How to recover data from Mac hard drive if Mac hard drive is dead?

Yes, a Mac Hard drive can become dead and if such a case happens have you ever thought of, what will happen to the data there on the hard drive. I faced such an issue and tried to find out the solution to the problem what I found out was that the data solution to the problem is really easy. The is recoverable even if the Mac Hard Drive becomes dead.

Mac Hard drive becomes dead when the it's own operating system no longer integrates with the OS X Operating system which is driving the computer. There is a built in Mac utility to help you recover the data, what you require is another Mac for it.

The procedure to recover that data from a dead Mac Hard drive is known as "Target Mode”, What is required is both the Mac computer should have a Firewire port, and a firewall cable is also required.

Now as we have all the essentials for the data recovery process lets start the recovery process.

• Keep both the Mac, one with the dead hard drive and other Mac beside. Remove all the cables from the Mac that has the dead hard drive.

• Now reattach all the cables to the dead hard drive Mac and plug in the system.

• Now turn on the second Mac, wait for the desktop to appear, Take the firewall cable and connect the cable to each of the Mac's firewire input.

• Now you need to turn on the Mac that has the dead hard drive, what you need to take care while turning it on is that you hold the “T” key, and keep it holding.

• You only need to release the “T” key when you see a dead hard drive icon on the second Mac.

• Now as you see the icon on of the dead hard drive on the second Mac you need to double click the icon to open it's window. Now drag all the data you can see in the window to the desktop, this may take minutes to hours depending on your data on the drive.

• Once the data is being copied move the dead hard drive icon to trash, now press the power button of the Mac that has the dead hard drive till the time you are sure that the system has shut down.

• Now disconnect all the cables from both the Mac PC and rearrange all the cables you will see that the data has been recovered.

So as I told that the data recovery process is really easy after a hard drive is dead on Mac. But, if in case you don't have a second Mac or if in case the things didn't go as per the plan then, will the data be still recoverable?

Yes, why not, in such a case Mac data recovery software can come to the rescue, just make sure that you go for a mac recovery software that has the option of a BOOT CD. You will just then need to start the PC and insert the data recovery BOOT CD to the system and the rest will be done by the software.

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How to cure hard drive problems & recover data from Mac formatted hard drive

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Mac OS X hard drive is the only reliable hard drive what I feel, I am saying so because of the well known fact that the data in the drive is held in the hard drive even after the power failure, the data won’t be deleted from the hard drive till the time you delete it. But we all face the situation when we have to replace old Mac hard drive from a new one or when the data in the hard drive is corrupt most of the people will recommend to format the hard drive to correct almost all of the hard drive problems and we usually format the hard drive, in the process many a times we loose crucial data. Mac data recovery software can be useful in that situation

I also got stuck in a similar situation like this so firstly I tried to recover the data from the Mac OSX itself but when it was not possible through the OS I tried several other ways to recover the data. The whole process that I followed to recover the data is explained below. I did all this to prove the point that the data is recoverable even after formatting the hard disk and also to check that are most f the problems cured by formatting hard drive or not.

I did this to format the hard drive
Open hard drive
• Then Disk Utility program.
• Select a drive you want to format.
• Mac OS X can not be formatted unless you boot your system from installation disk.
• Click >>Erase Tab
• Select what kind of format you want to do
• Enter a label name of your hard drive.
• Click >>Erase button and the formatting process will resume

I realized that the issues with the hard disk were corrected but in the process I lost all my data, now another problem was in front of me was how recover lost data. I tried Mac time machine but that too will recover data only if the backup of the data is being taken prior on it.

I researched a lot and found out that even after formatting the hard drive the data isn’t deleted from the hard drive it is replaced by new empty file system and the old data becomes inaccessible. But then also the data can only be recovered if there is a data recovery for Mac software. I searched a lot and compared several Mac data recovery software, most of the software have the same features only the price as well as the OS support is what differs, Instead of buying the software in the first go I decided to try the free to use version of the Mac file recovery software.

These software run on pretty simple technology, the software firstly will scan your hard drive and then show you the preview of the files those can be recovered you can not get the files back to the system till the time you purchase it but yes you can at least get the files in the preview section of the software if you find your files there that means the files will be recovered properly.

Finally I got the data back and the point I wanted to prove was also solved.