4 Easy Ways to Recover Data from Dead Mac Hard Drive

Way 1. The Easiest Way to Recover Data from Dead Mac Hard Drive

Instead of going through dozens of stuffs to get files off dead Mac, you can use a professional MacBook pro hard drive failure recovery software like Tenorshare 4DDiG for Mac Data Recovery to recover data from a crashed, failed, corrupted, or damaged Mac hard drive without any efforts.

Buy Tenorshare 4DDiG with coupon code: 4DART30OFF to enjoy 30% OFF now!

• Download and install Tenorshare 4DDiG for Mac on a working Mac computer.

• Insert a blank USB drive into your Mac. Run the program and select Recover Data from Crashed System.

  

• Tenorshare 4DdiG for Mac will format your USB drive and create a bootable drive for your Mac. You will see the following when your drive is ready.

  

• Insert your drive into your dead Mac, boot-up the Mac and hold down Option, choose your drive, and your Mac will boot from it. Select the files you want to recover and click on Export.

  

Way 2. Turn Your Dead Mac Hard Drive into an External Hard Drive and Recover Data

Since the hard drive on your Mac has died, you probably can't boot-up your Mac as there are no system files for your Mac to boot-up from. In this situation, what you can do is you can remove the dead hard drive from your Mac, put it into an external drive enclosure, and then use another machine to recover files from the drive.

If that sounds confusing to you, the following steps will break down the entire procedure into small steps for you to follow. Just follow the steps given below and you should be able to recover data from dead MacBook.

• Remove the dead hard drive from your Mac using the official instructions. The manufacturer website will have steps on how you can remove a hard drive from your Mac.
• Once the dead hard drive has been removed from your Mac, put it into an external drive enclosure.
• Connect the external drive to a working Mac using a suitable cable.
• On Windows PC: Open the Windows File Explorer, double-click to check the hard drive data.
• On Mac: Double-click the disk icon on the desktop and check if you can access the hard drive and its data.

If you can access your Mac hard drive, then you can select the files you want and save them on your chosen location.

Way 3. Create a macOS Bootable USB disk and Recover Data from Dead MacBook

If you would like to recover data on the same Mac where you lost your data, you can create a bootable USB drive of macOS and use it to boot-up your dead Mac. Then, you can use a data recovery software to recover your data. The following shows how you can go about doing it on your machine.

• On your secondary Mac machine, download the macOS Installer from the App Store.
• Plug-in a compatible USB drive to your Mac. This will become the bootable USB media for macOS.

• Launch the Terminal app on your Mac by clicking on Launchpad and searching for and clicking on Terminal.

  

• When the Terminal app launches, type in one of the following commands to create a bootable macOS USB drive. Make sure to use the command that is for your version of macOS.

  Catalina:

  sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Catalina.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume

  Mojave:

  sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Mojave.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume

  High Sierra:

  sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume

  Sierra:

  sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app

  El Capitan:

  sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app

  
• Your bootable USB drive should now be ready. Plug it in to your dead Mac and boot your Mac from the bootable USB drive.
• When the Mac boots-up successfully, you can copy the files you want and save them to a safe place.

You should have successfully recovered lost files from your dead hard drive on your Mac.

Way 4. Using Target Disk Mode to Recover Data from Dead/Crashed Mac

If you have two Mac computers, you can use Target Disk Mode to transfer data from your dead Mac to the working Mac computer. But you need to be noted that you must use either Thunderbolt or Firewire cable to do the task and FileVault must be disabled on your Mac (FileVault encryption is enabled by default on Mac). The following is how you recover data from dead Macbook Air using Target Disk Mode:

• Connect both of your Macs using either Thunderbolt or Firewire.
• Turn on your dead Mac while holding down the T button.

• When the computer starts, your dead Mac’s storage will appear as a drive on your working Mac. Copy all the files from that drive to your working machine.

  

Your data should be recovered. This is how to recover data from a dead Mac using Target Disk Mode.

Summary

If your Mac hard drive ever crashes or dies, our guide above should teach you how to recover data from dead Mac so you know how you can get your lost files back on your machine. Tenorshare 4DDiG for Mac Data Recovery is highly recommended to recover data from broken MacBook since it has helped a lot users with MacBook pro hard drive failure data recovery. We hope it helps you out.