Top 15 Best Data Recovery Software for Mac OS X

Despite what its name suggests, PhotoRec doesn’t recover only photos. According to its developers, it recognizes more than 480 file extensions (about 300 file families), making it one of the most comprehensive data recovery software applications for Mac. Here’s the complete list of file formats recognized by PhotoRec.

Because PhotoRec is open-source data recovery software without a graphical user interface, it’s very easy for developers to port it to various operating systems, which is exactly what they did and why it runs under Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, *BSD, and even Sun Solaris.

The absence of a graphical user interface could certainly be a major obstacle for many less experienced users, but we found PhotoRec’s command-line interface to be fairly intuitive, which is why we wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to anyone.

To start recovering lost data with Data Rescue, all you need to do is select the device you want to recover from, pick the most suitable scan type, and wait for the application to do its job. The Quick Scan option is great for recovering data from storage devices that fail to boot or mount, while Deep Scan is ideal for getting back files that have been permanently deleted.

Users of Mac OS X 10.10, 10.11,10.12, 10.13, and 10.14 can use Data Rescue to create a special startup drive for simple recovery of a non-booting internal drive. Unfortunately, the developers of Data Rescue are unable to support this feature in Mac OS X 10.15 and newer due to the restrictions imposed by Apple.

Customers can choose between a Standard and Professional license. The Standard license includes one system activation, and it limits recovery to five drives, while the Professional license doesn’t have any activation or recovery limits.

Professionals swear by R-Studio for Mac because of its advanced data recovery capabilities and many impressive features, such as a built-in hex editor, support for RAIDs, and the ability to first copy the entire storage device into an image file and then use the image file for recovery.

Because R-Studio for Mac has so many advanced features, its user interface can be somewhat confusing and intimidating. Whereas most data recovery software applications attempt to hide all but the most essential options until they’re really necessary, R-Studio for Mac displays an almost overwhelming amount of information on a single screen.

The free version of R-Studio for Mac can recover an unlimited number of files, but the files must be smaller than 256 KB. To recover larger files, users must purchase either a regular or a commercial license for $79.99 or $899.00, respectively. As you can see, the commercial license is very expensive, placing R-Studio for Mac out of the reach of many data recovery professionals.

The program enables recovery on your system hard drive or most peripheral storage devices. It offers flexible file filtering to minimize scanning time and is able to recover deleted, damaged, or corrupted files in many different file formats.

Users like Softtote Mac Data Recovery because of its three recovery wizards, which do a great job of guiding through photo recovery, file recovery, and partition recovery. All recoverable files can be previewed before recovery so that you can decide which files you want to get back and which can be left behind.

By far the biggest issue with this data recovery software is the fact that it doesn’t support the latest version of macOS. This alone wouldn’t be all that bad if Softtote Mac Data Recovery was slightly cheaper. The good news is that there’s a free trial version that you can use to test what the software can do before you spend your hard-earned money on it.

When you launch Cisdem DataRecovery for Mac, you’re immediately asked which data loss situation you’re trying to solve. The available options include Basic Data Recovery, Trash Recovery, Formatted Data Recovery, External Drive Recovery, and Advanced Data Recovery. The subsequent steps reflect the selected data recovery option, making the entire process very straightforward.

Cisdem DataRecovery for Mac advertises support for over 200 different types of files, including all commonly used photo, audio, video, document, and archive, file formats. All major storage devices are supported, and the same goes for file systems.

You can try Cisdem DataRecovery for Mac for free before purchase, and the data recovery software also comes with a 30-days money-back guarantee that makes you eligible for a full refund if it fails to recover your data.

To start with, it can recover data even from encrypted APFS volumes and unreadable or unmountable drives. As long as the storage device hasn’t been damaged, you can be pretty sure that M3 Mac Data Recovery will be able to recognize it and find the data you’re looking for.

When dealing with a Mac that’s not booting up properly, you can take advantage of the option to run M3 Mac Data Recovery in macOS Recovery mode. You don’t even need to create a bootable recovery drive first because it’s possible to launch a bootable version of M3 Mac Data Recovery from the internet with a single command.

Even though M3 Mac Data Recovery provides two flexible scanning modes, we have found its recovery performance to be underwhelming, especially when recovering video and photo files. However, the recovery process itself was intuitive and easy to understand.

