• Disk Drill Mac Setapp
• Disk Drill Setapp

We’ve all experienced that horrible stomach-churning pang of dread when we delete a file that we didn’t mean to delete. Or when we realise that the file we trashed last week is the one we need for an important piece of work that’s due to be submitted tomorrow. The bad news is that there’s no Mac undelete feature. The good news is that, most of the time, and depending on what steps you’ve taken beforehand, it’s relatively easy to recover deleted files on Mac.

Get Disk Drill on Setapp, a Mac tool that brings every deleted file back — instantly. Whatever the reason of data loss, you’ll rescue it all in few minutes.

Manage all your devices and settings on Setapp. View and change subscription and personal details, switch plans, and add more Macs to your account. Try Setapp, pay for 1. Meskipun layanan Setapp masih Beta dan kamu bisa download Disk Drill gratis, namun semua aplikasi yang ada dalam layanan Setapp tidak ada yang beta, termasuk Disk Drill. Versi Disk Drill yang didownload adalah versi Disk Drill 3 full version yang merupakan versi terbaru.

Check if the file has really been deleted

The first step is to check if the file is gone. If you dragged it to the Trash but haven’t emptied it recently, it should still be there. Click on the Trash icon in the Dock and inspect the Finder window that opens. If you see the file, drag it out of the Trash and onto the Desktop. If the file isn’t there, things get more complicated, but there’s still hope.

How to recover deleted files on a Mac with Time Machine

This is the part where we remind you that you should have a regular incremental backup plan in place. Preferably, it should incorporate two separate backups to two different destinations, in different physical locations.

If you use a tool that makes a bootable clone, such as Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper, and regularly update the clone, all you have to do to recover a file is mount the clone and copy the file back to your Mac. If you take away nothing else from this article, please understand the importance of backing up your Mac on a regular basis. Your future self will thank you for it.

The simplest way to backup files on a Mac is to use Apple’s Time Machine, which is installed as part of macOS. You set it up once and forget it. Assuming you use Time Machine, it’s very easy to recover individual files. Here’s how:

1. Go to the Time Machine menu in the Mac’s menu bar and choose Enter Time Machine.

2. Swipe upwards with two fingers on your Mac’s trackpad or press the up arrow next to the Finder window that appears in order to navigate to a time before you deleted the file.

3. Once you’ve reached a backup from a time before you trashed the file, click on the Finder window and navigate the Finder in the normal way until you find the file you want to recover.

4. Press the spacebar to preview the file, and if it’s the one you want, click Restore. The file will now be restored to your current Finder and you’ll be able to open and edit it.

How to recover deleted photos on Mac

When you delete a photo in the Photos app, it doesn’t get rid of it straight away. Instead, it outs in an album called Recently Deleted and keeps it there for 30 days. Then it’s removed permanently. So, if the photo you want to recover was deleted less than 30 days ago, all you have to do is go to Recently Deleted, under Library in Photos’ sidebar, click on the photo you’re looking for and press Recover. It will then be moved back to your main Library.

How to recover music files in iTunes

If you delete a track from iTunes, it asks you if you want to move the file to the Trash. If you said no, all you have to do to recover the file is go to the Finder and navigate to your iTunes music folder (usually in Music>iTunes>iTunes Media), find the file and drag it onto the iTunes icon in the Dock.

If you said yes, and the file is still in the Trash, do the following.

1. Launch iTunes and choose Preferences from the iTunes menu.

2. Click the Advanced tab.

3. Makes sure there’s a checkmark in the box labelled 'Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library’.

4. Close Preferences.

5. Drag the file from the Trash onto the Desktop.

6. Drag it onto iTunes’ icon in the Dock.

7. When it’s imported, drag the file from the Desktop back to the Trash (a copy will have been added to your iTunes folder).

If you’ve emptied the Trash since you deleted the file from iTunes, you can use Time Machine to find it in the earlier version of your iTunes folder and recover it from there.

File recovery on Mac: How restore older versions of a document

Built in apps on macOS, such as Text Edit and Preview, as well as the iWork apps and many third party applications use a feature of the operating system known as versioning. That means that when you open a file and edit it, macOS retains copies of previous versions of the file so you can revert back to them if you need to.

Here’s how to use it:

1. Open the file.

2. Click on the File menu and choose Revert to then Browse all versions.

3. You’ll see that the screen changes and looks a bit like Time Machine.

4. To find the version you want to revert to, click on the tick marks on the right of the screen or click on the title bars of the documents on the right of the screen, or click the up arrow to the right of the documents.

5. You’ll see the date of each version displayed below its preview. If the document preview doesn’t display automatically, click Load Version to download it from iCloud.

6. When you find the version you want to revert to, click Restore or to open it as a new document, hold down the Option key and select Restore a Copy.

If you open a document, make changes to it, then decide you don’t want to save them, go to the File menu and select Revert To, then Last Opened.

