Best Ways to Free Recover Failed Mac Hard Drive Data

Disk Utility is a free macOS application that can help you resolve Mac hard drive problems. When your startup disk is corrupt, your Mac won’t boot. In that case, you need to launch Disk Utility in macOS Recovery mode and repair the disk. Steps are as follows:

Step 1: Power on your Mac and immediately press and hold Command + R keys. Release the keys when the Apple logo appears. Your Mac boots into macOS Recovery mode.

Step 2: From the macOS Utilities window, click Disk Utility and then click Continue. The Disk Utility window will appear.

Step 3: From the left pane of Disk Utility, select Macintosh HD, the startup disk. Click the First Aid tab from the top pane, then click Run.

Step 4: If Disk Utility repaired your Mac startup disk, restart your Mac and boot into Desktop normally. If Disk Utility fails, try the next troubleshooting method.

One limitation of Disk Utility is that it can’t repair a corrupt partition map. To repair the partition map on a startup disk, you need to erase the Mac storage drive with a new partition scheme. But erasing the drive without backing it up will result in data loss.

Single User mode in macOS can be of great help to fix startup disk issues. When your Mac doesn’t boot, use the file system consistency check (fsck) command in Single User mode to repair the startup drive. Follow the given steps:

Step 1: Power on your Mac, then press and hold Command +S keys. Release the keys when some text appears on a black background. Your Mac will load the Single User mode.

Step 2: In the command prompt, type the command /sbin/fsck – fy, then press Return. If Macintosh HD is healthy, it will display the message: “The Volume (name) appears to be OK.” Restart your Mac normally.

Step 3: If fsck repaired the damaged hard drive, it shows the message: “File System Was Modified”. Re-run the above fsck command till you get the OK message. Restart Mac normally.

When your Mac doesn’t boot even after fixing the drive, use a bootable Mac data recovery software to recover your lost data from the failed hard drive. Steps are as follows:

Note: You need to activate Stellar Data Recovery Free Edition for Mac to the professional or higher edition to unlock the bootable data recovery feature.

Step 1: Launch the Stellar Data Recovery Professional software on a working MacBook, iMac, or Mac mini. Plug-in an external USB flash drive of a minimum of 8 GB to create a recovery drive.

Step 2: From the software’s home screen, click the Click here link present at the bottom-left corner or go to More Tools > Create Recovery Drive.

Step 3: From the dialogue window, select the USB flash drive and then click the Create Recovery Drive button. Click OK on the confirmation message box. Let the tool create a recovery drive.

Warning: The drive will be formatted in the recovery drive creation process. So, make sure the flash drive is empty or back up the drive before clicking OK.

Step 4: Plug-in the USB recovery drive to the non-booting Mac. Power on the Mac, then press-hold the Option key. Release the key once the Startup Manager opens. Select the Recovery Drive.

Step 5: From the macOS Utilities window, select Stellar Data Recovery. When it opens, customize the scan, then click Next. Select Macintosh HD for data recovery then toggle on Deep Scan.

Note: For macOS Catalina, Mojave, or High Sierra, you need to disable system integrity protection to scan the startup drive.

Step 6: After the scan, preview all the recoverable files from Macintosh HD. Click Recover and specify another external hard drive as a save destination. Then, click Save.

Step 7: Once data recovery is performed, erase Macintosh HD by using Disk Utility in macOS Recovery mode. If the failed hard drive can’t be fixed, replace the drive with a new one, preferably an SSD.

We hope the post helped you to free recover failed Mac storage drive using the troubleshooting ways described in detail here. As a best practice, do the following:

• Back up your Mac by using Time Machine
• Use Disk Utility, FSCK, or Target Disk mode whenever required
• Replace failed Mac hard drive with SSD and restore Mac from backup
• Use Stellar Data Recovery for Mac for your troubled hard drive. Compare all editions.
• Keep a USB recovery drive ready to salvage a non-booting Mac