Mac Data Recovery Software & Solutions

Reliable and user-friendly Mac utilities to manage partitions

2012-01-24T22:51:00.000-08:00

Logical partitions in a Mac hard drive helps in storing different categories of data separately. At the purchase level, the Mac hard drive has just one single volume so that you can make as many partitions or volumes in the drive as per your requirement. Apart from creating or adding new partitions to the hard drive, there can be many other needs, such as deletion of unwanted volume, formatting of the unwanted content in a volume, increasing or decreasing the size of any volume etc. In order to perform these operations and manage Mac partitions with ease, there are many Mac utilities available in the current market.

May be when you bought your first Mac, you did not exactly know what different kinds of files, you would store. You made just two volumes – one for documents and the other for entertainment. But, later you realized the need of separate volumes for official documents and personal data. This means, you have to create a separate partition in the hard drive.

At times, you may feel that one of your volumes require more storage space, in order to accommodate a particular category of data in that single volume. Similarly, there can be volumes with unnecessary space, which can be utilized in another volume.

Apart from these, there are occasions, when due to file system corruption, operating system malfunction or virus attack, Mac volumes become completely inaccessible. Even, at times the volumes are so badly corrupt that they can not be formatted. If you failed to repair such a corrupt or inaccessible volume, you do not have any alternate left, except deletion of the volume and creation of a new one.

For all the above situations, including creation, deletion, formatting or resizing of partitions, Apple has provided an inbuilt utility, called 'Disk Utility'. But, these days, you can find a number of reliable Mac applications, which can help managing your Mac in a much easier way like Stellar Partition Manager. Unlike Disk Utility, these utilities have more appealing and friendlier graphical user interface to manage Mac volumes. Even, some of the utilities provide features, like Hiding or Revealing Mac partitions, against unauthorized access. Moreover, these third-party Mac utilities are equally advanced and come with detailed instructions for performing each operation, without any further assistance.

Enhanced and Improved Utilities in DriveToolBox2

2012-01-24T21:17:00.000-08:00

Wipe: After erasing data, we can still recover it as data is still there on hard drive. What if you have confidential data and can't take any risk of its recovery? In this case Wipe is your Saviour. It completely wipes out your data from memory beyond recovery and protects you from prying eyes.

Drive Initializer: It helps you format your hard drive in appropriate way and enables you to create new partitions in HFS+ or FAT 32 format but make sure to take backup before formatting your drive. As per your requirement you can choose GUID partition, Apple partition and Master Boot Record. This module can help you convert your Intel based Mac hard drive to Apple partition to make it compatible with Power PC.

Surface Scan: This utility scans every block of your hard drive or volume for bad sectors. After scanning it will give you all the information about sectors and block size and helps you prepare for all kind of Block-specific errors. It does not deallocate the bad blocks; just give you information about them. All the bad blocks will be shown as red in grid format.

Volume Repair: Whenever you face any problem regarding accessing a volume like unable to open a file, cannot store data etc., straight away go for Volume Repair software. It checks for error in volume and fixes them. There are three option available- Verify, Repair and rebuild. “Verify” scans the entire volume and checks for errors. “Repair” Helps in repairing errors found after verification and “Rebuild” is a combination of verify and repair.

Drive Stats: Drive Stats give you complete information regarding your hard drive/volume status and displays complete details like drive name, drive size, partition map type, file count, available free space etc. You can efficiently track your drive performance by going through its basic information, description and SMART parameters.

Drive Performance: It helps you to better analysis and evaluates the performance of your hard drive by measuring the data transfer speed while different read/write or I/O operations and gives you the result in both graph and raw layout. You can compare your drive performance by the stored results of other systems.

Raw Data Editor: This is an advanced utility for advanced Mac users. It displays all the data stored on your drive in hex format and enables you to reset the offset value of any corrupt file. This can help you fix any minor corruption but it’s always advised to create a clone or an image of your hard drive before making any changes to file structure.

Shield: shield helps you to recover your deleted data and automatically create images at the scheduled time. You can recover your data effortlessly by using backup images.

What’s New in Drive ToolBox2?

