If your Mac’s hard drive becomes corrupted, it can lead to a variety of issues, from apps crashing unexpectedly to your computer refusing to boot up altogether. Fortunately, there are several steps you can take to fix a corrupted hard drive on your Mac and recover your data. Here’s how:
1. Shut Down Your Mac Safely
If your Mac is still functioning, shut it down properly by selecting “Shut Down” from the Apple menu. This helps prevent further damage to the hard drive and ensures that any data in memory is properly written to disk.
2. Repair the Corrupted Hard Drive Using Disk Utility
Disk Utility is a built-in tool in macOS that can help fix certain types of disk errors. To use it:
- Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder in your Applications folder.
- If your Mac won’t boot up, you can access Disk Utility from macOS Recovery. Turn on your Mac and hold down Command R until the Apple logo appears, then release the keys.
- Select your hard drive from the sidebar and click the “First Aid” button.
- Click “Run” to start the repair process.
If Disk Utility is unable to repair the drive, it may be physically damaged and need to be replaced.
3. Initiate the FSCK Command
If Disk Utility doesn’t work, you can try using the FSCK command in Single User mode:
- Turn on your Mac and hold down Command S until you see a command prompt.
- Type “/sbin/fsck -fy” and press Enter.
- If FSCK finds any errors, it will attempt to fix them automatically.
If FSCK is unable to repair the drive, you may need to use a third-party data recovery tool or seek professional help.
4. Try Free Software to Recover Mac Hard Drive Data
If your hard drive is too damaged to repair, you may still be able to recover some of your data using a free data recovery tool like Disk Drill or EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard. These tools can scan your hard drive for recoverable files and allow you to save them to an external drive.
5. Recover from a Time Machine backup drive
If you have a Time Machine backup of your Mac, you can use it to restore your system to a previous state before the corruption occurred. This will erase any data that was added since the last backup, but it can help get your Mac back up and running.
6. Hire a hard drive recovery service for Mac
If all else fails, you can hire a professional data recovery service to attempt to recover your data. These services have specialized equipment and expertise that can often recover data from severely damaged hard drives.
Remember, prevention is key when it comes to hard drive corruption. Always keep your Mac’s software up to date, use a surge protector, and regularly back up your data to an external drive or cloud storage service.