Recover 600GB From a Mac External HDD Without Initializing It
Do not initialize the 5TB drive. If a recovery scan can already see roughly 600GB of files, the immediate problem is not “making the disk usable again”; it is getting the files off without changing the source. Because this drive was dropped and its original connector broke, the next decision is whether the bare SATA drive is stable enough for one careful recovery pass.
That is the real constraint in this Mac external-drive recovery case on Reddit. The owner connected the Seagate drive through a SATA-to-USB adapter, saw macOS ask to initialize it, and then used Disk Drill to find about 600GB of data. Their blocker was cost: they wanted an actually free way to recover a large amount of data.
Do Not Initialize the Drive
On macOS, initializing an external storage device means erasing and reformatting it. Apple's Disk Utility guidance describes initialization as an erase operation. That is the opposite of what you want while the original files are still the priority.
A Windows computer being unable to open a Mac-formatted volume also does not mean the data is gone. For example, DMDE documents HFS+/HFSX and APFS support independently of the host operating system.
Choose the Free Route Based on Drive Stability
Recovery Paths:
- If the drive stays connected, reads at a normal pace, and makes no abnormal noises: DMDE Free Edition currently allows up to 4,000 files from the active directory per recovery operation, with repeated operations allowed. Recover to a different healthy drive.
- If preserving filenames and folders is less important: PhotoRec is free and open source, reads the source media without writing to it, and recovers by file signatures even when the file system is damaged. Expect less useful original folder and filename structure than a file-system-aware recovery.
- If the drive disconnects, stalls badly, clicks, or becomes harder to detect: stop repeated full scans. The earlier drop changes the risk. Preserve any files already copied and move to an image-first or professional-recovery path rather than trading the remaining data for a free software attempt.
Why Recoverit Is Not the Free Answer for 600GB
The user had already tried Recoverit, so the limit matters here. Recoverit Free for Mac currently allows up to 500MB of free recovery. That can be useful for testing whether files preview correctly, but it does not satisfy a 600GB, zero-cost requirement. If the drive is stable, use a genuinely free route first rather than presenting a paid upgrade as the answer to a free-only question.
Before Another Scan:
Have a second healthy drive ready for recovered files. Never save recovered data back to the 5TB source, and do not initialize or erase it just to make Finder mount it normally.