1. Warning: The free edition of Stellar Data Recovery is able to help you scan all Mac devices for deleted files. It gives support to various file types and file systems. Besides, it offers two scan modes and the fabulous file preview function to help you recover data from Mac any time.
2. Part 2: Free File Recovery Software to Recover Permanantly Deleted Files With a plethora of free file recovery software to choose from, it can often get tedious at times. Neither less to say, with various of them implementing different recovery options.
3. Recover Deleted Files Using Mac Terminal. Enter the “cd.Trash” command to navigate to the Trash folder. Enter the “ls” command to list all files in the Trash folder. Type “mv xxx.xxx /Desktop/” to move a file to the Desktop folder. Make sure to replace xxx.xxx with the actual name of the file.

This article covers the top five completely free data recovery software for Mac, which varies in features, functions, and performance. However, they all have one thing in common: they are free.

Compare the five tools carefully, and select the one that fits your needs best.

Recoverit FREE Download: Harddrive/SSD NOT SHOWING?: To RECOVER Deleted Files for FREE - Mac/Windows (Phot.

Top 5 Completely Free Data Recovery Software for Mac

When you get data loss on your Mac due to accidental deletion, partition/hard drive formatting, system crash, macOS upgrade, file system or hard drive corruption, stay calm and pick up one of the recommended data recovery software below for help.

1. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac Free

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac Free is one of the free top and handy Mac data recovery software that enables you to recover data from the emptied trash bin, Mac notebooks, desktops, hard drives, USB drives, SD cards, memory cards, digital cameras, etc. It works on internal APFS/HFS+/HFS X drives, and FAT/FAT32/exFAT/NTFS file systems used in USB flash drives and external hard drives connected to Mac.

Highlighted Features:

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# 1. All-in-one data recovery software

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac Free is fully compatible with the latest macOS 11.0 (Big Sur), 10.15(Catalina), 10.14 (Mojave) and all the former versions. It enables all Mac users to perform a full recovery of lost valuable data in only 3 steps: Scan > Preview > Recover.

# 2. HFS+ Fusion Drive Recovery

The latest update of EaseUS Mac data recovery software has improved its support of Fusion Drive, which makes it work even better in retrieving files from Mac computers that are installed on fusion drives.

# 3. Encrypted Drive Recovery

Another great update in EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac is that it supports encrypted drive recovery by offering guidance to assist Mac users in decrypting and unlocking their drives with password.

# 4. Data Protection

Once the data protection feature is enabled, it will automatically back up the deleted files to a safe location. If you unexpectedly delete files and want to recover later, you can quickly restore the lost files from the created backup.

Pros:

• Support to restore 200+ file types on Mac, including recovering lost Word/Excel/PPT documents, photos, videos, music files, emails, archived files, and more.
• Quick Scan + Deep Scan technology greatly enhances recovery probability.
• Real-time Preview allows you to preview found files while scanning and before proceeding with data recovery.
• No quality-loss recovery brings your lost photos, videos perfectly back in its best performance.

Cons:

• The completely free version is limited to a maximum of 2GB data recovery. (The outstanding Windows data recovery free version also provides 2GB free file recovery.)

2. Disk Drill

Disk Drill is a popular Mac data recovery application developed to recover lost partitions or files from Mac internal and external hard drives. Also, the Recovery Vault and Guaranteed Recovery options in the free trial version support to monitor the file deletion activity and retain metadata so as to quickly undelete files.

Highlighted Features:

# 1. Undelete Protected Data (Not Available in Free Version)

Being similar to the Data Protection feature in EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac, Disk Drill also contains an undelete protected data feature that requires Recovery Vault and Guaranteed Recovery features to be enabled in advance.

With these two features enabled, Mac users could quickly undelete files from a Trash Bin reference or shadow copy of each file to a user-specified folder.

# 2. Allocate Existing Files

When Finder fails to read data, Disk Utility reports the drive as unformatted, Disk Drill can scan the partition and retrieve data from Mac.

Pros:

• Compatible with all the Mac OS X and macOS systems.
• Recover 200+ file types.
• It is packed with free and useful disk tools for all users.
• An intuitive user interface to recover lost files effortlessly.

