Best Recovery Tools For Mac



Over the recent past we have become highly reliant on technology around us for storing and maintaining our information. From family photos to crucial work documents — practically everything now lives on the hard drives of our computers. When you think about it, just a decade ago, accidentally deleting files from the Trash on your Mac would cause panic and frustration — the data was lost, with no way of retrieving it. Today, there are almost too many convenient and intuitive apps to help you recover deleted files and formatted hard drives.

When choosing the best data recovery software for Mac, we pay special attention to the following criteria: data recovery performance, ease of use, and price. We avoid data recovery software applications that don’t run on the latest version of macOS. You should read about the following best file recovery software mac. We have compiled a list of paid & free data recovery software mac. Choose the right one, according to your needs & requirements. Top 15 Best Mac Data Recovery Software. There is a glut of mac recovery software in the market, therefore it becomes difficult to choose the best.

If your essential materials go missing or get deleted by accident or your Mac crashes, which results in the potential loss of your hard work, there’s no need to wave those files goodbye, nor rush your Mac to get serviced. Instead, you can take advantage of the best modern Mac data recovery software. These effective apps will help you easily deal with all the complications of Mac data recovery and let you restore valuable files in just a couple of clicks.

How Can Mac Data Recovery Software Be Helpful?

Do you have extensive knowledge about your Mac, its operational system, and how the hard drive works? Or do you consider yourself a specialist who can salvage inaccessible, lost, damaged, or formatted data? Most people don’t — so if essential files are lost from your device, you typically have two options: taking your Mac to a technician, and paying a higher price for hard disk recovery, or familiarizing yourself with some data recovery software for Mac and letting it do the magic instead.

The best professional data recovery software analyzes the memory of your device and restores all the deleted information using special markers left in the depths of the hard drive. In reality, practically every device holds a vast array of information, since even just a month after buying a gadget, people delete significant amounts of data. You most likely don’t want to dig into the heap of old garbage to find a file you’ve accidentally deleted, which is why some good disk recovery software apps have file preview options to facilitate the process of finding the desired file.

To choose the best hard drive recovery software for your needs, here’s a selection of all the top data recovery apps compatible with macOS.

Specific to Mac users: MiniTool Mac Data Recovery

In general, MiniTool is a good enough Mac data recovery option for your casual deletion accidents that don’t involve big volumes. This app works in four different modes, allowing for some basic file recovery for Mac: rescuing data from existing, lost or deleted partitions, retrieving multimedia files buried in portable storage devices, and restoring information removed by accident.

Though a decent hard drive data recovery software overall, MiniTool is free to use on one computer only, with a maximum free restoring capacity of 1 MB, which is arguably very low if you need to recover more than a couple of low-resolution photos. Less of a drawback, but still worth mentioning, is that MiniTool doesn’t support any other devices but Macs.

How to recover all types of files with MiniTool Mac Data Recovery:

  1. Open the app and click Undelete Recovery

  2. Select your hard drive ➙ Scan

  3. Recover all the desired files from the list of results

Two-type scan feature: Recoverit

A hard drive data recovery software like Recoverit is effective, has a friendly interface, and will be helpful for both easy and more complex cases, due to its effective two-type scan feature. In addition, the app features a file filter and document preview that ease the search for necessary files and assist you in swiftly restoring the exact information you need.

What’s more, Recoverit allows you to pause and stop the file scan at any point if you’ve found what you were looking for — so you don’t have to wait for the whole process to complete. Up to 100 MB of data can be retrieved for free, and this Mac data recovery software works with over 1,000 file types and formats (given that you’re ready to pay the full subscription fee).

Although Recoverit might seem like the best hard drive recovery software, one thing to keep in mind is that it doesn’t support RAID hard drive recovery, although it’s still helpful even if the hard drive is physically damaged.

Using Recoverit is simple:

  1. Choose the device, location, and Advanced Recovery, if needed

  2. Click Start

  3. Select folders or files from the results window

  4. Click Recover

Good restoring capacity: EaseUS

There will almost always be a price associated with any data recovery for Mac app you choose, however, some of them will have a trial period with free features available to give you a good indication of whether it’s still possible to restore your files. That’s exactly the case with EaseUS, a useful data recovery software for Mac, offering 2 GB of files recovered at no cost — which is considerably more than most other apps, and potentially enough to find and retrieve what you were looking for in the first place.

