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Mac Data Recovery

Users of Apple computers often imagine that the Mac is more secure and less prone to viruses, operating system bugs or disk failures than other computers. This is mostly based upon personal perception though, and Macs do experience data loss, the primary causes of which are the same as on any other computer: hardware malfunction, software corruption, computer viruses, operator error, and natural disasters.

In the more serious situations, for example when the drive is not spinning or if there are unusual noises during booting or drive access, it may be advisable to contact a data recovery specialist. Attempting to recover data in these situations may only make things worse. However, if you want to attempt in-house recovery, here are some specific types of problems and possible solutions:

• If there are messages reporting that a disk is unreadable, data may have become corrupted. For this type of problem Mac OS 9.x provides the Disk First Aid program, and Mac OS X includes two utilities called Disk Utility and fsck.
• If the computer is running OS X and it appears that the operating system is corrupt or has files missing, try a Safe Boot. A Safe Boot may allow the computer to boot successfully using a reduced driver set, whereby an automatic disk check and repair may resolve the issue.
• If a Safe Boot is unsuccessful, the next best option is to install the drive as a slave in another computer and copy the files off of the disk. Bear in mind that PCs and Macs differ in the way they store files. These differences can cause information to be lost when copying files between platforms, unless the files are encoded in a format that saves the Mac-specific data with the file.

Faliure to achieve a satisfactory result from this means you will need to consult a data recovery specialist.

There is also a wealth of information available on the AppleCare Knowledge Base.