Data recovery on Mac when you don’t use Time Machine

If you don’t use Time Machine, all is not lost (though we’d suggest you start using it — it’s the easiest way to recover files you accidentally delete).

There are several options when it comes to data recovery software for Mac. One of the best is Disk Drill, which scans your Mac for deleted files, allows you to specify the kind of file you’re looking for — text document, audio, file or video, for example, and lists everything it finds. You can then preview files to check if they’re what you’re looking for and recover them if they are.

The key point when using any data recovery tool is to stop using your Mac as soon as you realise you need to recover a file. When you empty the Trash, files in it aren’t deleted immediately. Instead, the reference to them in the file index is removed and the space they occupy made available for use. If you stop using your Mac immediately, the file won’t be over-written and data recovery software will have a good chance of recovering it intact. The longer you use your Mac, the more chance there is of it being over-written completely.

How to delete files safely

If you want to delete files easily and never worry about removing the wrong ones, use a great tool CleanMyMac X. Its Smart Scan relies on just one button to scan your Mac and then remove all the junk it finds. All the files are 100% safe-to-delete as CleanMyMac always refers to the Safety Database in order to correctly select and remove the junk. Moreover, you can always view the files before removing them and decide whether you really want to get rid of them. CleanMyMac is incredibly easy to use, so give it a try. It's available for a free download here.

Mac data recovery: the last resort

If none of the above solutions work, and if the deleted files are very important, the last resort is to take your Mac to a specialist data recovery company. These services use specialist software to interrogate your Mac’s drive and rebuild lost files. However, it’s a very time consuming and expensive process and a step you should only consider if the files you need are more important than the cost of recovering them or you really can’t live without them. If you do decide to use such a service, research the companies carefully and, if possible get word of mouth recommendations from people you trust. And, as with using data recovery software, stop using your Mac immediately.

To conclude, putting a file in the Trash doesn’t delete it. And even emptying the Trash doesn’t get rid of it completely. There’s still the possibility of recovering it. However, by far the best way of making sure you don’t irreversibly delete a file you need is to make regular backups of your Mac. If you do that using the built in Time Machine, recovering a file or folder you’ve trashed is very easy indeed.

Get a data lifeguard for Mac

A clone of your Mac is essentially a backup of all the data you can make bootable, so when you connect the disk to another Mac, you just reboot and carry on from where you left off.

Cloning your Mac’s main drive is a great way to protect yourself against potential problems when doing things like installing a new or updated version of macOS — especially if you’re using a beta version of macOS. Clones can also be useful during travel if you’re worried that your Mac might get lost, stolen, or damaged.

When you need to recover files from a failing system, having a clone of your hard drive helps you recover files, eliminating the possibility the failing drive will die completely before files are recovered.

Cloned backups differ from the now popular ‘incremental backup’ as a clone creates a snapshot of your Mac that is preserved for as long as you want, whereas incremental backups update themselves at regular intervals and replace older versions.

The difference between cloning and using Time Machine

As noted above, a clone is an ‘image’ of your hard drive, meaning it’s a compressed version of your entire hard drive you can revert to at any time.

Time Machine is Apple’s default method for creating incremental backups. Time Machine keeps the latest versions of a backup on your Mac, which is meant to give you the most recent ‘image’ when you buy a new computer or need to do a factory reset on your Mac. The goal is to get you back up and running quickly.

The issue is you don’t control incremental backups, and can’t define which backups are kept. Out Time Machine, for example, backs up automatically every other day or so, and keeps the last dozen-ish images. If we needed to revert to a backup from several months ago, Time Machine wouldn’t work for us.

Cloning is great for those who need control, especially for businesses that may need to clone drives with sensitive business data like tax info or client files. This is why we advocate for pro tools like Disk Drill, which allow you total control over when backups are created, which files or folders are included in a backup, and offers dense compression of backups. It’s really simple to use, too!

How to create a clone of your Mac

There are a few things you need to do when you want to clone Mac hard drive and use it as a backup. First, you need an external hard drive or SSD with a volume that’s clean and empty, which means it should either be brand new or completely erased beforehand.

Next, you’ll need software to create the clone. There are several applications that are available for Macs that you can use. We recommend going with Disk Drill. Disk Drill can help you recover data from a failed drive and allows you to create byte-for-byte copies of a disk and save them as a disk image. In other words — clone your Mac.

Finally, you need a safe place to store your clone — a backup is no good if you can’t find it when you need it.

Before you start

If you have a regular backup routine, it’s a good idea to run one before you start the process of cloning your Mac. It sounds daft to run a backup just before you create a backup, but it’s always better to be safe than sorry. If you’re using a disk that’s been used before, you’ll need to erase it completely to make it ready for the clone. We’ll assume you’re going to use the whole disk as a single volume.