2012-01-20T03:04:00.000-08:00

Drive ToolBox2

SpeedUp Mac: Efficiently removes all the unwanted files and applications that eats up system performance by consuming a quality space. These are cache files, log files, junk files, universal binaries, duplicate files etc. SpeedUp Mac optimize free space by removing clutter i.e. removes the basic obstacle between you and your Mac in order to make your Mac run at the speed it used to be in the beginning.

Partition Manager: It manages Mac partitions thereby providing an efficient way to resize your hard drive by creating, deleting, resizing, formatting, hiding or revealing partitions on hard drive. It not only manages other volumes but your boot volume as well by creating a bootable Mac DVD. There is an additional option Hide/Reveal, to secure your partition from unwanted and unauthorized access and to mount the hidden partition whenever you want. This utility is applicable only to GUID partition and Apple Partition Map(APM).

Drive Defrag: A file use to save in small chunks of memory i.e. It is fragmented and when we need to access these files, it takes long time to open as different chunks is to be fetched from different memory locations. To resolve this problem Drive Defrag is a best solution, it easily defrags hard drive volume or a particular file by providing contiguous memory location and optimizes free space at one place. It reduces file access time and increases the read write operations in your file.

Drive Clone: This module not only creates clone of a hard drive but having an additional feature of creating image. It creates an exact twin of your hard drive/volume to another volume, folder or network drive. Cloning is a great way to save your data and your system setup without worrying about reloading entire OS and programs. One of its best features is that you can resize volumes on destination drive.

Data Encryptor: This is a free and bonus utility that helps you encrypt and decrypt files and folders. It enables you to even hide the encrypted files. If you have used this software for encryption, then no other software can decrypt it.

For other Utilities in Drive ToolBox2 read the next article Enhanced and Improved Utilities in Drive ToolBox2

A Pack of 12 Mac Utilities to Keep Mac Healthy | Stellar Drive ToolBox2

2012-01-20T02:33:00.000-08:00

Stellar drive Toolbox for Mac OS X is now with advanced utilities in its new version. Drive ToolBox2 is comprehensive software to maintain and manage your Mac in the best way. It is a combination of 12 different utilities and a free bonus utility to optimize your drive performance, managing partitions, repairing corrupt volume, defragging fragmented hard drive, wiping data beyond recovery, encrypting confidential data etc.

Features:

Enhance Mac performance by removing unwanted files and applications.
Performs functions like cloning your hard drive or creating drive or volume image.
Defrags fragmented hard drive to optimize free space.
Creates, deletes, format and resize Mac partitions.
Encrypt important files or folders to maintain data security.
Provides all details of the system in detailed as well as summarized view.
Wipe unwanted and sensitive data beyond recovery.
Completely scans your system to find bad sectors
Checks performance level of drives and volumes.

What’s New in Drive ToolBox2?

Speedup Mac
Drive Defrag
Drive Clone
Partition Manager
Data Encryptor (Free)

For New features in Drive ToolBox2 CLICK HERE

New flavor in MacWorld | iWorld 2012 for Mac Addicts- OS X ZONE

2012-01-15T23:12:00.000-08:00

All Mac users.. Its high time for you all as MacWorld | iWorld is coming with its all new fascination. All Mac users desperately wait for this event to occur for whole year. So hold your breath as MacWorld is going to be organized from 26th to 28th January, San Fransisco.

New flavor in MacWorld | iWorld 2012 is the exclusive OS X Zone. It is a specified floor area specially designed to showcase OS X Developers, the most exclusive class for MacWorld | iWorld mob every year. This area provides an Unparalleled Promotional Exposure to present your software with Minimum cost and maximum exposure.

Take profit that come with face-to-face interaction like building contacts with the users belongs to Apple products community, indulging one-on-one with customers, meeting with other high profile developers, and making new contacts with potential partners and investors.

All this is available at an easy cost of $1,995 whose actual value is over $15,000! To confirm check MacWorld.

