The Mac OS operating system, like the Windows family of operating systems, is equipped with many protective functions, among which a special place is occupied by the recovery of deleted data. This procedure allows you to regain access to folders and files stored on the hard drive of a Macintosh PC if they were erased as a result of a system failure or unintentional actions of the user.

Methods for recovering information on Mac OS

To start the procedure for recovering data erased from a hard drive, you can use both standard tools built into the Mac OS system itself and specialized software. The first group includes:

• basket (Trash);
• Time Machine utility.

Resuscitation of information through the basket

As in Windows, in Mac OS files and folders deleted from the hard drive are first moved to a special area - the Recycle Bin, which is located on the system partition. Therefore, if the Trash was not cleared after erasing the data, you can restore the information directly from the Recycle Bin. To do this you need:

After emptying the Recycle Bin, all files from it will be erased, that is, the above-described method of resuscitation will not bring a positive result. In this case, you should use other tools to recover data deleted from the disk on Mac OS.

Using the Time Machine utility

Time Machine is a program built into Mac OS designed to backup data stored on the hard drive of a personal computer. With its help, system restore points are automatically created every hour, which can later be used to return accidentally deleted files. When you first launch the application, a backup of your entire hard drive is created. Subsequent backup affects only the information that has been changed.

To start the data backup procedure you must:

After a successful data backup, accidentally deleted files can be recovered as follows:

Specialized software for resuscitating erased data on Mac OS

When you delete files on Mac OS, they do not disappear without a trace. The system simply sees the space that was previously occupied by data as free. That is, new information can be written to it. And as long as new data does not overwrite the old ones, they can be restored using specialized software.

The most effective resuscitation programs developed specifically for Mac OS are:

• Disk Drill;
• FileSalvage;
• PhotoRec;
• Data Rescue.

All software works according to a similar scheme. Therefore, having mastered one utility, you can easily figure out the rest. As an example, let's look at the principle of recovering data deleted from a disk on Mac OS using Disk Drill. This program works perfectly with all file systems and allows you to regain access not only to lost files, but also to entire partitions.

The sequence of actions will be as follows:

The recovery process can be monitored in the corresponding window.

What happens when you empty the Trash?
If we empty the trash, this does not mean that the files will disappear forever. They simply lose connection with the file system.The space occupied by deleted files is marked as "reusable" so that the deleted data remains physically intact on the disk until it is replaced by other files.Files will only be deleted when they are replaced by new files.In order to prevent deletion, we must stop using Mac immediately if we want to recover deleted data from garbage.

How to recover deleted files from Recycle Bin on Mac

To recover deleted files, we recommend the program Wondershare . It is easy to use for users Mac, and is compatible with Mac OS X Mavericks. With a user-friendly interface, you can restore your recycle bins Mac using just a few clicks.If the space is not overwritten, the deleted data can be recovered 100%.

Why Wondershare

Wonder Share allows you to perform the following actions:

• Recover 550 different formats that are lost in various situations


• Recovering data lost as a result of formatting and deletion and in the absence of access


• Recover various types of files such as images, recordings, documents, songs, videos and more


• This allows you to save data from your Mac desktop B ook, iPod, Mac, USB drives, digital cameras, mobile phones and other media


• Read and recover data from protected storage


• You can download and install any program and not be afraid of losing your data, so you can replace the lost data and install the program on another partition.

Steps to restore the recycle bin to Mac

Step 1 Selectmode"Lost File Recovery"

This option allows you to recover information from a partition or removable media, regardless of how they were deleted - using " Ctrl + Delete » or emptying the Trash.

Advantages of this option: It only takes a few minutes. If you can't retrieve the deleted file in this mode, you can try "Draft Recovery" later versions, which can recover tons of files, including long-lost ones.

Step 2Scan garbage for Mac

Select the device or media from which you deleted files.Then click " Scan " to search for deleted files.

Step 3Browse and recover files from Macgarbage

When the scan is complete, all the information you deleted is listed in a table with the dates and location of deletion (desktop or library).Undoubtedly, the data deleted from the Recycle Bin is located in the "Trash".Or you can search for the file name in the search bar at the top to download it quickly.

Before restoring, you can preview the file to make sure it's the right file and check its size.Common formats for images, documents and archives can be viewed directly.

When checking file recovery, click on "Recover".What you need to keep in mind: do not save recovered files in the same place where you lost them, otherwise you may overwrite them.

Adviсe: Before "emptying the Trash", check your Trash carefully.

He told me how you can recover deleted files on a Mac for free using the Disk Drill utility. The method works with any hard drives and flash drives.

What should you do if you accidentally deleted a file and there is no backup copy? What if the backup disk itself becomes damaged and is no longer recognized by the Mac? Maybe your camera card or flash drive has stopped being read? There are many options. But in all these cases, Disk Drill will help you recover the data.

What information can Disk Drill recover?