Cons:

• The free version only allows a preview of data recovery.
• Recovery Vault and Guaranteed Recovery are not available in the free version.

3. PhotoRec

PhotoRec is a free, open-source program that works very well in data recovery on older operating systems like OS X, Linux, Free BSD, Net BSD, Open BSD, and Windows.

It allows users to restore most common files, like photos, audios, documents, ZIP archives, and others from internal or external devices, such as digital cameras, memory cards, USB flash drives and partitions/hard disks.

Highlighted Features:

# 1. Advanced File Carving

PhotoRec first searches for the data block or cluster size. The program will quickly load value from superblock like ext2/ext3/ext4 or volume boot record like FAT/NTFS if the file system is not corrupted. When the file system corrupted, PhotoRec will check the device at a sector level, using the first 10 found files to calculate the block or cluster size so as to locate and find more lost files.

# 2. Block or Cluster Level Recovery

This program will read the Mac device block by block, cluster by cluster, checking against different file signatures so as to recuperate available files.

Pros:

• Support data recovery cross-platforms, Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, etc.
• 100% open-source program, not only the software but also the source code.
• Nice tool to recover personal files.

Cons:

• Not very user-friendly for ordinary computer users.
• Technical skills required. It uses command lines to operate.

4. TestDisk

TestDisk, like PhotoRec, it's also an open-source, freeware product that allows for multiple file types recovery.

It mainly focuses on partition recovery. It enables users to find deleted or lost partitions by fixing the partition tables due to software crash, virus attack, mistaken formatting, etc.

Highlighted Features:

# 1. Partition Recovery

When a partition lost or disappeared on Mac due to corrupted partition tables, Mac users can apply TestDisk to rebuild and repair the corrupted partition table.

# 2. Rebuild Boot Sectors

When the Mac bootable drive fails to boot, it corrects problems in bootable drives that are failing to boot.

Pros:

• Completely free and open.
• Runs on several operating systems, including macOS and Mac OS X versions.
• Recover lost partitions and rebuild the partition table.

Cons:

• Use the command line to make data recovery.
• Not user-friendly for regular computer users.

5. Exif Untrasher

Exif Untrasher is another completely free Mac data recovery tool that mainly restores deleted or JPEG files from digital cameras, external drive, USB stick, SD card, etc. You can easily download and install this software on your Mac running Mac OS X 10.10 and all the later versions.

Highlighted Features:

Recover My Files For Mac Free Download

# 1. Highly Efficient in JEPG Recovery

Exif Untrasher is a tool that mainly designed to locate photos in JEPG formats on any kind of storage device like SD card, CF card, memory stick or Mac hard disk.

External storage device needs to be mounted as a volume on Mac for the utility to access and attempt a restore.

Pros:

• Simple and quick to recover lost images from the memory card.
• Free with no quantity limits.
• It is updated by the developer regularly.

Cons:

• It only works for JEGP file recovery. It doesn't support extra file formats.

3-Step Tutorial of Free Mac Data Recovery

To help more Mac users to bring their lost files are soon as possible, we are here to show you a 3-step tutorial of free Mac data recovery. If you are eager to bring your lost files back on Mac or external storage devices, apply the brief and innovative EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac Free for help.

Remember to connect your USB, SD card, or external hard drive to Mac computer if your lost data were saved on it.

Step 1. Select the disk location (it can be an internal HDD/SSD or a removable storage device) where you lost data and files. Click the 'Scan' button.

Step 2. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac will immediately scan your selected disk volume and display the scanning results on the left pane.

Step 3. In the scan results, select the file(s) and click the 'Recover' button to have them back.

Conclusion

On this page, you are presented with the top 5 completely free Mac data recovery software - EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac Free, Disk Drill, PhotoRec, TestDisk, Exif Untrasher. When you are facing unexpected data loss on Mac, the programs demonstrated above can help you recover lost files effectively.

What's more, if your lost data is less than 2GB, EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac Free is highly recommended as it provides the most user-friendly interface and most powerful data recovery function.

If you simply want to restore JEGP images, Exif Untrasher is worth to try.

People Also Ask

Some Mac users may still have doubts about Mac file recovery. Here we have collected the top frequently asked 4 questions and left brief answers below. Check out and find your own answers here.

