Data loss is a common issue, whether it's because of accidental deletion, virus/malware attack, system crash, hardware failure, or some other reason. Fortunately, most of the time data recovery is possible. You simply need to use the right data recovery tool.
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When it comes to data recovery tools, TestDisk is a popular name among many users. But this tool is too complicated to use for beginners, here we'll show you how to use TestDisk on Windows and Mac computer.
What Can TestDisk Do for You?
TestDisk is a free powerful data recovery tool that has been designed to help users recover deleted data, lost partitions, make non-booting disks bootable again, and more. Available for both Windows and Mac, TestDisk has a command line interface and it is capable of recovering a wide variety of files.
- Bonus. An Easier and Higher Success Rate Recovery Software - AnyRecover
Comparison of TestDisk and AnyRecover
1How to Use TestDisk On Windows 10/8/7
To check whether your MacBook is with an HDD or SSD, click on the Apple icon on the top left of your screen, select About This Mac, and select Storage. For example, this MacBook is with an SSD. Hard drive performance is measured in two categories: read speeds and write speeds. For years, early adopters and beta testers would partition their Mac's hard drive in order to test macOS, either a new or beta version. Partitioning your hard drive actually creates a separate container on your hard drive that is limited in its abilities. Therefore the only way to really make a judgement about the speed of the storage inside your Mac is to use a tool such as the BlackMagic Disk Speed Test, or the AJA System Test Lite (free from the. Disk Benchmark monitors performance in hard drives, solid-state drives, RAID arrays, as well as connections to storage, allowing you to tune your storage system for optimal performance. Compatible with macOS®, ATTO Disk Benchmark measures your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes.
Using TestDisk to recover deleted files/folders may seem like a lengthy and complicated process, but if you follow the steps right you will come to find that recovering deleted files via this tool is not as difficult as it seems.
Mac hard drive test software - creating the definitive list. Disk Utility, diskutil (FREE, comes with OS) Smartmon Tools (FREE, Open Source) SMARTReporter ($4.95 for commercial version, but an older version is FREE) Scannerz Lite ($21.95) Scannerz with Phoenix and FSE-Lite ($39.95) Disk Tools Pro ($79.99) Disk Warrior ($99.00) Drive Genius ($99.00).
Follow these instructions to use TestDisk on Windows: How do you update mac.
Step 1. Launch TestDisk on your computer. Once it is launched, press Enter.
Step 2. Select Create option and press the Enter button. TestDisk will scan for connected hard drives.
Step 3. Once you see the list of hard drives, use the arrow keys to select the disk that you want to scan and press Enter.
Step 4. On the next screen, choose the partition table type (Intel) and continue by pressing the Enter button.
Step 5. Now select Analyze and press Enter. TestDisk will start analyzing your selected hard drive.
Toshiba Hard Disk Test Utility
Step 6. Once the analysis is complete, use the Quick Search option to scan the drive.
Step 7. Now you will see the list of lost/deleted files. From that list, navigate to the files/folders that you want to recover and press the 'C' button to copy them.
Step 8. Next, select the destination folder to copy your files and press 'Y' to start the copying process. TestDisk will copy the selected files to the folder where it is running from. Once all the selected files are copied, you will see a 'Copy Done!' message on the screen.
2How to Use TestDisk On Mac
Google download app for mac. The process to use TestDisk to recover deleted files on Mac is quite similar to the process on Windows with few differences.
Follow these instructions to use TestDisk on Mac:
Step 1. On your Mac, launch the Terminal program.
Step 2. Once the Terminal is launched, input sudo TestDisk to recover files from a hard drive and press Enter.
Step 3. Next, choose No Log option and press Enter to continue.
Step 4. You will see a list of connected hard drives. Select the hard drive that you want TestDisk to analyze and press Enter. To choose the partition that you want to scan, select it and press P.
Step 5. Next, choose EFI GPT option if you have the recent Apple Mac or Mac if you have an old PPC Mac and press Enter.
Step 6. After that, select Analyze and press Enter. Next, perform a Quick Search.
Step 7. Once the scanning is complete, you will see the list of lost/deleted files. You can browse the files and folders via the arrow keys of your keyboard. Navigate to the files/folder that you want to recover and press C to copy them. You will need to copy files/folders one by one.
Step 8. When you press C to copy the file/folder, TestDisk will ask you the location to copy the selected data. Simply navigate to your desired folder and press Y. The copying process will begin.
If everything goes right, your selected file/folder will be copied to your desired destination. You can then navigate to that folder to view those files. If the copying process is taking too long or seems to be stuck, then you can always quit TestDisk by pressing the Q button.
An Easier and Higher Success Rate Recovery Software
If you are looking for a more user-friendly option to recover your deleted files, then it is recommended that you give iMyFone AnyRecover a try. This software has a user-friendly interface that is suitable for beginners. You can use iMyFone AnyRecover to recover all types of files quickly and conveniently.