As for the downsides, despite having one of the fastest scanning engines, EaseUS doesn’t feature the option to select a particular folder or location to search for lost files. Plus, if you need to recover over 2 GB, this might not be the best professional data recovery software, just because its Unlimited version is a bit pricey. However, since EaseUS is said to be the best SD card recovery software, it makes it possible to quickly dig up information lost in old or damaged memory cards and USB drives.

How to recover lost data with EaseUS:

  1. Choose the hard drive you want to scan from the main menu

  2. Click Scan

  3. Select the files to recover ➙ Recover

  4. Save your files on your Mac

Best professional data recovery software: Stellar Data Recovery

If you’re looking for a recovery app with increased customization available for a more precise file search, Stellar Data Recovery is the best recovery software for you. This recovery app features lots of adjustable preferences to narrow the search for very particular files and even has the ability to bring back long lost or deleted emails, which (you’d be surprised) comes handy more often than not.

Practically the only flaw to note with Stellar Data Recovery is its price. While the app allows you to scan and preview files for free, you need a full paid version to recover them. But if you have scratched, corrupt or partially burnt optical media like old CDs, DVDs, or Blu-ray discs that you need to get information from, this is one of the best file recovery software you could think of.

To use Stellar Data Recovery:

  1. Select the types of data you wish to recover and click Next

  2. Pick your hard drive ➙ Scan

  3. Preview data available for recovery

  4. Save the desired files to your Mac

What is the most secure file recovery app?

Are you looking for the top performing Mac data recovery software that not only provides data recovery solutions but also protects your data from accidental deletion and backup failures? Well, you’ve just found it.

Disk Drill is the essential data recovery software for Mac backed by its intuitive user interface and a ton of free disk tools that might become handy for any user. What makes this hard drive data recovery software so special is its versatility and a wide range of utilities for working with all types of devices. Disk Drill provides the most secure file recovery for Mac and supports all popular formats, meaning it’ll be able to retrieve files missing from your iPhone and iPad too, as well as Android devices.

Many Disk Drill reviews point out that its algorithm is optimized for maximum performance — a decisive point in file recovery if you want the scanning process to only take a few seconds. And to protect your files in case your computer crashes, there’s a useful data backup feature available as well.

How to recover your files with DiskDrill:

Best Recovery Tools For Mac Computers

  1. Open the app and select the hard drive you want to recover from

  2. Click Recover for the process to begin

  3. Check the scan results and Recover all the necessary files

How to delete excess data from your Mac automatically

While data recovery apps help you find and restore crucial files, it’s not the best idea to overload your Mac with information, especially one you don’t need. Going through all your desktop folders and deleting useless files is indeed a tiring process. That’s when an effective app becomes indispensable.

CleanMyMac X is a tool created specifically to boost your Mac’s performance by keeping it free of any unnecessary junk and unused files. It instantly finds and removes all system trash from your computer, searches for duplicates, and neutralizes any malware. With CleanMyMac X you can do all kinds of cleanups of your Mac in just one click.

But what if you want to delete some files forever? CleanMyMac X comes to the rescue here as well with its unique Shredder feature:

  1. Open the app and navigate to Shredder under the Files category

  2. Click Select Files…

  3. Hit Shred and your files are gone forever!

As we trust more and more information to our devices, accidentally losing files due to hard drive failures and our own mistakes becomes almost unavoidable, so it’s important to be in the know of great recovery apps like Disk Drill. And once that valuable information is back on your computer, don’t forget to keep it clean with an app like CleanMyMac X.

Best of all, both Disk Drill and CleanMyMacX are available to you completely free on Setapp, a platform of over 170 apps and utilities to enhance your Mac’s performance. Now that you know about the best data recovery software for Mac available, you’ll never have to worry about losing your files ever again!

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Last updated on December 18th, 2019 at 10:24 am

This is the reason why you must keep your data always having a backup so that you must not lose anything. But don’t be panic. If you haven’t done the backup till now, start doing it. And in this tutorial, we are providing you with a complete list of best data recovery software for Mac.

You must note that there are many top recovery software for Mac which are paid and free but we always recommend you to go for premium version as we have discussed in detail that why paid software is best.