Of course, unlimited recovery isn’t worth much if the application can’t deliver satisfactory recovery results. Despite its outdated user interface, which makes Lazesoft Mac Data Recovery much less intuitive than most other similar applications, we were able to achieve solid recovery results and get back most deleted files without any issues.

The latest version of Lazesoft Mac Data Recovery introduced support for the exFAT file system, which means that virtually all commonly used file systems are now supported. The only major exception is the Apple File System (APFS), which is available in macOS High Sierra (10.13) and later. There’s no support for APFS because the latest version of Mac OS X that’s officially supported by Lazesoft Mac Data Recovery is 10.9 Mavericks.

Because it’s always better to spot problems in their infancy, before they have a chance to cause major damage, TechTool Pro features a full testing suite that you can use to determine the health of your Mac’s hardware and your storage devices.

With TechTool Protection, you can protect important files and folders against accidental deletion by storing a complete back up of your directory structure. Should you accidentally delete an important file, TechTool Pro’s Data Recovery will be able to read this backup like a map and determine where to look to get your files back.

Included with every copy of TechTool Pro is TechTool Protogo, which makes it possible to create a bootable diagnostic device containing TechTool Pro and all of its most powerful tools for portable Mac diagnosis and recovery.

Just like most other data recovery software applications, Ontrack EasyRecovery relies on a step-by-step recovery wizard to guide users through the recovery process. However, each step requires users to pick from a variety of different options, some of which are easier to understand than others.

For example, step number three asks users to choose a recovery scenario that best fits their data loss problems. That alone wouldn’t be an issue if it wasn’t for the fact that Ontrack EasyRecovery also requires users to select which file systems they want to search for.

The free version can recover 1 GB of data, which is a fairly generous amount that should be more than enough for most users. Other available versions of Ontrack EasyRecovery include Home, Professional, Premium, Technician, and Toolkit.

At its core is a simple 3-step recovery process, which anyone can figure out without an online guide or video tutorial. First, you select the storage device on which your lost data was originally located, and then you begin a scan of the selected storage device. Finally, you review the recovered files and choose those that you want to recover.

From start to finish, this whole process shouldn’t take you more than a couple of minutes, but several users have reported slow recovery performance, so your mileage may vary. Tenorshare UltData for Mac can recover around 550 file formats and preview most of them.

The latest version of this polished data recovery software fully supports macOS 10.15 Catalina. If you decide to unlock unlimited recovery, you can pay for a Tenorshare UltData for Mac subscription (monthly or annual) or purchase a lifetime license. Because the annual subscription is nearly as expensive as the lifetime license, we see absolutely no reason to spend money on it.

Geared toward regular Mac users who are looking for a simple and effective way to recover all lost data, Wondershare Recoverit boasts an intuitive user interface that makes it immediately obvious where you need to click next to get your data back. The software can recover more than 200 file types, but it specializes in photo and video files.

The most recent version introduced two useful video recovery features, called Advanced Video Recovery and Video Repair. The former can recover videos by merging video fragments, while the latter can repair damaged video files by analyzing a sample video file shot using the same device as the damaged video file.

These two features alone would make Wondershare Recoverit an easy choice for all photographers and filmmakers if it wasn’t for the fact that you need the most expensive yearly subscription license to take advantage of them, making this data recovery software fairly expensive.

If you can look past the obvious attempt to convince Mac users to spend money on a license, there are many reasons to choose Minitool Power Data Recovery. For example, it can recover permanently deleted data from all common storage devices, including optical disks.

Even corrupted hard drives and removable storage devices are no match for the advanced data recovery algorithms that are available to users of all versions of Minitool Power Data Recovery. The application delivers below-average performance only when recovering video and music files.

Not that long ago, Minitool Power Data Recovery received a major user interface upgrade, and it’s now easier to use than ever before. The new user interface lets you apply search filters with a few simple clicks or find specific files just by entering their names.

It can deal with permanently deleted files, partition issues, and even complex data loss scenarios like improperly formatting. According to its website, EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac supports more than 1,000 file types, which is more than any other data recovery software application on this list. While objectively verifying this claim would be extremely difficult, we can say based on our experience that EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac can recover all commonly used file formats without any issues.

The free version of this data recovery software can recover up to 2 GB of data, so it’s no wonder that many users never upgrade to the Pro edition, which includes not only unlimited recovery but also free 1-on-1 remote assistance, the ability to recover from Time Machine backups, and more.