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Top 7 Best Data Recovery Software for Mac
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Looking for data recovery software to restore lost or deleted data on your Mac? We’ve put dozens of recovery tools through our real-life recovery challenge to see which ones deserve a spot on your computer.
In this article, we break down our top 7 data recovery software for Mac. We provide recommendations based on their usability, recovery performance, and value. You’ll get a deep look into each app without needing much tech knowledge yourself. Read on!
Our Criteria for Evaluating Data Recovery Software for Mac
Over the years, we’ve tested dozens of data recovery software solutions across different operating systems (and with varying degrees of data loss). We found that there are certain characteristics that make the best, the best.
For this project, we came up with a definitive set of criteria:
- Our inner score
We created a scoring system that considered recovery performance, speed, features, price, etc. While the apps on this list don’t always score high on every rubric, we chose the ones with the best overall marks.
- Usability
We prioritized apps that were easy to use for beginners and got the job done with a few clicks.
- Recovery Performance
We tested how each app solves common data loss scenarios, such as RAW drives, corrupted partitions, system errors, etc. The apps on this list are either really good at solving one problem or useful for every scenario.
- System Compatibility
We made sure that our top apps were compatible with the latest Mac operating systems, devices, and file systems. Again, we got a mix of apps that were either great at one thing (for ex. HFS+ partitions only) or good at everything.
- Scan speed
We gave preference to apps that had a fast scanning speed in consideration of users who need to recover massive amounts of data quickly.
- Extra Features
We selected apps with additional features that are not directly related to data recovery but are helpful for data loss scenarios.
- Price
We recommended the most cost-effective apps that can justify their value to certain users (either they were super good at one thing or great at everything).
Want to learn more about the dozens of Windows and Mac file recovery software we tested? Maybe you already have an app in mind and want to see how it performs in real life.
Check out our in-depth data recovery software reviews for Mac and Windows, where we publish our test results! We provide detailed breakdowns in each article, similar to the content you'll find below.
Top 7 Best Data Recovery Software for Mac
#Welcome to the Thunderdome! What lies ahead is a brutal head-to-head competition among the best hard drive recovery software for Mac in 2023.
We ranked our top picks based on usability, performance, and value, and we give our honest reviews based on real-life recovery challenges.
1. Disk Drill for Mac
Expert's Favourite
4.79 • Best choice for Mac users – Disk Drill for Mac combines ease of use with excellent data recovery capabilities and many extra features that greatly increase its overall value.
macOS Windows
Freemium Some features are provided free of charge, but money is required to unlock the rest
Free preview
$89...$598
Disk Drill is a highly popular data recovery software for Mac that we’ve covered a lot on this website. It provides a ton of tools that can help users solve almost any data loss scenario. Disk Drill is comprehensive but accessible, and it’s one of our team’s absolute favorites.
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Modern interface – Disk Drill has one of the best-looking graphical user interfaces on the market. It’s super easy to use, making it a great choice for beginners.
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Great recovery performance and features – It can resolve almost any data loss scenario, including RAW disks, corrupted or lost partitions, RAID data loss, and more. Users can also sort, filter, and search their files and can rely on excellent session management.
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Useful extra features – Disk Drill provides extra features that are actually useful for recovery or disk maintenance, such as image backup and S.M.A.R.T. monitoring.
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Constant updates – Disk Drill is typically updated every 3 months, which means that it’s constantly being optimized for new technology and bugs are dealt with swiftly.
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Apple Silicon – To build on the last bullet, Disk Drill was among the first to fully support the latest macOS and Apple Silicon ships (M1/M2).
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No free recovery for macOS – Only the Windows Basic version offers free data recovery. However, you can scan and preview your data as much as you want.
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No drive cloning – You can’t clone drives directly to another drive. However, you can create a disk image of it using Disk Drill’s Byte-to-byte backup feature.
2. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac
3.81 • Respectable free data recovery limit – Thanks to its generous free data recovery limit, EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac is worth trying despite its shortcomings.
macOS Windows
Freemium Some features are provided free of charge, but money is required to unlock the rest
Recover up to 2 GB for free
$89.95...$499
If you’ve been searching about data recovery, there’s a 90% chance you’ve encountered EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard. There are a few deal-breakers when it comes to this app, but its generous amount of free recovery and its respectable performance make it a strong option to consider.
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Nice GUI – EaseUS provides a modern and sleek user interface. It’s visually one of the best on the market.
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Free data recovery – You get up to 2 GB of free data recovery for Mac. You can get an additional free 1500 MB if you post about the app on social media (make sure to check their website).
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Fast scanning – EaseUS scans data pretty fast – great for users who need to recover a large number of files. However, postprocessing can take longer, though.
