Data Rescue 5 for Mac Support

Please see the full comprehensive list and information in the User Guide (PDF).

The possibility of recovering data with it’s original filename and folder structure depends on the specific recovery scenario. If you are attempting to recover from a drive that is failing to mount and cannot be accessed through Mac OS, or from a system that will not boot, it is possible to recover folder/file structure since the data is still fully intact in most cases. This data will be found in the ‘Found Files’ folder in the results a Quick or Deep Scan. If you are attempting to recover files that were deleted or files from a formatted hard drive, generally the filename and folder structure are not going to be recoverable. The reason for this is because when files are deleted, the link between the raw data on the hard drive and the filesystem is broken. This is because the metadata for the file, which includes filename, folder location and other information about the data, is lost. When files are deleted, their location on the hard drive is marked as available free space and until that location is overwritten with new files, the raw data may be recoverable. This data can be found in the ‘Reconstructed Files’ folder in the results of a Deep Scan.

We do not offer any refunds for our products. We have a free demo made available on our website. This demo will enable you to scan for your missing files and also offers a preview mode after the scan, and if the demo works, so will the full version. Please see the Terms of Sale.

No, it will not. You will need to purchase Data Rescue 5 in order to have full capability of the product.

If you have attached a drive with a damaged volume since you started Data Rescue, Data Rescue may not automatically notice it. Try the File -> Refresh Drives List menu item. If the volume you are looking for still does not appear, it may be because Data Rescue is unable to find the correct name for it, in which case it may show some other name such as unknown for the volume name. Or it may be that Data Rescue can see the device, but is not able to recognize a volume structure on the device. If that is the case, you will need to choose the device name for scanning rather than the volume. Finally, it could be possible that your drive is malfunctioning to the point where your computer is not able to talk to it at all, in which case even the device name will not appear. In this case, no software will be able to scan your device. In this latter case, you might try some or all of the following things to see if your device can be made to appear: Double-check the drive cables and power source; remove/reattach the drive and/or power cycle it; power down and restart your computer. You can double-check that the drive can be seen by your computer by using Disk Utility to see if it can detect the drive. If the drive fails to show up in Disk Utility, this means that the computer does not detect the presence of the drive, and no software will be able to access it either. If possible, you could also try mounting the drive into an external enclosure and then see if the computer will detect the drive, we've seen this work in some cases. We've also seen some hard drives appear intermittently depending on the nature of the problem with the drive, so you may want to give it several tries, shutting the computer down in between, to see if the drive will re-appear to the system.

There could be two reasons for this, as explained below: When you do a Deep scan, Data Rescue uses two different algorithms to locate files. These methods will often locate many of the same files twice - once under a catalog folder and again under the CBR folder. (Data Rescue does not currently have the capability to automatically cross correlate these sets of files, but may do so in a future version.) So if you elect to recover everything, it will often be the case that the total space required exceeds the original media size. The second reason why the found files may total more than expected is the possibility of anomalously (and incorrectly) large files. In the course of scanning the media, Data Rescue will often come across bad files and catalog entries. Data Rescue is able to filter out the vast majority of these bad entries, but not all of them. Occasionally a few of these may show up in the recovery list with incorrect and large sizes. If you suspect this may be the case, you can easily find these large files by searching for files greater than a certain size using the Search button and looking by file size. A useful technique to eliminate these from the recovery is: first mark everything by clicking the checkbox for the top level folders, then search for and uncheck the large files which appear to be bogus.

Temporary Storage Location is the workspace where the software will store minor log files while performing your scans. This location must be a separate drive from the drive you are trying to recover, in order to prevent any additional damage to your lost data. This means that if you are trying to scan your internal drive, you will need to select another location such as a USB drive as your Temporary Storage Location.

Clone in Data Rescue will allow you to clone the raw data of a failing hard drive to a brand new or existing hard drive for you to run the data recovery. Note: Make sure that there is no data on the drive that you are using for Clone. It will be completely ERASED. Clone is not a utility that will allow you to clone your failing hard drive so you can replace the failing hard drive with the cloned hard drive, it is only for recovery purposes.

Yes, Data Rescue can recover from Raid drives. In Data Rescue if the Raid drive shows up as one drive then just scan that one device. If the Raid device is showing up as individual drives then within Data Rescue using Professional Mode, you can add a Virtual Raid for recovery. You would have to know the setup for the Raid (i.e. Primary/Secondary drive and stripe or mirror). If the drives are striped then the user will have to know the stripe size also to recreate the striped Raid. This allows greater flexibility to recover data from a RAID drive.

Yes, recovery is possible in these cases however typically the original filenames and folder structure will not be recoverable. The reason for this is because when files are deleted, the link between the raw data on the hard drive and the filesystem is broken. This is because the metadata for the file, which includes filename, folder location and other information about the data, is lost. When files are deleted, their location on the hard drive is marked as available free space and until that location is overwritten with new files, the raw data may be recoverable. This data, as well as data lost from reformatting can be found in the ‘Reconstructed Files’ folder in the results of a Deep Scan where it will be organized by file type.

Most cases of apparent freezing are actually slow reads due to disk problems. Make sure cables connecting to disk drives are properly connected. Disconnect or turn off unnecessary devices. If Data Rescue runs into a slow disk area where the disk is having trouble reading, it may appear to freeze, but actually just be very slow. If you think it has frozen, make a note of what is being displayed on the progress display, for example, the block number, then check again in half an hour or so and see if it has advanced at all. If not, it is probably just slow due to disk read problems. You can contact Prosoft technical support for further assistance.

Yes, you will need to be in Professional mode, and when a scan is active you will have the option to End Early.