“I have a MacPro and recently while performing a Mac update, it froze and was still stuck on a grey screen even after multiple restart attempts. I finally tried to use Disk Utility to check the status of my Mac. But "Repair Disk" was greyed out, so finally tried to reinstall Mac OS X. When it was close to completion, an error prompt appeared stating 'Macintosh HD is damaged and cannot be repaired'.”
Well, it looks like you have a failing hard disk and it is a nightmare to lose all the data stored in. To help you from such situations, Apple offers you an in-built backup program called Time Machine to take regular backup of all your latest data from Macintosh HD. It is good to see that you tried to access. But, in most unfortunate incidents, even the Time Machine itself fails to leave in a grave situation.
Nevertheless, for any hard drive issues, the most crucial part is data recovery. The quicker you act, the more success rate in recovering the data. Below are few possibilities to retrieve data from a damaged hard disk on Mac OS X.
Manual Ways to Get Back Data from Internal Macintosh HD
Method 1: Use Single User Mode
You can try fixing the Macintosh HD by entering into a non- GUI mode. To do so;
- a. Turn of your Mac
- b. Turn On the power button, upon start-up of your Mac, press and hold Command + S key
- c. Now, you are in Single User Mode. From here you can repair the hard disk and access the data
- d. Enter the command /sbin/fsck – fy and press Return
- e. The command-line will analyze the Mac volume and displays the message accordingly
- f. If the Macintosh HD is healthy, you’ll get a message saying - The Volume (name) appears to be OK
- g. If there was any damage that was repaired, you’ll see a message as File System Was Modified
- h. Run fsck command until you see the message as in pointer f
Method 2: Try Connecting Macintosh HD as an External HDD
To connect your Mac HD as an external drive you need things like external hard drive enclosure, USB cable and screwdriver.
- First, remove the internal Mac HD. You can watch any D-I-Y videos available to help with this
- Once you have removed internal hard disk, slide it into the external hard drive enclosure, turn it on and put the screws that comes along with the enclosure and tighten them with the help of a screwdriver
- Close the hard drive with the plastic front-back cover
- Connect this external drive with another Mac system using an USB cable. Once the drive is mounted, you can access the files
A damaged Mac HD sometimes fail to get accessed even if it is connected as external drive. So, you may wonder how to recover failed MacBook Pro Hard Disk or from any Mac machine in that case. Well, the solution to overcome such riddle is to rely on excellent Mac recovery tool and restore data from failed Macintosh HD.
Macintosh HD Data Recovery Program
Yodot Mac Data Recovery tool is the ultimate solution when the above mentioned two methods fail to retrieve data from “damaged and cannot be repaired” Macintosh HD. It is an advanced data recovery app that helps in mounting the damaged internal HD and retrieving the data. The program works on all Mac devices like iMac, Mac Mini, MacBook Air etc.
Key Features of Yodot Mac Recovery tool are -
- Retrieves data from formatted, re-formatted, corrupted, RAW internal and external hard drives. It even works on drives having bad sectors
- It creates disk image of the hard drives having bad sectors and performs data recovery
- Supports data recovery from HFSX, HFS+, FAT, and exFAT drives
Steps to Restore Data when Internal Macintosh HD is Damaged and Cannot Be Repaired
- Download and install Yodot Mac Data Recovery app on another computer and connect the internal Mac HD as slave drive
- Select Formatted / Re-formatted Recovery and in the next screen select the damaged hard drive
- Here, you can select all or specific type of files you want to rescue and click Next
- The tool starts scanning the volumes and displays the rescued data as Data View and File Type View
- Save the recovered files in an accessible location
Things to follow
- Apart from Time Machine, it is ideal to create secure backup. You can try using cloud services along with external HDDs
- Keep your computer protected from virus and malware by using a good antivirus program
