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I have an older Mac (Catalina) and my external hard drive won't show up. I didn't back it up. I know big mistake. What software do you recommend using for data retrieval? I heard that disk drill is good. is is a scam or is it a good usable way to retrieve my data?
MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.15
Does the external hard disk drive appear in Disk Utility? You have to at least get it to mount or you won't be able to get to Step 1. Try a different cable.
There have been reports of "Disk Drill" corrupting perfectly good hard disk drives, but those reports involved installing it as a resident utility that runs all the time which was never a good idea. I do not know if it can be used as a standalone data retrieval tool and I don't have any other recommendations. I think your best course of action will be to find a way that gets that disk to mount. Try a different Mac if you can get your hands on one.
Does the external hard disk drive appear in Disk Utility? You have to at least get it to mount or you won't be able to get to Step 1. Try a different cable.
There have been reports of "Disk Drill" corrupting perfectly good hard disk drives, but those reports involved installing it as a resident utility that runs all the time which was never a good idea. I do not know if it can be used as a standalone data retrieval tool and I don't have any other recommendations. I think your best course of action will be to find a way that gets that disk to mount. Try a different Mac if you can get your hands on one.
Try Data Rescue. It has been years since I used it, but I think it may allow you to select a drive.
I know that TestDisk and PhotoRec can be used since they insist the drive is unmounted first, but I believe they are both command line utilities. I've only ever used TestDisk though and it can be confusing on how it works. I don't know how either utility works with an APFS file system.
What file system is being used on the external drive?
FYI, it sounds like your drive may be failing. If that is the case, then do not use any data recovery apps as they will be unable to handle the errors produced by a failing drive. Data recovery apps are only meant to recover accidentally deleted data from working drives. Using a data recovery app, or any app to attempt to recover data or fix the drive will result in the drive failure getting worse since most utilities don't know how to handle the errors.
You can attempt to check the health of the drive by running DriveDx. You will need to install a special USB driver in order to attempt to retrieve the health information from the external drive. However, even with the special USB driver some external drive enclosures will not allow the necessary communication to access the drive's health information. Post the complete DriveDx text report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.
It won’t mount, I have tried multiple computers.
Tried disk utility also.
In that case data recovery software is of no use.
what data recovery software does everyone recommend for using with my mac and external hard drive?