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Infrequent updates – The developers usually update EaseUS only twice a year. We expect more updates for a paid app with EaseUS’ price tag.
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Struggles with small files – The FAT32 and ExFAT scanners struggle with files up to 1-2 KB when large quantities of them are in a single folder.
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Limited preview – EaseUS struggles to preview certain file formats as well as files that are larger than 100 MB.
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Expensive – EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard is pricey! It’s $89.95 per month, $119.95 per year, or $169.95 for a lifetime license.
3. R-Studio for Mac
3.70 • Capable but potentially intimidating – There’s a good reason why R-Studio for Mac is loved by professionals, but regular home users have different priorities.
macOS Windows Linux
Freemium Some features are provided free of charge, but money is required to unlock the rest
Recover files smaller than 256KB
$79.99...$899
R-Studio is one of the most powerful tools available for consumers… In the right hands. However, it can be intimidating and even frustrating for users who want a simple data recovery solution. We like it and technicians love it – but is it the right tool for you?
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Works with older devices – R-Studio works for Macs released as early as 2005. It can also recover CDs, DVDs, ZIP drives, and even floppy disks!
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Superior RAID support – Most common RAID levels are supported (up to 50E and more) and R-Studio will even reconstruct a broken array automatically.
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Custom file signatures – You can train R-Studio to recognize any file signature by simply adding it to the app.
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Forensic recovery – Can generate forensic data that includes more information about the scanned files as well as the computer’s hardware configuration (R-Studio Technician and above).
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Bootable version – In case your Mac refuses to boot, you can launch R-Studio from a flash drive or CD.
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Underwhelming preview feature – R-Studio struggles to preview most file types, including RAW photos. It’s also slow.
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Lacking session management – R-Studio is sorely lacking in session management. It can’t auto-resume the scanning process, especially if your drive gets disconnected due to errors.
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Not updated often – It usually takes more than 6 months for R-Studio to get updated.
4. Wondershare Recoverit for Mac
3.44 • Not as wonderful as it may seem at first. – Even though the software doesn’t look like it, it’s actually a one-trick pony that can be recommended mainly to those who want to recover damaged video files.
macOS Windows
Freemium Some features are provided free of charge, but money is required to unlock the rest
Recover up to 100 MB for free
$75.99...$449.96
Wondershare Recoverit is a peculiar data recovery software from the makers of the popular video editing app Filmora. It has a specific set of strengths and weaknesses that make it a lifesaver for some users but somewhat useless to others.
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Advanced video tools – Recoverit provides tools that can exclusively search for deleted videos and even repair video files by stitching their fragments.
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Bootable drive – Users can create a bootable recovery drive for Macs that won’t boot. We like that you can create it directly within the app.
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Advanced image preview – Recoverit’s preview tool supports a large variety of image file types, which users can scale and rotate within the preview.
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Fast scanning speed – We were able to scan large drives relatively quickly. For users who need to recover a lot of HD videos, this is good news for you!
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Limited Apple Silicon support – The app’s functionality is limited on M1 and M2 Macs due to the lack of kext (Kernel Extensions) in the new architecture.
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Scan volumes only – You can’t scan whole drives, only volumes. More on this later.
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Limited preview – Recoverit’s preview tool doesn’t always work and may prompt you to recover the file instead, which requires a license. This is counterintuitive because users typically want to preview files first to confirm that they can be recovered.
5. PhotoRec for Mac
3.31 • Excellent value in a not-so-appealing package – PhotoRec for Mac delivers decent data recovery performance, but the lack of a graphical user interface makes it more difficult to take advantage of it.
macOS Windows Linux
Free All features are provided free of charge, and the software can be used, studied, and modified without restriction
None
Free
PhotoRec is a well-respected open-source data recovery tool that is 100% free forever. For the right user, it’s one of the best tools out there despite its (forgivable) limitations. We actually think it’s the best free data recovery software for Mac. Keep reading to learn why.
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Free and open-source – PhotoRec is 100% free and open-source, which means that anyone can view its source code online.
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Signature scanner – Despite rarely getting updated, PhotoRec recognizes a lot of file types, both old and new.
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Lightweight – The app is only 25.1 MB and runs well on older machines.
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Can scan RAW drives – PhotoRec works even for disks without a file system.
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No direct support – PhotoRec is manned by volunteers. You can only get help on the official forums and by asking other users.
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Signature scanner only – PhotoRec’s signature scan is awesome partly because it’s the only scan type available.
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Super basic interface – QPhotoRec (PhotoRec + GUI) is way more accessible than PhotoRec’s original interface, but it’s still a far cry from the rest of its competitors.
6. Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac
3.30 • Not as stellar as its name suggests – Stellar Data Recovery for Mac may be one of the most popular data recovery applications for Mac, but it’s certainly not the best one.
macOS Windows
Freemium Some features are provided free of charge, but money is required to unlock the rest
Recover up to 1 GB for free
$69.99...$399
Stellar Data Recovery is a super well-known name in the data recovery software market. It has a nice interface and useful image and video repair tools that actually work. However, it has some major issues that you should know before downloading it yourself.
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Lots of extra features – The app is packed with cool features that genuinely add value for the user.
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Custom file signatures – You can train Stellar to recognize custom file signatures.
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Backup tools – Stellar provides a cloning tool and an image backup feature. These can be a lifesaver if you have a failing drive.
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Nice GUI – Stellar’s GUI is clean and modern. We wish its user experience was more well thought-out, but it definitely looks impressive.
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Scan parameters – You can configure the signature scan to only search for certain file types, which can make the process much faster.
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Crashes – Stellar crashes a lot regardless of scan type, device, and file system. This was disappointing considering that it’s a paid app.
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M1/M2 system disk scan – You can’t scan your system disk on M1 and M2 Macs… The scan simply won’ start.
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Only 118 file signatures – Stellar only recognizes 118 file signatures. Even the free app PhotoRec had a better signature scanner.
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Partition scan only – If your drive has partitions, you can only scan those. You can’t scan the entire drive.
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Limited preview – The preview tool only works on a few file types and can only display data under 100 MB.
7. Data Rescue for Mac
3.26 • Oldie but not goodie – Data Rescue for Mac is among the oldest applications of its kind, but its age is starting to show in multiple not-so-favorable ways.
macOS Windows
Freemium Some features are provided free of charge, but money is required to unlock the rest
Preview only
$19...$399.96
Data Rescue is a living dinosaur among data recovery software. While some of its aspects have been left behind by the times, it still offers some value to certain users. For those specific users, even the software’s weird pricing model will work to their advantage.
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Established company – Data Rescue for Mac is one of the earliest data recovery tools in the industry. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best, but it means that the company behind it is very stable.
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Virtual RAID support – Build virtual RAID arrays in case of malfunctioning disk sets (supports RAID 0 and JBOD only).
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Custom starting point – Users can set a custom starting point for the scan, which is super useful in case your drive has a lot of data.
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Clever scan for HFS+ only – Original folder structure and file names can only be restored from HFS+ partitions. Other file systems are not supported.
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Struggles with ExFAT – Data Rescue struggled to recover recently deleted files from ExFAT partitions (commonly used for external drives).
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Unclear settings – Users have to dig around for settings whose defaults were unoptimized for most situations.
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Weird pricing model – For example, you can pay $15 per file or $79 per drive. Considering there are free options that offer unlimited recovery and paid software with licenses under $100, Data Rescue is a hard sell.
Honorable Mentions
There is a lot of “decent” data recovery software that didn’t make it to the main list not because they were bad, but because their overall score simply didn’t match up. Here are the runners-up that didn’t quite make the cut but are worth considering for some users:
TestDisk
TestDisk is a 100% free, open-source data recovery tool that can recover and fix lost partitions. It doesn’t have a graphical user interface, but its command-line interface has step-by-step instructions so it’s easy to follow along. It lacks certain recovery features like preview and organization tools and session management, but it does its job (partition recovery) extremely well.
iBoysoft Data Recovery
iBoysoft is a semi-popular data recovery software for Mac that caught our attention thanks to its prolific help articles. It’s really good at (1) restoring the original folder structure and file names and (2) recently deleted data from ExFAT and NTFS partitions. For Mac software, we wish that it provided better support for HFS+ and APFS partitions, but it’s a decent choice for recovering external storage devices.
Lazesoft Mac Data Recovery
Lazesoft is a lesser-known data recovery software from, as our review put it, a “bygone era.” Its last update was released in 2015 and it only runs for macOS Mojave 10.14 at the latest. Why are we recommending it? Because it’s 100% free. And it’s pretty good at restoring our data’s original folder structure and file names as well as recently deleted files from NTFS partitions.
Techtool Pro
Techtool Pro is one of the best disk repair tools for Mac. Its name may have faded in popularity, but it’s still on the recommendation list of many Mac veterans today. Data recovery is limited to deleted APFS files, but it can also rebuild volumes, conduct comprehensive diagnostics, and run from boot on FAT32 and ExFAT volumes.
Tenorshare 4DDiG Mac
Tenorshare 4DDiG is a well-known and well-reviewed data recovery software with a pretty interface and average recovery performance. It’s good at recovering your original folder structure and file names from FAT32 and NTFS partitions and restoring recently deleted files from NTFS, ExFAT, and FAT32 partitions. It also works with basic RAID arrays and non-mounting partitions.