Crap Remover and Performance Booster- SpeedUp Mac

2012-01-02T21:29:00.000-08:00

Are you aware of files in your Mac eating up your system performance?? Let me tell u. There are Cache Files, Log Files, Junk Files etc. Such files and applications halt the System Performance and occupies a Quality Space. After a certain period of time our system go slow and we people think that its because our system is growing old but there is nothing like that, its because of these unwanted Files and Applications.

SpeedUp Mac by Stellar efficiently Removes Clutter, Enhance System Performance and Optimize free space. The software works both as a cleaner and uninstaller.

Basically there are 3 Options:

SpeedUp Now: It is a complete booster for your System. It is used to clean your whole System. Old large Files, duplicate Files, universal binaries, log files, cache/temporary Files etc. consumes your drive space. Moreover, SpeedUp Mac enables you to backup your files before removing them from the Hard Drive. You can also discard or include a particular file type.

Clean My Mac: It enables you to clean a particular volume. As in SpeedUp Now you can not select a volume, is the major difference between two. This feature works on individual Mac volumes and enables you to gain considerable amount of disk space.

Uninstaller: It removes all avoidable applications, widgets and plug-ins that exist in the system . You can simply drag or drop an application that you want to remove into 'Application Uninstaller Area' or choose from the list of applications.

Widgets and plugins eats up a lot of space contributing in slowing down System Performance. Some widgets keep on running even when you’re not using your dashboard and some plugins got automatically downloaded without your knowledge. Uninstaller scans the entire drive listing out all the widgets and plugins, thus enabling us to delete the unwanted ones.

Some Important features

Scheduler: Scheduler in Preferences enables you to run the software at particular intervals, say 1 week, it will scan your Mac and list all the unwanted files and applications. And its totally upon you to delete those files that you feel are not required.
Advance: It is basically to alert you that your Trash is full. By default max limit is 1GB but you can set it upto 5GB, and when trash exceed that limit a message will pop up to clean your trash.
Devices: If you connect any external device to your Mac it will scan that device and delete the junk and binary files from it.

Mac Data Recovery Under Error 43

2012-01-02T01:38:00.000-08:00

File system is one of the important parts of the computer hard drive. It stores all the details of the volumes and the data areas on the hard drive. Without the file system, it is not possible to access any file from the hard drive memory by its name. Hence, for smooth functioning of the system, the file system must be in good health. In Mac, there are different types of file systems, such as – HFS, HFS+, HFS Wrapper etc. Sometimes, due to unexpected system shut sown, software or hardware contradiction etc, the file system becomes corrupt and all the data in the hard drive becomes totally inaccessible. In such situations, you need to opt for any Mac recovery software to recover the lost/inaccessible data back.

At times, once the file system has already got corrupt, though the system may boot, some files/folders can not be accessed. While trying to open such files, you may come across various error messages. One of the error messages that you may have received can be as below:

“- 43 error (File not found, Folder not found)”

The error message indicates that the operating system has failed to locate the content of the file, you are looking for. The reason behind the problem is the corruption to the directory structure, which has led to this problem.

Apart from this, Error code -43 is usually encountered while trying to connect any Windows share or copying files to/from the Windows share through Mac. Here, the cause behind the problem can be any of the below -

Illegal characters in the file name, which are not supported by Windows
Insufficient permissions for accessing the SharePoint by connecting your SMB server through a URL, which contains the name of that SharePoint server.

Resolution:

If you have received the problem, while accessing any Windows share, then resolve the problem by trying out the following:

Remove the characters from the file name, which Windows do not support. The characters can be - ?, [, ], /, \, =, +, <, >, ;, :, " ,, | and *.
Don't use the share name in the URL; instead use only the server name.

However, if you are having the problem, while working on your normal Mac system, then the problem is related to a severely damaged directory structure. You can try repairing the corrupt directory structure by running 'Disk Utility'. If Disk Utility fails, you need to format the system hard drive and make fresh partitions in it. In such a condition, you need to restore the formatted data from a valid backup. In the absence of an updated backup, any Mac recovery software can only help you recover the lost data back.

These Mac data recovery utilities are immensely powerful and recover the lost data efficiently. At the same time, these utilities are completely read-only in their recovery operation and with graphical user interfaces, quite easy-to-use.

