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Questions

Before performing my utility software surgery (it’s totally bloodless), I get asked a few questions. After all, if the data is still there on the drive, the owner wants to make sure that I don’t do anything to make it disappear forever.

For example, if a disk drive is totally erased (even the camera flash drives or USB drives), can the lost data be recovered? The answer is yes. What if files were sent to the trash and the trash was emptied? Can those files be recovered? Yes, again.

What if the storage device is not formatted for Macs (including FAT 32 format, usually found on USB drives, camera flash drives)? Can those files be recovered? Again, a qualified, yes.

How about if you securely erased a file? Can that be recovered? Usually not. Secure Empty Trash is an process which overwrites a file many times, making it virtually impossible to reconstruct.

Doctor Features

Mac utility software usually is self explanatory, at most comes with a PDF and a few pages of instructions, at worst a brief help page or two, or nothing. Disk Doctors Mac data recovery utility is simple on the outside, complex behind the scenes.

Remember that for Mac drives, Disk Doctors utility only works on files from a Mac OS Journalized Volume (though there is search capability on FAT 32 formatted drives, such as USB flash drives). Fortunately, that’s most Macs, PPC or Intel.

The recovered files pop up in a list similar to your Mac’s Finder. Disk Doctors utility can be run from your Mac’s hard drive, but not if your Mac’s hard drive is the problem drive. In that case, it’s better to start up from a different drive.

Enter the Interface

The Mac Data Recovery software download is straightforward. Open the download, drag the utility to your Mac’s Application folder, then double-click to start up.

What you get next is delightfully simple (after walking through the convoluted activation process). The pop up window will list all the hard drives connected to your Mac, internal, external, even USB flash drives.

Select a storage volume by clicking (not double-click). Options? There’s only two buttons. I told you it would be simple.

Open Scan Info will display a dialog box so you can open a previous scan of your Mac’s hard drive (or flash drive). The Recover button begins the scan process, but lets you select which file types to look for first, to narrow down the search.

For example, you can select Office files, or images or audio or video files, or simply all files. File types can be removed or added, and a limit place on the maximum file size to recover.

Clicking the Next button brings up sliders, an advanced control to limit the area on your disk drive. I found this option to be unnecessary as most scans need to cover the whole drive.

Clicking the Next button again begins the scanning process.

Auto Problematic

The scanning process is steady and quick, but not fast, especially on larger volumes. My office Mac has almost 100-gigabytes of data. I did a search for Microsoft Word documents across the entire one terabyte drive. The scan completed in less than 55 minutes, but would normally take longer on a corrupt drive, or a larger disk drive with many files.

The Time Remaining indicator is about as accurate as Apple’s OS X indicator bars (meaning, not very). A very detailed help screen is a click away.

What’s going on behind the scenes is complex, deceptively so since all you had to click was one button to begin scanning a volume. Now what? This is when it gets a little more tricky.

If you’re scanning a USB flash drive, or an external hard disk drive that contains only files, you’re likely to know exactly where files are, or where to look for them. Those scans won’t take long, and there are unlikely to be many files anyway.

If the disk drive is your Mac’s drive, then you’ll need to check the list of files carefully, and it’s probable that the list of files is extremely long. Files can also be previewed in Disk Doctors utility. Scanning and detail is thorough. You’re likely to see invisible files, and strange file names, but don’t worry. You’ll also see the familiar hierarchical structure of your Mac’s finder.

Disk Doctors Mac Data Recovery utility is a good tool when data is valuable, and recovery must be handled promptly. While it’s not an inexpensive utility, the cost of lost data can be significantly greater. The Mac version is one of many utilities by Disk Doctors, including versions for Windows, Linux, Unix, and specialized utilities for email and digital media.

For Mac users with sensitive, valuable data that needs to be protected and recovered, Disk Doctors Mac Data Recovery utility is more than worthy.

Destroying Data

As an addendum to the whole Mac file recovery process, there’s the opposite side to consider. Destroying sensitive, valuable data when a Mac or PC is being retired. If you can recover seemingly lost files from a hard disk drive, so can someone else when a drive is tossed out or replaced.

There’s a Disk Doctors Data Security utility which also sanitizes a hard drive, and includes a file shredder to wipe out data completely.