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Download Free Flash Drive Recovery for Mac to recover deleted files, photos, audio, music, Email or formatted data from USB flash drive on Mac effectively,.
Aug 26,2019 • Filed to: Solve Mac Problems • Proven solutions
How do I create a recovery USB for Mac?
Part 1. Overview of Mac Recovery USB
If you are an Apple user, you would probably know that when you install OS X (Lion or higher), it will automatically create a hidden recovery volume on your startup drive. So when you encounter an emergency, you will be able to recover your Mac easily with 'Disk Utility' to repair a damaged hard drive, find information about your device's problem online, restore your device to its previous settings or reinstall OS X. To further enhance your user experience, Apple lets you have a physical copy of OS X Recovery USB drive created with Disk Assistant.
It is a great option to have because if your drive is brutally damaged, there is a possibility of not being able to use the recovery volume and you don't necessarily have an internet connection all the time. Therefore, having a physical copy would be like an insurance for your devices. Read on our side-by-step guide to help you create OS X Recovery USB drive with Disk Assistant on a USB stick.
In order to create an OS X Recovery USB drive, you will need a few things:
- A working recovery volume on your operating system startup drive - this is the source where you will create a copy of the volume.
- A USB drive with at least 1GB storage space.
If you do not have a working recovery volume on your device, you will not be able to follow through with these instructions. And remember that these instructions will not work if you have an older device model that is currently running on a newer operating system.
Part 2. How to Create a Mac Recovery USB
When you clone the recovery volume on any partitions listed in 'Disk Utility', any data in the destination volume will be deleted. Therefore, it is a good idea to prepare the USB drive before you create OS X Recovery drive with Disk Assistant, especially a USB drive with a large amount of storage space. Create partitions in the new destination so that you will be able to have a dedicated section for the recovery volume.
Once you have prepped the new destination,if needed, follow these steps to get you on the way of owning a physical OS X Recovery disk created with Disk Assistant.
Get the Disk Assistant, if needed
Select the new drive
Eject and keep the USB safe
Where is Recovery Disk Assistant? Go to Applications > Utilities to see if the 'Recovery Disk Assistant' is not available in the folder. If it is not, download it from Apple's Support website. Wait for the download to complete and double-click on the 'RecoveryDiskAssistant.dmg' file in the 'Downloads' folder. It will create a file named 'Recovery Disk Assistant.app' into the 'Applications' folder.
Connect a USB drive to your device and launch 'Recovery Disk Assistant'. You will need to agree to the terms and conditions and wait until the wizard detects the external drives. Select the new recovery disk i.e. the USB drive you connected to your computer and click on the 'Continue' button.
It should not take long for the system to create a clone of the original recovery volume. It will prompt you when it is done so that you can click the 'Quit' button to eject the USB drive. Make sure you keep the USB drive somewhere safe and easily accessible.
Since the introduction of OS X Lion, Apple did away with recovery disks, but we know that while this is super convenient for many, having an actual recovery disk can be beneficial at times. This is the simplest and fastest solution to have available to you anytime, anywhere.
Related: We also provide solutions to help you boot Mac from USB drive.
Part 3. How to Recover Data on Mac OS X
What if the Mac recovery USB works normally but data gets lost? Read on and get a feasible solution for Mac OS data recovery.
Recoverit - The Free Software for Mac OS Recovery
To get data back from your Mac OS X, sometimes you need a trustworthy and professional Mac recovery program to help you, for example, Recoverit Free Mac Data Recovery. This is a piece of mighty data recovery software to help you restore Mac in all data loss scenarios, such as crashed Mac, unbootable Mac, emptied Mac trash, formatted USB flash drive, unintentional deletion of important files, and many more.
With a 96% recovery rate, you can be reassured since it is able to use advanced scan and search technology to help you recover files without much effort and any hassle. Why is it considered safe and secure? It performas the read-only mode and keeps your data private by yourself. Moreover, before you have to purchase it for Mac OS recovery, you can download the free trial to recover limited files for free, regardless of the device or file format.