Recommended: Best professional data recovery software

Free vs Paid software

Mac

There is no shortage of free software and we always bend towards the things usually free of cost but you must be aware of the privacy policy of the software. Nowadays, you may have some sensitive and confidential information regarding your work, your personal life and free software sell or use them illegally to earn money. So definitely spending few bucks in terms of your security and privacy is not a bad deal.

Moreover, in free software usually, our team has noticed that most of the content, files, pictures are still missing even after waiting for so long. But in a paid version, you have to be patient in front of the screen and the result surely is fruitful. And one of the best thing for data recovery software is, they are cheaper than other software categories.

What we can recover with data recovery software?

This is one of the most asked questions from the users who are looking for data recovery software. And we can not get the specific answer anywhere regarding this. But still, files containing pictures, videos, notes, music, and other such things get easily recovered. For more detail, we have explained further in the list of best data recovery software for Mac.

How we rank the data recovery software?

We the growing competition in the market, it becomes really difficult to rank recovery software. Our team has personally reviewed, checked users reviews, compare features, ease of usage, and other factors in determining the best out of best for our readers.

If you have further queries regarding any of the below software, contact us directly. Our team definitely helps you in choosing the right one as per. your requirement.

Best Data Recovery Software for Mac

1. Data Rescue

Data Rescue hits the top of the list and the reason is customer satisfaction. It is well designed, easy to use, and advanced technology to find anything from your Mac makes it rank 1 in our list. If you are not sure whether Data Rescue is best for you, go for its demo version. It scans every data as paid version and allows you to preview the recoverable data. If your data is there, you have to go for the paid version. Basically, it ensures that your money does not get wasted. What a company do more than this. Right?

Now let us head to it’s some of the other features.

Data Rescue Features

  • Advanced system scanning: Data Rescue comes with advanced deep scanning feature to ensure every data must be recovered.
  • Free demo preview: Check the recoverable pictures, files, video, music or whatever before you actually purchase a product.
  • Fast scanning speed: Many of the scanning related software takes a lot of time for its completion. Comparatively, Data Rescue is much faster even while deep scanning.
  • Robust file support: Data Rescue supports multiple file formats for every audio, video, file, folder, sheets.
  • Duplicate recognition: Whatever you have copied stuff or duplicate content, you can get notifications.

Apart from these features, there are many other advanced features that Data Rescue offers.

Plans & Pricing from Data Rescue

Data Rescue comes in Standard and Professional version. It only allows you a free demo to preview recovered file and once you have purchased the license, Data Rescue does not refund your money.

2. Disk Drill

We must say, Disk Drill, is the perfect competitor for Data Rescue. Whatever gone missing from your Mac such as critical business documents, music, photos or videos. Disk Drill is the perfect solution. As per the user’s reviews, there are no regrets for having Disk Drill. You can recover the missing file or the complete partition with Disk Drill. It even supports in recovering the SD Cards, external drives, and lot more.

Disk Drill uses Quick and Deep scan feature as per the requirement. Quick scan brings the instant result and if still, the data is not showing, the deep scan is the way to definitely get back your data. Let us have an overview of its features.

Disk Drill Features

  • Recover multiple file format: It is always hard to recover some least use formats but this is not a case with Disk Drill. It supports almost every format.
  • Device supported: Disk Drill, along with macOS, supports iOS, Android, and Windows.
  • Ease of usage: One of the best things is the usage without any technical knowledge. Either it is a quick scan or deep scan. With one click you can do it all by yourself.
  • Restore internal/ external drive: With Disk Drill, it is not compulsory to scan and restore what is within your Mac. Scan and restore data from wherever you wish.

Plans & Pricing from Disk Drill

Disk Drill comes in three plans, Basic, Pro, and Enterprise. Basic is free with limited access of usage, Pro offers you all advanced feature to recover your files without any limit for the lifetime, and Enterprise plan comes for a commercial purpose that can be used up to 10 users.

3. Wondershare Data Recovery for Mac (Recoverit)

Recoverit is another popular and widely used software from Wondershare for recovery purpose. Wondershare is a well-known company and offers trusted software to its customers. Definitely, you can trust on Recoverit too. It also offers the same feature as to preview your file before purchasing the license and if you are satisfied with the scanning result, then only go for it. On our research, we found that many professionals are using Recoverit and are completely satisfied.