1. Is Mac data recovery free?

It depends. If you lost deleted files to Trash, you can restore them from the Trash for free.

When you lost files on a local Mac hard drive or an external storage device, if you apply free Mac data recovery software like EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac Free for help, it's free.

If you take your computer to a local data recovery center, it will charge you a big bunch of money.

2. What is the best free data recovery software?

• For Windows users, you may refer to Top 10 Free SD Card Data Recovery Software.

The Recommended software also works perfectly in Windows OS for data recovery and you can find out the most suitable for you to apply and restore lost files with ease.

• For Mac users, as we recommended on this page, EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac Free, Disk Drill, PhotoRec, TestDisk, Exif Untrasher are all good to help.

3. Is there any free data recovery software?

Sure! Many data recovery software producers all have released their free data recovery software. Here we have collected some of them for you to pick up and apply to guard your own data.

10 Top Free Data Recovery Software for Windows Users:

• 1). EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Free
• 2). Recuva
• 3). Stellar Data Recovery
• 4). Disk Drill
• 5). R-Studio
• 6). Acronis Revive
• 7). Remo Recover
• 8). Recover My Files
• 9). Puran Data Recovery
• 10). TestDisk

5 Top Free Data Recovery Software for Mac Users: (We have uncovered on this page)

• 1). EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac Free
• 2). Disk Drill
• 3). PhotoRec
• 4). TestDisk
• 5). Exif Untrasher

4. How can I recover deleted files without software Mac free?

There are two ways for you to recover deleted files on Mac for free without using data recovery software.

• One way is to undelete files from your Mac Trash bin.

When you mistakenly deleted files on Mac computer to the trash, and you didn't empty the trash, you can undelete them from your Trash for free.

• The other way that you can try is to recover deleted files from your Mac Time Machine backup.

If you have the habit of backing up files on Mac computer using the Time Machine, congratulations. When you delete some of them, luckily, you can bring them back immediately from your Time Machine backup. You can follow to Recover Files from Time Machine Backup for a detailed guide.

Get a data lifeguard for Mac

Overwriting a much-needed file is every computer user's worst nightmare. Even when your Mac warns you that the file with this name already exists, you don’t stop and think it through — you just hit Replace and now the old file is gone. This happens way too often to busy people.

So what do you do now? Is it possible to rescue an overwritten file? Well, you’ll be pleased to know that all hope is not lost. The overwritten file can be recovered. On Mac, the file still exists somewhere on your system, and, with the help of a few tools, you can get it back.

These tools are Time Machine, Get Backup Pro, and Disk Drill.

Get data recovery software

Recover overwritten files, lightning-fast. Get the best tools to make it work for you.

What is an overwritten file?

Before we give you practical solutions, let’s quickly outline what an overwritten file is, how you can overwrite a file, and how does it affect you.

Essentially, an overwritten file is a file replaced with another file — whether accidentally or intentionally. Have you ever seen an error that reads something like “this file already exists, want to replace it?” That’s the one. Usually, you get an error like that if you want to save a file with the name identical to the name of another file on your Mac. If you choose Replace, the original file will be overwritten.

But here’s an important thing to note: overwriting a file on Mac doesn’t mean you immediately delete the data it references. When you hit that Replace button, you basically delete the name of the file, thumbnails, and the icon. The actual data that the file contains is stored on your drive and won’t be deleted immediately. You still have time to bring it back!

Can you recover overwritten files?

Yes, you can recover overwritten files Mac has seemingly deleted. You can either use a backup tool or, for worst-case scenarios, a data recovery tool. There’s also a way to recover files from cloud backups if you use cloud storages such as Dropbox. The difficulty of the recovery task will depend on whether your macOS deletes the data referenced by the replaced file or not.

Where do replaced files go?

Recover Files Free Mac Desktop

It really depends on the type of file, its size, your operating system, and many other factors. macOS was designed to save space on your drive and run all processes as fast as possible. This is why it will usually just delete the reference to your data to complete the task you want to complete — ”replace file.” The data that is actually referenced by that file, such as an image or the content of a PDF report, will be deleted at some point in the future — say, when you run an optimization task, clean up storage, etc.

You shouldn’t worry about how to find replaced files Mac has deleted. If you learn how to recover replaced files, you can bring them back — even if your macOS has deleted them. Next we cover three best ways to undo replace file Mac.