Video Tutorial: How to Recover Data on Windows/Mac
Here, we offer a video tuturial to show you how to use Recoverit Free Data Recovery to recover lost, deleted or formatted data back for free.
3 Steps to Recover Information on Mac
Free download and install the free Mac OS recovery software. Follow the next steps to recover information previously stored on Mac.
Select the recovery disk
Scan the Mac recovery disk
Preview and recover information
To recover information on Mac, you need to first select a hard disk that stored your lost data before. Then click 'Start' to begin the Mac OS recovery process.
A thorough scan is launched on the selected Mac hard drive or external device for Mac files recovery. If the scanning location would be an external device, please connect it to your Mac in advance.
Finally, you can preview the files selected from the results. Choose the files you want to recover and click 'Recover' to get them back. After Mac OS recovery, please do not save the files to the same place.
So far, you should have known how to create a Mac recovery USB, and also learn how to perform Mac OS recovery for your lost data. After it, we always encourage each of you to keep a habit of Mac file backup. It can help you guard your important data much better.
Note: Recover Lost Mac Data under Mac OS X 10.13 (High Sierra)
Due to macOS High Sierra (macOS 10.13) requirement, Mac users are not allowed an access to the built-in system drive from any apps. Therefore, if you need to restore lost data from the system disk under macOS 10.13, please 'disable System Integrity Protection' first.
How to disable 'System Integrity protection'? Please follow the steps below.
Step 1Reboot the Mac and hold down 'Command + R' keys simultaneously after you hear the startup chime, this will boot OS X into Recovery Mode.
Step 2When the 'OS X Utilities' screen appears, pull down the 'Utilities' menu at the top of the screen instead, and choose 'Terminal'.
Step 3In the 'Terminal' window, type in 'csrutil disable' and press 'Enter' then restart your Mac.
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Posted by Autumn X to Mac Data Recovery on July 18th, 2017
It is terrible when you plugged in a USB flash drive to your Mac computer but got the error 'The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer'. Once the USB flash drive becomes unreadable/corrupted, you will be unable to access the data stored on it. Relax. This tutorial will show you how to repair/fix unreadable/corrupted USB flash drives on Mac and also recover data from the unreadable USB flash drive withiBoysoft Mac Data Recovery, according to your situation.
- Table of contents
- 1. Problem - USB flash drives not readable on Mac
- 2. Why is USB flash drive is not readableon Mac?
- 3. How to fix/repair the unreadable/corrupted USB flash drive on Mac?
- 4. Bonus tips
- 5. Conclusion
Problem - USB flash drives not readable on Mac
A USB flash drive or other removable data storage medium is widely used for storing and transferring data from an iMac, MacBook or Mac Mini. Generally, when you insert in a USB flash drive, it will be mounted in Disk Utility and on Desktop. Then you can read and write to the USB drive.
However, what a very distressing situation if your USB flash drive is not readable/recognizing/working/showing up on Mac, especially when you desperately need to access some data stored on it. A Mac user has reported this issue in forum:
'I have a 32 GB USB which has suddenly come up with a message statingthe USB flash drive is not readable by this computer (Apple MacBook Pro). I do not want to initialize it as this will result in loss of my data. How can I fix the unreadable USB on Mac and recover data?'
Why is USB flash drive is not readable on Mac?
Actually, USB drives are susceptible to such kind of corruptions, as these drives are usually connected to any system. Here are some of the common reasons behind this issue:
- > Severe virus infection to your USB flash drive. A virus or a Trojan may delete critical system elements, thus disabling the OS and making the drive unrecognized.
- > Sudden power surge or abrupt removal of USB flash drive. The flash drive was removed improperly from the computer which led to the corruption of its partitions.
- > Faulty USB port or cable. If the USB port or cable of the computer is not working properly, your Mac computer won't recognize or read the flash drive.
- > Incompatibility issues between the file systems of both flash drive and the Mac computer. In case the USB flash drive is formatted with the NTFS file system which isn't compatible with macOS.