File Sharing Between Mac and Windows

2011-12-22T02:02:00.000-08:00

File sharing between computers has become a necessity with the use of computers everywhere. With more and more people switching to Mac from Windows cross-platform connection has become common, earlier it was quite tricky but with time has become easy. Why one wish to connect Mac and a PC? There can be various reasons:

You might prefer user interface of Mac
Might be having PC at home and Mac at office and need to share files.
You may be required Windows files which are shared on the local network.
You might want to share files between Mac and Windows machine.
You might have a network HDD attached and want to share files between Mac & Windows.

Ways to Share Mac and PC:

Using Firewire
This is the simplest method of connecting two machines but is possible only when two machines are placed together.
1.Get a Firewire that is easily available to connect Mac and PC.
2.Make sure that your files are in MS-DOS format as both Mac and PC support this format.
3.Connect the Firewire to the machines that need to be shared.
4.Transfer Data from one to another and remove the Firewire.

Sharing Files over the network

This is the option that is most preferred when the two machines are far enough to not connect by physical means. All we need is that two machines should be on a similar network. Mac is having a inbuild feature of detecting any system connected on local network, so it’s very easy for a windows user to share files for anyone on Mac.
Go to System Preferences from Apple Menu -> Select Sharing from Internet & Network

By default only Public Folder will be shared and if you want to share any other folder, click on the '+' sign and choose the folder.

After selecting, set Permission for each shared folder. You should prefer to allow Read only permission in order to avoid messing around with your files.
Now, transfer files from one machine to another over network.

Advantages:

Resource Sharing: One of the major benefits of sharing a Mac and a Window machine is Printer Sharing, means you can get output from your Printer regardless of which computer it is connected to.
Guest Account Sharing: Through network you can share Guest Account.
No Physical Boundaries: There is no boundation on the distance between two machines. You can place them anywhere irrespective of the fact that they are connected on a same network.
File Sharing is Cheap: Every Macintosh comes with mandatory software to share files, there is no need for users to spend money on hardware.
No File Size Limit: What if you are having file larger than 100MB? File Sharing's limits are much higher than that of any other storage media.

Clone and Backup your Hard Drive Using Disk Utility

2011-12-11T21:03:00.000-08:00

To take proper backup of your data is the best way to recover from the worst situation that occurs from data loss and one of the best way for same is making clone of your drive. Cloning is a process of copying the content of your drive to another drive. The main reason why cloning is one of the best way is that you can create a bootable of your clone drive. If your OS X got corrupt and you want the data stored in it then you can boot your system from its clone.

There are software available in market for cloning like Stellar Drive Clone, Carbon Copy Cloner, SuperDuper etc. but they need you to pay some amount of bucks. You are having a free facility for same that you guys may not be aware of. ANY GUESSES?? Ya, it’s by using Disk Utility. By Disk Utility you can clone your drive or simply do a full Backup without paying even a penny, it’s absolutely free and very reliable. To clone a drive you need to follow this path:

Go to 'GO' in Menu Bar -> Applications -> Utility -> Disk Utility -> Select Restore

Source: Drive you want to clone or backup. Select that drive and drag it in source option.

Destination: Drive on which you want to make clone or save backup. Select the drive, drag it and drop to the destination option. Always prefer that it should be an external drive. As the whole concept of cloning will ruin if you will use an internal drive as destination drive. In this case if your system got corrupt then the clone as well, so prefer to use an external drive.

Using this process you can make clone of any drive except the one from which you booted your Mac. For that you need to follow a different process i.e. if you want to make clone of a drive other than Macintosh HD then use the above process, but if you want to make Clone you whole system including Macintosh HD then you need to go for following process.

Here we go:

Step 1: Insert the CD or DVD that came with your Mac to Startup and hold the C key while your Mac restarts.

Step 2: Go on, select your language. What do you think; you are installing Mac OS X again? NO.
This is just you need to do to get to Disk Utilities. When Menu Bar pop-ups, select Disk Utilities from Utilities menu.

Step 3: In Disk Utility you need to select Source and Destination Drives.

Step 4: Click Restore and you will end up with a perfect clone of your hard drive.