Recover an overwritten file on Mac with Time Machine

So let’s say you accidentally replaced file, how to recover? macOS allows you to roll back with a built-in tool. Time Machine is a brilliant macOS feature that’s designed to help you in situations where you’ve accidentally overwritten important files.

There is one caveat: Time Machine should’ve been active before you’d overwritten the file. If it was indeed, here’s how to get your file back.

How to recover overwritten files with Time Machine:

1. Open the folder where the overwritten file was located in the Finder
2. Select Enter Time Machine from the Time Machine menu (the clock icon) or click on its icon in the Dock
3. Use the up arrow to travel back to a time before the file was replaced and locate the file
4. Click on Restore and select which file you’d like to keep: the old one, the new one, or both

That’s it! Panic over. The old file is back.

Time Machine, however, is not the most flexible backup software you can use. It consumes a lot of space by storing a copy of every single file stored on your drive and works in preset intervals only.

For more flexible backups, try Get Backup Pro. This app also backs up your data but leaves you in charge of how exactly. You can choose different kinds of backups, like cloning or synchronization. You can also only back up folders and files that are of absolute importance, and ignore the rest. Get Backup Pro supports scheduled backups, so you can automate the process by setting up regular backups of the most essential data.

If, unfortunately, your Time Machine or Get Backup Pro were off when the overwriting took place (you should definitely turn them on now), your only hope for recovering files is using third-party software like Disk Drill. Fortunately, Disk Drill is very good at what it does.

Recovering replaced files on Mac via cloud backups

iCloud keeps your deleted files in a recovery folder for 30 days, so if you’ve just recently replaced a file, you can probably restore it via iCloud as an alternative to the backup method. To do this, go to iCloud.com > iCloud Drive. Go to your iCloud drive settings, scroll down to find Advanced, and click Restore files. Select a specific file you want to restore or all files.

If you use another popular cloud storage service — for example, Dropbox — there’s an option to restore overwritten files too:

1. Go to dropbox.com and log in to your account
2. Select the folder where your overwritten file is located or go to All files
3. Once you’ve located the file, click the three dots > Version history
4. Find the original version and click Restore.

Since Dropbox allows you to store up to 2 GB of files for free, it will normally keep a pretty extensive version history. So the chances are, unlike iCloud, it will keep the originals of your files for more than 30 days.

Restore overwritten files with one click

How do I recover a replaced file on Mac if there’s no backup available and my cloud account hasn’t saved it? For sure, losing your files and not having a proper backup in place might almost ruin your day, but there is still one more thing left to do.

Mac Deleted File Recovery

Meet Disk Drill — a top-rated tool that has recovered millions of overwritten files from Macs, external hard drives, memory cards, and USB drives worldwide. This app is easy to use and can recover documents, photos, videos, music, or anything else you might’ve lost.

Disk Drill on Setapp

Disk Drill’s scanning tools are so good that even deleted files from failing hard drives can be recovered.

Here’s how to get your overwritten file back with recovery software:

1. If the file is on an external drive, make sure to connect it first. Launch Disk Drill and enter your administrator password to give the tool permission to scan your drive
2. Select the drive you wish to recover the file from, locate the file, and click on the Recover button
3. Grab a coffee and sit back while Disk Drill does its thing to bring your file back to life.

If the Recover option can’t be used, Disk Drill is able to perform a Quick Scan and Deep Scan to scan drives at a binary level to restore files that way. However, for overwritten files, this is unlikely to be needed.

Recovering Deleted Files On Mac

Conclusion

With a good backup and recovery tool, you can learn how to undo “replace file Mac” in seconds. So don’t panic if you accidentally overwrite something important, the chances are you’ll get it back with ease. Other than that, make it a habit to backup your files regularly — not only to avoid overwriting, backups will help you restore your data in case your drive fails, your macOS update goes wrong, or else.

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Even when Time Machine or Get Backup Pro is activated, we recommend having Disk Drill around, just for peace of mind. Should anything go wrong with any file, all is not lost, and you have three ways to recover. Best of all, both Get Backup Pro and Disk Drill come together, along with more than 200 apps, in one Setapp subscription. And you can try them absolutely free.

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