- > Out-of-date drivers. If drivers are out of date, the Mac operating system and your applications on the computer will fail to interact with all hardware devices. So the USB flash drive becomes unreadable.
- > The USB drive is physically damaged. If your USB drive is seriously broken by hitting, dropping, shaking, etc., there is no USB repair tool or USB flash recovery software for Mac can help you.
How to fix/repair the unreadable/corrupted USB flash drive on Mac?
Solution 1: Check the USB port or cable
Check that USB port on your Mac. Plug into a different USB port or plug another device in and see if that works OK. Also, make sure that it's not faulty. Try using a different USB cable with the USB drive to see if that fixes the non-readable problem.
Solution 2: Update or reinstall the driver
When you are having problems with a device, you should check if any updates are available please do the following:
Step 1: Click on the Apple in the upper left corner of the screen.
Step 2: Select 'Software Update...'
Step 3: Any updates available will be listed and able to be downloaded or you will be told your software is up to date.
Solution 3: Check the file system format
If the files system is NTFS format, it's not hard to understand why the USB flash drive is unreadable on Mac. To make sure, you can go to Disk Utility and check its file system. To fix the incompatible issue, you can download and install an NTFS driver to read and write NTFS drives on Mac.
Solution 4: Fix the unreadable USB flash drive with First Aid
Disk Utility's First Aid is capable of repairing minor errors of disks, such as fixing a USB flash drive that is not readable/recognizing/working/showing up on Mac.
Step 1: Launch Disk Utility from Utilities.
Step 2: Select the unreadable USB drive from the sidebar.
Step 3: Click First Aid at the top of the window, and then wait until the reparation process finishes.
Solution 5: Reformat the unreadable USB drive
IfFirst Aid failed to fix the unreadable drive, it indicates that the USB drive might have severe errors beyond its capability. Then the best solution is to reformat the unreadable USB drive and make it readable or usable again. This process will wipe all data stored on the USB drive. So, please make sure you have a backup copy, or, follow the steps torecover data from the unreadable USB drive with iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery.
iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery is afree USB drive data recovery tool that supports recovering deleted videos, documents, photos, music and much more files from unreadable USB flash drives, Mac hard drives, external hard drives, SD cards, memory cards and other storage devicesmacOS Catalina 10.15/Mojave 10.14/High Sierra 10.13/Sierra 10.12 and Mac OS X 10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7.
Besides, iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery also recovers deleted files from flash drives, recover data from formatted, inaccessible, unmounted, corrupted drives. It
Steps to recover data and fix the unreadable USB drive on Mac
Step 1: Connect the unreadable USB drive to Mac.
Step 2: Launch iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery.
Step 3: Select the unreadable USB and click the Next button. The program will start to scan for lost files.
Step 4: Preview the scanning results and choose files you want to recover, and then click Recover button to get those files back.
Step 5: Launch Disk Utility from Utilities and select the unreadable USB drive.
Step 6: Click Erase on the top of the window, and follow the on-screen instructions to reformat the unreadable USB drive.
Hopefully, the USB drive will be readable now.
Solution 6: Send the unreadable USB drive to a local technician
Sometimes, the unreadable USB drive can't be fixed by reformatting. In this case, the unreadable USB drive is probably damaged physically, and you have to ask a local technician for help.
Bonus tips: Firstly, make sure that your USB flash drives don't become unreadable/corrupted in the future by always properly unmounting the disk properly after using it.
Secondly, download install an anti-virus program and check your computer and USB drive for virus or malware regularly.
Moreover, keep the driver and the Mac computer updated. The last and most important thing is to remember backing up important files as it is the golden rules to avoid data loss.
If unfortunately, you have lost data on your Mac computer or any other storage media, you can rely on iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery. Just download this program and get all lost data back.
Conclusion
Wish you have fixed/repaired unreadable/corrupted USB on Mac with these solutions above. These effective solutions also can be used to fix USB not recognizing/working/showing up on Mac.
Which solution really helps you out? Do you have any other great solution to fix this issue? Please don't be hesitate to share them with us.
Still have questions?