Data Recovery Digest

Loss of data can strike at any time. Of course, ideally everyone should have a secure and fool-proof backup system in place, but that isn’t always the case. Data loss can occur on any operating system. It doesn’t matter if you’re on Windows, Mac or Linux. It is sometimes the case that data loss can occur through a failure of the OS, but it can also happen through the device itself.

It’s important to distinguish between physical and logical failure. Physical failure is when the drive is actually damaged, perhaps by water or fire. The intricate components inside have been harmed and, as such, some or all of the data could fail. This type of failure requires the drive to opened and repaired and cannot be done at home. Airborne particles will damage the drive further, thus recovery specialists will need to be contacted.

On the other hand, the other type of failure, logical, can be repaired at home. This is perhaps an error from the operating system, maybe from something like dodgy formatting. This article will explore what recovery tools are available for those trying to recover data from an OS X drive.

First of all, Mac has a built-in recovery tool. Hold down Command-R during startup and OS X Recovery will begin. You can run Disk Utility to repair the drive or restore from a Time Machine backup. However, this method isn’t the best when you need good old fashioned data recovery.

R-Studio

The first tool available is R-Studio, a paid-for piece of software that recovers from local disks, removable disks, corrupted disks and more. Although you have to pay for the software, there is a trial version available that will let you assess how successful the data recovery is going to be. Handily, it also has a search facility so that you can hunt down specific pieces of data.

R-Studio is suitable for enterprise and professional usage, but it’s also great for standard users too. It has a simple and easy to use interface, ensuring that the recovery process is as stress-free as it can be.

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac

This software was first developed for Windows, but later expanded out into Mac support. This is again paid, but the free version is not a trial as such. Instead, it allows recovery of up to 2GB of data. This can be very useful if you don’t need to recover a whole load of data and just need something specific back.

The paid version costs $89.99, although this is only suitable for home use. Enterprise support requires a purchased of an unlimited licence for $499 to allow commercial usage within a business.

Prosoft Data Rescue

This software costs $99 and has a pretty neat feature that the competitors don’t. The program will scan for structural damage and, while doing so, will also create a full clone of the drive that can be exported to an external device. Recovery will then commence on this image, ensuring that no further damage is done to the original data. This is because you should stop using a drive as soon as it fails – using it more risks overwriting data that has gone missing.