the file to a destination of your choice.