It doesn’t matter at all on which disk the files were lost. If you can physically connect it to your Mac, then Disk Drill will get to work. Even if the computer can't read it. The use cases are as follows:

• Files have disappeared from your internal storage, external storage, USB flash drive or memory card;
• A partition on an external drive has disappeared and can no longer be mounted (often happens when the drive is removed incorrectly);
• The music has disappeared from the MP3 player or e-reader a la Kindle;
• The system has stopped recognizing the memory card, flash drive or hard drive.

Disk Drill works with all popular file systems:

• HFS/HFS+
• FAT/FAT32/exFAT
• EXT3/EXT4

Deep Scan works even with damaged or missing file systems.

How to use Disk Drill

By default, Disk Drill scans your drive and shows all the deleted information it can find. If the file has just been deleted, then the function will handle this Quick Scan(Quick Scan). If not, then it goes Detailed scan(Deep Scan).

Since deleted files lose all metainformation, all found files will have incorrect (random) names, hierarchy and creation/modification date. To find the file you need, you need to sort the information by type and size, and then use the Quick View function to find the file you need.

To avoid this hassle, Disk Drill offers several interesting features. These are the ones I forgot to enable first, so don’t repeat my mistake.

• Recovery Vault- stores a copy of the metadata of all deleted files. If something happens, the names, creation dates and their hierarchy will be preserved during restoration. The function is generally unpretentious to resources. A metadata archive for 10,000 files takes approximately 60 megabytes.
• Guaranteed Recovery- stores invisible copies of all files that end up in the trash. If you deleted something you needed and then regretted it, Guaranteed Recovery will restore any file without any problems. In the Disk Drill settings, you can set how much space you want for hidden copies of files from the recycle bin and how long you need to store them.

Both of these features work even in the free version of Disk Drill. So, you can add an additional layer of protection to your files simply by installing a trial version. But you will have to pay for the recovery function itself.

The only thing you need to remember is that Recovery Vault and Guaranteed Recovery only work with HFS & HFS+ and FAT partitions. They cannot be enabled for other sections.

How to recover deleted files from a flash drive

To demonstrate the work, I took and formatted my 64 GB flash drive. Initially, it only featured the season of The Man in the High Castle. I don’t even remember what was stored there and deleted before.

A quick disk scan took about 15 minutes. As a result, Disk Drill found:

• all 13 episodes of the series;
• 18 documents from the sketch editor;
• 208 music tracks in mp3;
• 232 photographs;
• some videos in 3gp (I have no idea how they ended up there);
• several videos in mov format.

Good day friends. I decided to write a help article for those who have somehow lost their data on a flash drive or disk. This article will only talk about the Mac operating system. You can find information on recovering files from a flash drive and on a disk on the Windows operating system on the Internet. There is a lot of such information, but very little on Mac OS.

There are quite a lot of programs on Windows that recover data from flash drives and disks, and many of them are free. The same cannot be said about Mac OS. For the latter, there are only a few programs that are guaranteed (well, maybe 90%) to be able to recover your data, unless, of course, your laptop burned out and a hammer didn’t fall on the flash drive.

Programs for data recovery from flash drives and disks

1. Disk Drill

The most famous program in the business for Mac OS and perhaps the most effective. At least judging by the reviews of Mac users, the official website of this program and just people on the Internet. Disk Drill works with MacBook Pro, Air, iPod, Mac Mini and iMac laptops. This infidel program works with both HDD and SSD. As for flash drives, this is generally Disk Drill’s strong point. SD Card, XD Cards, regular Compact flash, MMC Card and many other external storage media are restored by this program. And what’s most interesting: a very small percentage of non-recovery, when many other programs have a fairly high percentage (especially in programs for Windows). One gets the feeling that Disk Drill would recover data even from a lost flash drive (this would be very relevant :)))

2. R-Studio

A good program for recovering data on hard drives and external HDDs and flash cards. The program works with almost all known file systems (FAT12/16/32, NTFS and others). Reviews about this program are not bad (I haven’t seen any bad ones). Not the most popular program, but perhaps just not well-promoted (unlike disk drill)

3.Mac Data Recovery

A good and also FREE program for data recovery on external media and HDD/SSD drives is Stellar Phoenix Macintosh Data Recovery. Works with any media and any data formats. Restoring files from a flash drive with Macintosh Data Recovery is a pleasure, since, in my opinion, it has the most ideal interface.

4. Data Rescue

Disk recovery is always an unpleasant story, scary, because you don’t know whether you can recover everything or not. Data Rescue is an excellent program for recovering data from a damaged system. If your Mac OS system has crashed, then the most important thing in this situation is to save important files from the disk, and not the system itself. The system can be reinstalled.

Well, actually, I can’t offer any more candidates for data recovery on Mac OS and flash drives, since I don’t know other programs. In the comments you can write programs that you have used and that really helped. All the best.