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8 August 2023  Ashley S. Miller  Specialist of Customer Service Dept.
 

Summary
Learn how to recover data from your Mac hard drive using Disk Utility, a powerful tool available on Mac computers. Find a simple and practical method in this article.



Table of contents

table iconI. What are the functions of Mac Disk Utility?
table iconII. How to recover the erased hard disk data in Mac computer?
table iconIII. Expansion: What should I do if the disk cannot be turned on after erasing the disk with Mac Disk Utility?
accidentally erased hard drive mac

I. What are the functions of Mac Disk Utility?

Disk Utility is a utility for macOS and Mac OS X systems that enables users to perform tasks related to their hard drives and storage devices. You can use Disk Utility to do things like:
● Mount, unmount and eject disks.
● Create or allocate hard disk partitions.
● View and manage physical disks.
● Erase (format) the disk and reformat the file system.
● Verify the integrity of storage devices.
● Repair damaged hard disks.
● create and convert disk images in various formats,click here See the steps for creating a disk drive. can alsodisk image recovery to disk.
Mac Disk Utility

II. How to recover the erased hard disk data in Mac computer?

1. Can the data be recovered after Mac Disk Utility erases the hard disk?

If you accidentally erased the data on the hard drive using the “Erase” function in Mac Disk Utility, can the data be recovered? In fact, the “erase” function in Mac is equivalent to the format function in Windows system. After selecting the target disk in Disk Utility and clicking (Erase), you can see (Security Options) in the pop-up window.
mac disk utility erase security options
There are four levels of security options. If you have not manually set it, the default is to select (fastest), which is equivalent to the default selection (quick format) when the Windows system formats the disk. Therefore, if the hard disk is accidentally erased, the data inside may still be recovered.
Description of security options:
fastest: This option does not securely erase files on disk. A disk recovery application may be able to recover these files.
quick: This option writes random data once before zero-filling the entire disk. It erases information used to access your files and overwrites data 2 times.
Safety: This option is a DOE compliant 3-pass secure erase. It writes random data across the entire disk twice, and overwrites the entire disk once with known data.
safest: This option complies with the US Department of Defense (DOD) 5220-22M standard for securely erasing magnetic media. It erases information used to access your files and overwrites data 7 times.

Security option fastest
After accidentally erasing a hard drive, The drive should be stopped immediately , Avoid new data being stored and overwriting deleted/lost file data , and then use data recovery software to scan and recover data as soon as possible. The following will introduce a very practical data recovery software – Renee Undeleter , which supports the use of Mac and Windows systems. It should be noted that data recovery software is a remedial measure after data loss, and may not be able to recover hard disk data 100%. It is recommended that you use the “time machine” in the Mac computer to regularly back up hard disk data to avoid data loss.

2. Use Renee Undeleter to recover lost/deleted hard drive data

Renee Undeleter It is a software specially used to restore various data files. When you accidentally delete important files, empty the recycle bin, or format the disk/storage, you can use this tool to retrieve the lost data. The software covers four functional modules, including file recovery, format recovery, partition recovery and image creation, which can help you solve all data loss problems in an all-round way.
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Image creation Create a partition image to read and back up data;

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As a professional data recovery software, Renee Undeleter not only has comprehensive functions, but also has a very simple operation process. The specific operation steps are as follows:
Step 1: Download, install and run Renee Undeleter on a Mac computer, and select the (Format Recovery) option on the main interface.
Notice : In order to avoid data overwriting, please do not install Renee Undeleter in the disk with lost data. If the hard disk you need to recover data from is an internal hard disk and is the only hard disk in the Mac computer, please download the software to an external U disk or mobile hard disk. If the hard disk to recover data is an external hard disk, you can download and install the software to the internal hard disk of the Mac computer.
Mac version choose formatted recovery option
Data recovery function introduction:
File recovery: Quickly retrieve files lost due to accidental deletion or emptying the recycle bin.
Format recovery: Quickly recover files lost due to inaccessible or formatted partitions.
Partition recovery: Partition information can be analyzed and obtained, and the entire partition can be fully scanned.
Create a mirror: A mirror can be created for a partition to back up the current partition state. You can view the mirror creation and recovery process.
Step 2: Next select the hard drive partition where you want to recover data. After the selection is complete, click (Next).
Select the partition to scan for the Mac version
Step 3: Then wait for the scan, the scan time will depend on the size of the hard disk partition. During the scanning process, you can double-click to preview the file. If you have found the file you need to recover, you can check it and click the (Recover) button. At this time, the scan will be terminated to start recovering the file. You can also wait for the scan to end, select the files to be recovered from the scan results, and then click the (Recover) button to save the files to other disks.
Mac version waiting to scan

III. Expansion: What should I do if the disk cannot be turned on after erasing the disk with Mac Disk Utility?

Some users accidentally erased the macOS system disk and failed to boot. What should I do at this time? You may need to use macOS Recovery to reinstall macOS or restore from a Time Machine backup.

1. Reinstall macOS

Step 1: Turn on your Mac and immediately hold down (Command (⌘)+R). If prompted for a password, enter it, such as an administrator password.
Enter your administrator password to enter macOS Recovery
Step 2: Select (Reinstall macOS) from the macOS Utilities window. Click (Continue) and follow the on-screen instructions. When the installer asks you to select a disk to install on, select the erased disk. If the installer gives you the option to install on “Macintosh HD” or “Macintosh HD – Data”, choose (Macintosh HD).
macOS Utilities reinstall macos

2. Restore from time machine backup

If you have backed up the Macintosh HD hard disk data using “Time Machine” before, you can choose to restore from the backup, please connect the hard disk that saved the backup to the Mac computer, and then perform the following operations.
Step 1: Turn on your Mac and immediately hold down (Command (⌘)+R). If prompted for a password, enter it, such as an administrator password.
Step 2: Select (Restore from Time Machine Backup) from the macOS Utilities window, click (Continue), and you will be prompted that restoring the backup will erase the selected target disk,Using Migration Assistant To restore to the new computer and other information, click (Continue) after confirmation.
macOS utility to restore from Time Machine backup
Step 3: On the interface of selecting the recovery source, select the time machine backup file and click (Continue). Next, the macOS backup files backed up at different time nodes will be listed, select the desired backup file and click (Continue).
select recovery source mac
Step 4: Select (Macintosh HD) as the destination to restore the backup, the system will be restored to this disk, click (Restore) and wait for the restoration to complete, then restart the Mac device.
Select the destination mac for recovery