(Credit: Macinstruct.com)

Now Restart your Mac and you are done with cloning.

Mac Malware Update- XProtect

2011-12-05T21:41:00.000-08:00

XProtect is a inbuilt feature in Mac OSX incorporated by Apple, it is a basic scanner for newly downloaded files confirms if they contain malware or not. Apple just released a new version for its XProtect to block new threats of Trojan horse.

Though Mac OS X is the most secure operating system from malware (viruses and worms) attacks but malware developers are one step forward form Apple, they wrap their malware and serve it as a legitimate software package, which when installed by an user will send personal information to remote servers, corrupt files and breakdown systems security measures. They play hide and seek with Apple and other security software developers by releasing new variants for malware when scanner definitions are updated with any malware attempt.

Few months ago malware distribution sites had become prominent in Search Engine Result pages with “Mac Defender” and its variants showing up on many prominent websites like Google and MSN. It was the result of Black Hat Search Engine Optimization; it is a process of making pages by unethical methods that doesn’t follow SEO Guidelines.

Initially malware attacks were almost negligible in Mac, with time they increased as more and more malware makes its way, to help this Apple has added a feature to Mac OS X known as Xprotect. Earlier Mac OS X Snow Leopard and later include very basic protection against malware downloads, after the breakout of MacDefender in May 2011, Apple released a security update that enables automatic updating of Mac OS X.

To enable or disable security update, follow this path:

Go to System Preferences in Apple Menu -> Security and Privacy -> General -> Automatic Update Safe download list

(Credit: reviews.cnet.com)

After MacDefender malware 'Flashback' was found in late September as an installer for the popular Flash Player Plug-in. When run, install malware in user's Preferences folder. In its second version malware was modified for Web browser applications like Safari, which would inject the malware when these applications were run. In both cases, their job is same to send personal information to remote servers.

In-spite a number of Flashback variants have also been released, today's Xprotect update only include definition for second release of Flashback (FlashbackB) which was found a month ago. It’s a bit disappointing to see Apple's slow response. Though, in any case, an update to Apple is welcome news.

It's great to see Apple tackle malware more quickly to help protect those who don't have any third party scanner installed. Moreover It is advisable to keep a regular updated backup of your data and files to protect your self incase of any malware attack or a recommended Mac Data Recovery software like Stellar Phoenix Mac which can help you in recovering your lost or deleted files.

Mac Data Loss Causes and Recovery Solutions

2011-11-30T19:48:00.000-08:00

Data loss “a horrible reality”, everyone faces at many stages, is the most unexpected thing that happens usually at the worst possible moment. Sometimes our Mac goes unbootable, data got lost and many more. Here we are discussing some frequently occurring data lost problems, causes and possible solution.

Problems we usually face

Corrupted Preferences File
Data Corruption
Damaged File
Missing Volume
Files suddenly go missing

These are the most common problems that you all must have faced sometime. Now what are the major causes of their occurrence?

Major Causes and Recommended solutions

Is Your Hard Drive Detectable?

If your system is not detecting hard drive, don't pull your hair, problem may be in your power cable or data cable. It’s not necessary that every time there is problem in your hard drive. Just check your power cable and data cable again and try to connect your cables with your hard drive.

Power Issues

Power outages (power cut, blackout or power failure) and other power related issues can also be the cause of severe problems. So its recommended to check your power supply time to time, to take proper backup in UPS, you can also use auto save option if you are working in MS Word.

File System Corruption

File system is one of the most important structures of your Mac to locate data stored on hard drive and to retrieve it. What if your file system got corrupt? Data is inaccessible. To fix this problem go to Disk Utility, it is an inbuilt utility of Mac OSX operating system to help you check integrity of file system and fix minor problems. To reach Disk Utility follow this path:

Go to 'GO' in Menu Bar -> Applications -> Utility -> Select Disk Utility

Select Macintosh HD and click “verify”, it will show all the details and make you sure if your file system is corrupted or not. Then click on “repair”, to repair your files. Most probably it will work, still if it doesn’t work, then there is problem in your hard drive and go for a good Data Recovery Software like Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery to retrieve your inaccessible data and files.

