DIY Solutions to Recover and Repair External Hard Drive on Mac in 2019

Sue Wen

Aug 28,2019 • Filed to: Solve Mac Problems • Proven solutions

How Do I Recover Files from an External Hard Drive on a Mac?

I accidentally erased my 1-TB WD My Passport external hard drive. I connected it to my Mac OS X computer and attempted to get the lost data back, but I can't find my files on it. I am eager to recover files from the external hard drive on Mac. Any advice?

In today’s world, external hard drives have been widely used as supplementary mass storage devices for Mac. It is always a good way to keep your valuable photos, videos and other files in an external storage device so that you can bring them anywhere. Then problem might come: What if you accidentally delete files in your external hard drive? What if files are lost from your formatted external hard drive? Or what if files become corrupted in your external hard drive?

When facing those annoying Mac external hard drive data loss issues, Mac users may ask: How do I recover files from a corrupted, broken or formatted external hard drive on Mac OS X? If you are lucky enough, you may have backup copy of lost files, and you can easily restore them from that copy. If not, you can still ask for help from a Mac external hard drive data recovery program.

Part 1. How to Recover Data from External Hard Drive on Mac OS X

To recover data from external hard drive on Mac OS X, you can take Recoverit Data Recovery for Mac as a try. This fascinating Mac external hard drive recovery software supports almost all brands of external hard drives, including Seagate, LaCie, Western Digital, Maxtor, Samsung, etc. It also supports to recover all types of files no matter whether they are deleted, formatted or corrupted from an external drive. Moreover, this Mac data rescue software allows you to retrieve files from external hard drives, even if they are corrupted, broken, formatted, dead, crashed or damaged.

Download | Mac Download | Win

Video Guide to External Hard Drive Recovery

This video tutorial demonstrates to you how to recover data from external hard drive on Windows. The steps are true of Mac OS X file recovery from external disk. You can also turn to the below text-based macos recovery guide.

2. How to Retrieve Data from External Hard Drive on Mac

Download and install Recoverit data recovery on your Mac computer. Launch Recoverit Data Recovery for Mac and follow the next simple steps to perform external hard drive data recovery on Mac OS X.

Select external hard drive

In this step you can choose a specific location where the files get deleted or lost. To recover data from Mac external hard drive, please select the drive letter for your external hard drive and click "Start" to scan data.

recover data from external hard drive on Mac

Scan hard drive to search data

Recoverit will start an all-around scan. The "All-Around Recovery" mode will deep dig into your Mac external hard drive and piece the bits of your files together on it. It might take a little long time.

deep scan lost data

Restore files from Mac external hard drive

Now you can preview and check the found contents in the window after the scan. Then select files you need and click "Recover" to save them on your Mac.

recover data from mac external hard drive

Data Recovery Tips：

To avoid recoverable files from being overwritten during the recovery, please do select a folder on your Mac rather than the externa disk to save them.
Scanned out of the photos, documents, video, audio and other documents, display "preview failed", the document has been damaged, can not be restored.
For the software does not support the preview of the file type, such as compressed files, installers, etc., only the final recovery, to know whether the file can be used normally.
Data recovery is not a panacea which can’t guarantee 100% recovery successfully in any situation. Therefore, it is better for you to prevent data loss effectively with a good habit to backup your data timely.

Part 3: How to Repair External Hard Drive on Mac

To repair external hard drive on Mac, there are 2 options, Disk Utility and Terminal. Now, let's move on and take a look at how to fix external hard drive on Mac.

Repair External Hard Drive with Disk Utility

Go to Apple Menu > Restart. Restart Mac and hold "Command + R" keys.
Click "Disk Utility" > "Continue" > "View" > "Show All Devices".
Select the external hard drive you want to repair in the sidebar.
Click "First Aid" > "Run" if you get "overlapped extent allocation".
Disk Utility will repair your external hard drive on Mac usually.

Repair External Hard Drive with Terminal

Go to Applications > Utilities > Terminal
Type the command line: "cd /Volumes" and "ls". Press "Return" to get a list of hard drives.
Type "diskutil verifyVolume xxx (external storage name)" and Return.
Type "diskutil repairvolume /Volumes/xxx (external hard drive name)" and Return.

After repairing the external hard drive on Mac, turn to Part 1 to recover files from external hard drive. With Mac hard drive data recovery software, at least 96% of your data stored on external hard drive can be retrieved without any hassle and much effort. Also, it enables you to scan your external hard drive and preview files on your Mac before recovery.

Download | Mac Mac Version Download | Win Windows Version

Note: Recover Lost Mac Data under Mac OS X 10.13 (High Sierra)

Due to macOS High Sierra (macOS 10.13) requirement, Mac users are not allowed an access to the built-in system drive from any apps. Therefore, if you need to restore lost data from the system disk under macOS 10.13, please "disable System Integrity Protection" first.

How to disable "System Integrity protection"? Please follow the steps below.

Step 1 reboot the Mac and hold down "Command + R" keys simultaneously to boot OS X into Recovery Mode.

Step 2When the "OS X Utilities" screen appears, pull down the "Utilities" menu at the top of the screen instead, and choose "Terminal".