Features of AnyRecover
- Recovery all types of files e.g. photos, archives, videos, documents, emails, etc.
- Recover deleted files from any storage medium, including hard drive, external hard drive, SD card, digital camera, etc.
- Very high successful data recovery rate - Up to 98%
- User-friendly software interface enables you to recover your lost files as easy as possible.
Comparison of TestDisk and AnyRecover
Deep Scan |
Preview Data |
External Devices Recovery |
Scan Specific Path |
Raw Recovery |
Steps to Recover Lost Files
Step 1. Open iMyFone AnyRecover on your computer then select the location where you want to recover files from.
Step 2. Click on 'Start' to begin the process, you can pause to locate your desired files or stop it during the scanning.
Step 3. Preview your lost files, select those you want to restore then click on 'Recover'.
Conclusion
TestDisk is a powerful free data recovery tool that is capable of recovering all kinds of deleted data. However, this software is not easy to use as it has a command line interface. If you are looking for a user-friendly alternative that is just as reliable, then iMyFone AnyRecover is a recommended option for you.
Keeping you Mac's hard drive or SSD healthy is hugely important. By monitoring and checking your Mac hard drive's health, you can anticipate potential problems and prevent potentially catastrophic crashes. How do you know if your Mac is working properly?
Fortunately, there are a number of tools available that allow to to check the health of a drive and fix problems before they become serious.
Best Apps to Check Your Mac Hard Drive Health
One of the best apps for alerting you to potential problems is iStat Menus, available in Setapp. Once you've installed it, iStatMenus sits in your Mac's menu bar and monitors not just your hard drive, but its CPU, RAM and network traffic, among other things.
iStat Menus, and the other disk monitoring tools available for macOS, monitor what is knows as SMART status. SMART stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology and is installed on most hard drives and SSDs. In order to use it, you need software to analyze and display what it finds, and that's where iStatMenus comes in. Check out how to clone mac hard drive.
Monitoring SMART reports won't prevent your hard drive from failing, but it will reduce the likelihood of problems occurring.
Note: As of 2016, Apple no longer allows software tools to check the SMART status of an SSD. So iStatMenus won't repot anything on Macs shipped in 2016 or later.
There are other steps you can take to keep your hard drive or SSD healthy. CleanMyMac X has a number of maintenance routines. While most of them are designed to keep your Mac running smoothly, one of them is an excellent way to keep your hard drive in good shape.
How to verify Startup disk
- Launch Setapp, search for CleanMyMac, and open it.
- When CleanMyMac has launched, look on the left hand side of its window for the Speed section and click Maintenance.
- Click the check box next to 'Repair Disk Permissions' to verify startup disk and then click the 'Run' button at the bottom of the window.
- Click OK in the dialog box that opens. Click 'Run' again. View the result
Identifying bad sectors with Disk Drill
Sectors are blocks of space on a disk drive and bad sectors are blocks that cannot be read because, for whatever reason, they're damaged. When Disk Drill attempts to recover data from a hard drive that's failed or one where you've mistakenly deleted files, it marks sectors it can't read from as bad. That means that it won't try to recover data from them in the future. How to free up space on my mac air.
You can't fix bad sectors, the drive's firmware should identify them and prevent them from being written to. If there's data stored in them and you need to recover it, you're out of luck. But by monitoring how many of them there are on a drive, you can keep an eye on its health and decide whether it's time to replace it, if the number of bad sector starts to increase quickly.
Here's how to identify bad sector in Disk Drill:
- Open Disk Drill app in Setapp. When it launches, it will ask if you want to 'Monitor my disks for hardware issues'. Say Yes. If you already have Disk Drill installed but didn't check that option when you launched it the first time, go to the Preferences, click the SMART tab and check the box next to 'Monitor my disks for hardware issues.'
- Start a recovery session. In Disk Drill's main window, select the volume 'Macintosh HD', or whatever you've called your Mac's hard drive. Click Recover. Let the recover session run and complete.
- Check bad sectors. Once the recovery session has completed and saved, go back to the main Disk Drill window. Click the gear icon next to the drive you ran the recovery session on and click the bottom item on the menu 'Specify bad blocks.' This tool is designed to allow you to tell Disk Drill which blocks are bad and you don't want it to scan, but it will also display bad sectors it has identified.
How to avoid problems from an unhealthy hard drive
You should always backup your hard drive regularly, but it's even more important to do it when you suspect your hard drive is having problems. If you identify problems with a hard drive using any of the steps above, you should consider increasing the frequency of your backups and test them to make sure you can recover data if you need to – a backup routine is useless if you can't restore data. You should also consider using Get BackUp Pro to make a complete clone of the drive, that way, in an emergency you can boot from the clone and be back up and running immediately. Click here to read about how to backup your Mac. Get Backup Pro, also available in Setapp, is an excellent tool for making regular backups.
How to recover from a failed hard drive
If it's already too late and your hard drive has failed and lost data, you should try to recover the data before you do anything else.
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