UFS Explorer
UFS Explorer provides great support for the most common file systems from Windows, macOS, and Linux. It performed decently during our real-life recovery challenge and provided ample recovery features. UFS Explorer can handle advanced RAID configurations, provides solid session management, and has five types of data scanning (among other advanced features). It’s definitely not for beginners, though.
DMDE
DMDE is a hidden gem that rewards users who are willing to manage a steep-ish learning curve for cost-effective data recovery. While its usability leaves much to be desired and its signature scanner is below average at best, everything else about DMDE is solid. Its file system scanner is highly effective, it’s compatible with all the main file systems, and it provides a lot of useful tools that are even made available during the free trial.
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Comparison table
#The comparison table below provides an overview of all data recovery software applications that have made our list.
| Feature | Disk Drill | EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard | R-Studio | Wondershare Recoverit | PhotoRec | Stellar Data Recovery | Data Rescue |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Score | 100% | 80% | 77% | 72% | 69% | 69% | 68% |
| Requirements | macOS 10.15-14.0 beta | macOS 10.9-14.0 beta | macOS 10.5-13.0 | macOS 10.10-13.0 | macOS 10.6-12.0 | macOS 10.11-13.0 | macOS 10.12-13.0 |
| Clever in-depth scan | |||||||
| Quick scan | |||||||
| Distributed as | Freemium | Freemium | Freemium | Freemium | Free | Freemium | Freemium |
| Trial version available | |||||||
| Trial version limitations | Free preview | Recover up to 2 GB for free | Recover files smaller than 256KB | Recover up to 100 MB for free | Freeware. No limits | Recover up to 1 GB for free | Preview only |
| Starting price | $89.00 / Perpetual | $89.95 / 1 month | $79.99 / Permanent | $75.99 / 1 month | Free | $69.99 / 1 year | $19.00 / 1 file |
| See Plans & Pricing | Pricing details | Pricing details | Pricing details | Pricing details | Pricing details | Pricing details | Pricing details |
| Raw photo recovery | |||||||
| Video formats recovery | |||||||
| Document formats recovery | |||||||
| S.M.A.R.T. | |||||||
| Helpdesk support | |||||||
| Live chat | |||||||
| Phone support |
Best Practices for Successful Mac Data Recovery
Successful data recovery is never 100% guaranteed, but there are ways you can greatly improve your chances. Here are some tips:
- Stop using the device:
Actively using the device you want to recover may permanently overwrite your data. To prevent overwriting and increase your recovery rate, stop using the storage device.
- Choose the right data recovery software:
Data recovery software are tools that solve various data loss problems. Consider your individual scenario while choosing.
- Save recovered files to a different location:
Never save recovered files to the same drive or partition you’re trying to recover. This may overwrite the files in the recovery queue.
- Repair or replace the device:
Data loss doesn’t happen for no reason. Make sure to use the appropriate solution to fix whatever caused the data loss.
Frequently Asked Questions
After testing dozens of data recovery software for Mac, here are our top 3 recommendations:
- Disk Drill
- EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard
- R-Studio
The best free data recovery software for Mac is PhotoRec, which is an open-source project being developed by volunteers around the world. Despite being an old app, it’s compatible with most modern operating systems and its signature scanner is even better than many paid software.
If you need an app to recover lost partitions, you can also use TestDisk, PhotoRec’s sister software.
Apple doesn’t have its own “traditional” data recovery software. It has a Time Machine, which is an excellent backup and recovery tool – however, recovering data relies on creating backups of that data in the first place.
Disk Drill is the only software we know of that provides native support for Mac recovery and iOS recovery in one tool (and under one license). Most data recovery software offer separate tools for Mac recovery and mobile recovery, requiring separate licenses.
Yes, you can recover data from a formatted hard drive using data recovery software. When you format a hard drive, the data is still present in the file system but it’s marked to be overwritten. As long as you use data recovery software before your files get overwritten by new data, you have a good chance to recover them.
22 publishings
Alejandro is a veteran writer with a rich background in technology. He worked part-time in his uncle’s repair and recovery shop as a young boy, and now uses his experience and writing skills to produce content for multiple tech websites – specifically on the topic of data recovery. As an author for Pandora Recovery, he is constantly testing and experimenting with new tools and technology to help his readers find the best software for their needs.
Frisco, Texas, United States
Yevgeniy Tolkunov is Hardware Engineer at ACE Data Recovery. Yevgeniy has a Master's Degree in Physics, Information Technology; 15+ years of experience.