Accidental Loss

Its human nature to take some things very lightly like deleting some file without properly checking if it’s useful or not and afterwards we realise its importance but now it’s too late. So it’s always recommended to take proper backup which is the best way to recovers your lost data.

Bad Programming

Bad Programming, particularly when your system hangs-up and forces you to hard restart. This eventually results data loss of your last unsaved files. Though, one cannot completely avoid problems caused by Bad Programming still its always advised that your main drive should be having 15-20% of free space and increase your RAM.

Conclusion: Nothing and no one can give you 100% assurance that your data is safe. But for your sake its always recommended to take proper backup of important data.

Is Time Machine a Safest Option For Backup???

2011-11-23T22:13:00.000-08:00

Are you using a Mac and sure about your data backup security?? IF Yes. Are u sure because of Time Machine utility. Then think again, IS YOUR DATA REALLY SECURE!

Now let me explain some noteworthy flaws about Time Machine Backup.

NEEDS MANUAL STARTUP : Time Machine needs to be started manually and anyhow if you forgot to do so, no one can help you from the feeling of despair. I personally faced it, last week while going out i forgot to start time machine in hurry and that dumped all the happiness of vacations in a bin after knowing that there was no backup updated.

SOURCE AND DESTINATION DRIVE : If you have selected destination drive on the same system as that of source drive and your system got corrupt then the destination drive as well. Now ARE YOU SAFE? NO. Here what you need to do is to always prefer an external drive as your destination drive.

STARTUP DRIVE : There are two problems related to Start-up Drive:

Firstly you can't backup to the Start-up drive.

Secondly, though time machine backup everything on an external drive, still you can't boot your system from time machine backup means you need to spend hours restoring your data if your internal drive got corrupt.

USER CONTROL: Sometimes you might want to backup some files at one drive and others at different one but this is not possible in case of time machine, it is not flexible enough and you have to take backup at one location only. In addition, you can't exclude file based on certain criteria like files with a particular extension.

MARSHALLING NOT ALLOWED: If you are working with confidential file then you need to think again before using time machine as marshalling is not allowed in time machine and anyone can access your data. Time machine doesn’t read marshalled data as well as it doesn’t allow marshalling on time machine backup.

DOES NOT INCLUDE OFF-SITE PROTECTION : If you are really concerned about security of your data then you should better go for off-site protection like taking online backup, as time machine is providing you a false sense of security. After all someone can steal your hard drive from your table, likewise disasters like fire and flood won't spare your backup drive.

You might get the impression that the Time Machine is the worst scenario in backup industry. But did you know that some of the top names in Backup Industry use Time Machine? Everything have some pros & cons and this article was just to put a light on the cons of time machine, that doesn’t mean you will stop using this utility. It’s just to make you quite aware before using it.

Recover Deleted Data from Mac Hard Drive

2011-11-18T01:51:00.000-08:00

Today i switched on my Mac and got shocked my hard drive did not boot. I tried so many times to startup my Mac but it would not start. I was having an important presentation on my Mac and there was no backup updated. I won’t be having any other backup as this was the worst situation i have ever faced. My boss was calling me for presentation and file was not there.

I shut down my system immediately as i was aware of the fact that if i will continue to work then chances of recovering data will reduce. So as soon as you come to know that your data has been lost from your Mac , just stop working and shut down your system because as long as you will use that system the chances of recovering your data is reducing. YOU KNOW!!! Data is still there on hard disk, its just not visible. If you continue to work then the newer data will overrite the older one and possibilities of recovering data will reduce.

The situation has become haphazardious and then the idea of searching over Internet struck my mind and i got to know that there are possibilities of recovering data and i breathed a sign of relief.

These possibilities were all because of Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery software; it is very useful and user-friendly software that helps in recovering our lost data, photos, videos etc. Without wasting any time i just downloaded the trial version of software in order to check if it will be able to recover my data or not.

The software gives me a detail list of all the items that can be recovered but unluckily I was not been able to save the data as i was using the trial version. In order to save my files i need to download the full version and it was worth buying this software to get my lost files back.

Thank God to Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery software it helped me in recovering my files and reaching for presentation on time.