The main reason for users going for it is its security protocols and safety assurance it provides while scanning your data. The other main reason is its pricing when we compare with other top competitors. Let us have an overview of its features.

Recoverit Features

  • Recover everything: Recoverit recovers your email, graphics, videos, documents, encrypted APFS, in almost every format.
  • Secure recovery: Be 100% sure while using Recoverit, its strict policy assures its customers top secure without any data theft issue.
  • Time Machine backup recovery: It supports recovery from Time Machine and you can easily restore damaged, lost data.
  • Repair and recover: If your Mac is attacked by virus or other online threats, get back your file with automatic repair.
  • Ease of usage: Just three steps involved to recover your most important file. Select> Scan> Recover.

Plans & Pricing from Recoverit

With the free version of Recoverit, you can only scan and preview your lost or damaged data and for the data recovery, you have to go for the paid version. It comes only in a single plan with affordable price.

4. MiniTool Power Data Recovery

MiniTool Power Data Recovery is safe, reliable, and trusted by millions. When we compare with all other data recovery software, it is almost same and provides all major features that users look for. MiniTool Power Data Recovery offers you the advanced feature for a search to save your time such that you hit the specific area to recover deleted data. You can specify your file, folder with different filters such as the size range, and the approximate date, and much more.

In overall ratings, definitely, MiniTool Power Data Recovery is trustable software with its smart user interface. Have a look into MiniTool Power Data Recovery.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery Features

  • Recover file anywhere: Now there is no limit for scanning for specific storage. If you have even accidentally deleted your Trash bin completely, MiniTool Power Data Recovery recovers everything.
  • Recover Mac hard drive: With its smart deep scan feature, recover every trace of data from the hard drive in minutes.
  • Safe & quick: Safely recover all your data even if it is attached by virus or other malicious attachment.
  • Partition recovery: No matters, either it is partially or completely lost partition, recover it completely.

Plans & Pricing from MiniTool Power Data Recovery

MiniTool Power Data Recovery comes with flexible plans and pricing. It comes in Personal, Commercial, Enterprise, and Technician plans. Some plans give you lifetime free upgrades and tech supports on emails and phone.

5. EaseUS Data Recovery for Mac

No list is completed without having the name of EaseUS Data Recovery. We are not following the other’s list but only giving it on our list because they deserve it. It gives you easy search filters for specific search and super easy to use. You can navigate to your lost data by filtering according to the modified dates, size, graphics, location drive so that you can narrow your deep scan to save your time.

EaseUS has a very dedicated team in putting all their effort into restoring the lost or corrupted data. According to many users, sometimes manually scanning by users does not restore data properly and for that case, EaseUS team definitely help you! Check out some of the features from EaseUS Data Recovery.

EaseUS Data Recovery Features

  • Unlimited data recovery: There is no restriction for the limit on the amount of data you need to recover.
  • 3-Steps quick recovery: With just 3 steps, recover your data and restore it on your computer.
  • Technical support: EaseUS has amazing technical support and we personally tested and the result in our case was solved under 4 hours.
  • Recover everything: Don’t restrict your recovery limits. EaseUS recover data lost due to system errors, virus attack, hardware failure, operation errors.
  • Mac data protection: Everything you recover is completely safe and protected and if it contains something unusual, you will get alert instantly.

Plans & Pricing from EaseUS Data Recovery

EaseUS comes in subscription and perpetual license. You can purchase as per your requirement. The perpetual license is a one-time purchase and otherwise, with a subscription license, you have to pay monthly.

6. Stellar Data Recovery for Mac

Stellar Data Recovery is powerful recovery software that recovers permanently deleted files knowingly or unknowingly. Even the files deleted from Trash, you can recover it using Stellar Data Recovery. It also detects unmounted hard drives for data recovery on Mac. You can recover data from Time Machine, encrypted & NTFS drives. This software is fully compatible with all the latest version of macOS.

Stellar Data Recovery Features

  • Customize scanning: Set a specific parameter to search Documents, Emails, Video, Audio files, Photos if you remind them to make your recovery in less time.
  • SMART Drive Monitor: This gives you real-time reporting of different factors such as temperature, drive health, and performance. This lets you determine the health of your system.
  • Clone Disk: This feature makes a replica of the affected drive so that you do not miss anything if a failure occurs.
  • Disk imaging: This feature let you recover data quickly.