If you don’t already use it, try Get Backup Pro to manage your backups. It can create full or incremental backups, sync folders across multiple Macs, and create bootable clones for new computers or reboots. You’re also able to schedule backups whenever you like, and save them to any external drive.

How to prepare your SSD or any other external drive to use for your clone

Before we tell you how to clone a hard drive Mac for use as a backup, you need to prepare a place for the clone to live. A popular option is using an external drive, preferably an SSD drive, which is less prone to failure.

To clone Mac hard drive to SSD drives you first have to format the drive you want to use. This external drive should also be used exclusively as a repository for a clone of your Mac. If you want to save several backups, be sure to buy a larger external drive, or several smaller ones. That part is entirely up to you.

Before you clone hard drive to SSD Mac requires that you dive into Disk Utility and erase that external drive. Plug the external hard drive into your Mac, and launch Disk Utility. Go to the Utilities folder in Applications and double-click on Disk Utility to open it. To clone Mac hard drive Disk Utility is Apple’s built-in solution.

Erase the drive. Click on the external drive in the sidebar and then the Erase tab. In most cases, the format will automatically be set to macOS Extended and the scheme to GUID Partition Map. You can leave it at that. If you’re running macOS Mojave and will only use the drive with a Mac using Mojave, you can choose APFS from the Format menu. Give your drive a name and click Erase.

From there, you will want to use Disk Drill, one of the best Mac hard drive clone software options around.

Disk Drill Mac Setapp

Create a disk image of your drive

Here’s a step by step guide to create a disk image using Disk Drill:

1. Open Disk Drill on your Mac
2. Connect your external drive to your Mac
3. Select “Backup” in the toolbar
4. Choose “Backup into DMG Image”
5. In the popup window, select “OK, Let’s Do It”
6. Choose your Mac’s boot disk (typically “Macintosh HD”)
7. Select “Backup”
8. When asked where you want to save your backup, select the external drive
9. Select “Save”

Disk Drill will now create an exact copy of your boot drive as a disk image, saved on the external drive, and that’s how you clone external hard drive Mac.

Once the disk image has been created, you can double-click on it to mount it in the Finder. It will then be treated like any other volume by macOS and you can drag and drop files from it to your main drive. That’s fine if you only lose a few files and folders and need to recover them, but what if your boot drive fails or you need to recover the whole disk from the image?

Restore the clone

You can’t boot a Mac from a disk image, but you can restore the clone to your Mac’s boot drive if you need to. Here’s how.

1. Shut down your Mac
2. Restart in recovery mode. Restart your Mac while holding down the Command and “R” keys.
3. Erase your boot drive. Click on Disk Utilities in the Utilities application and then Erase. If the disk image you’re restoring from has macOS High Sierra installed, choose APFS from the format menu, otherwise, choose macOS Extended (Journaled). Give it a name and click Erase.
4. Restore the disk image. Still in Disk Utility, click on the drive you just erased. Now go to the File menu and choose Restore. Click the Image button and navigate to the disk image you created in Disk Drill. Then Restore.

Alternatively, if you know beforehand that you’re going to need to boot from the clone, choose Create Boot Drive and then Boot Drive for data recovery instead of Backup when you've created the disk image of your drive.

Disk Drill Setapp

Recover files from disk image

If you don’t need to completely replace your Mac’s startup disk, but need to recover files from a disk image — perhaps because you created the image from a failing drive that has now failed completely — you also can do that in Disk Drill.

1. Mount the drive. Double-click on the disk image in the Finder to mount it.
2. Recover data in Disk Drill. Select the mounted volume in Disk Drill’s main window and click Recover. Follow the on-screen instructions to scan the volume, identify and recover the files you need. Remember that you should never recover files to a failing hard drive, so choose a destination that you know is stable.

Bonus Tip: How to keep your Mac clean?

Keeping your Mac clean is important. It helps your Mac run smoother, and allows your clones to be organized for an optimal starting point when you need to reboot from a backup.

CleanMyMac X is the best tool for keeping your Mac running at peak performance. It can run routine scans, and is a great way to delete apps or files you no longer need. It removes clutter from your Mac and keeps it running smooth.

Another great app to download is iStat Menus, a system monitor that lives in your menu bar and provides insight on your CPU, GPU, and RAM use as well as your battery health statistics and various other tidbits you’ll want to keep track of, like how hot your computer gets.

Conclusion

Backups are really important, even if you only create them every few months. Incremental backups are good, too, but when you’re trying to recover files from months ago, this method likely fails you.

All of the apps we mentioned today – Get Backup Pro, CleanMyMac X, Disk Drill, and iStat Menus – are available for free as part of a 7-day trial of Setapp, a suite of nearly 200 excellent Mac apps. When your trial is over, Setapp is only $9.99 per month, an excellent bargain when you consider the number of apps you will have access to. Give Setapp a try today!

Meantime, prepare for all the awesome things you can do with Setapp.

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