Plans & Pricing from Stellar Data Recovery

Stellar Data Recovery offers huge discounts and promotions on its plans and comes in Professional, Premium, and Technician licenses. You can either choose the yearly license or lifetime subscription. If you have regular work in recovery data then definitely lifetime subscription suits you best.

7. Tenorshare Data Recovery for Mac

Tenorshare Data Recovery is another powerful tool to recover permanently deleted stuff from your Mac. If you are not willing to spend more, then definitely this is one of the good options. It shows you a real-time data recovery preview so that you can stop the process for further scanning. In our testing of Tenorshare Data Recovery, the scanning speed is ultimate and 100 GBs of data can be scanned under 10-15 minutes.

Tenorshare Data Recovery is built so advanced as it can recover data in every possibility. No matters whether it is due to hardware failure, human errors, software failure, virus, or natural disaster. Let us point some top features.

Tenorshare Data Recovery Features

  • Real-time preview: Customize or filter your search and preview them in real-time so as to track what files are already recovered.
  • Advanced algorithm: Its data analyzer gives you fast scanning speed with satisfactory recovery.
  • Secure recovery: Your data remain secure while recovery.

Plans & Pricing from Tenorshare Data Recovery

It is a comparatively cheaper but really effective way for data recovery. It comes in 1-Month, 1-Year, and lifetime subscription license. You can also choose your subscriptions as per your requirement.

8. Softtote Mac Data Recovery

Recovery

At the first look for Softtote Mac Data Recovery, due to its old HTML website, many users skip this software but the reality is completely different. Although the platform looks bit old the result is completed satisfied. You must definitely try this if you are looking for reasonable and affordable data recovery software for Mac.

When looking for its features, you can get almost every main feature required while scanning and recovering process. Check out a few of them below.

Softtote Mac Data Recovery Feature

  • Ease of usage: No complexity in finding any tool on Softtote Mac Data Recovery panel. Clean User Interface makes recovery simple.
  • File classification: No more full scanning. Just classify your search and start scanning your data.
  • Preview mode: Preview your file, photo before restoring and save your storage.
  • Compatibility: This software is compatible with all latest version of macOS.

Plans & Pricing from Softtote Mac Data Recovery

It comes in a single plan with a lifetime license.

9. PhotoRec

PhotoRec is free and opensource data recovery software that recovers digital photo and files across different platforms including macOS. If you are only interested in looking for a free software then you must go for this. PhotoRec also recovers corrupted and damaged files apart from just recovering deleted data. The official website claims that it supports about 480+ format extensions.

PhotoRec Features

  • Free of cost: PhotoRec is completely free of cost and one of the best free recovery tool available.
  • Multiple file support: You can recover your file whichever format it had. To check whether PhotoRec supports your file extension, check here.
  • Device compatibility: PhotoRec is not just for Mac, but also works for Windows PC, Linux, and other platforms.
  • Ignore File System: It works with every file system such as FAT, NTFS, exFAT, and others.

Plans & Pricing from PhotoRec

As already discussed, PhotoRec is completely free of cost and you just need to download it and start using it to recover your data.

10. TestDisk

TestDisk is another free and open-source software for data recovery. It is almost same as PhotoRec so you can either go for PhotoRec or TestDisk. Basically, the main purpose of TestDisk is to recover the lost partition. You can recover your corrupted or deleted file easily.

TestDisk Features

  • Lost partition: TestDisk recovery partition across different File Systems such as BeFS, BSD disklabel, DOS/Windows FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32, and others.
  • Operating System: Compatible with Mac, Windows, DOS, Linux.

Plans & Pricing from TestDisk

TestDisk is completely free of cost and you can use anytime for free data recovery.

Conclusion

We have tried our best for providing you with the list of best data recovery software for Mac. Before you purchase, use the demo version to scan and preview your deleted or damaged files, go for premium if you locate the files. As per our recommendation, if you are looking for paid software, you can choose among Data Rescue, Disk Drill, EaseUS Data Recovery. On the cheaper side, Tenorshare Data Recovery is a good option. If you are interested in a free version then we have listed PhotoRec and TestDisk.

I hope you find the information useful about the best free and paid data recovery software. For software recommendations, online deals, follow us on Facebook, Twitter.

Mac Data Recovery

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