Even if your macOS device breaks, the data on your Mac is not lost forever. With Recovery Backup you can save important files.
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Start recovery system
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Secure data
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After data recovery: reinstall macOS
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Alternatives for data recovery
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Avoid data loss: Tips for backup
If nothing works anymore and your Mac’s screen even remains black, you don’t have to despair directly. The data that is on the Mac is not lost if you know exactly what to do to save the data.
With a bootable USB stick, you can easily save the data on your Windows PC via a live system. With Apple computers, access to the data is unfortunately denied for security reasons. Fortunately, there are alternatives.
Unfortunately, there is no graphical user interface available for this, only the terminal, also known as the command prompt. In this guide, we will show you how exactly you start the recovery system and which commands you need for data recovery on external drives.
Start recovery system
To start data recovery, you need to boot the recovery system first. You do this as follows:
Secure data
Now the actual backup begins. Begin by locating the appropriate directories on your Mac.
copy data
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Now enter the following command and confirm with the Enter key to start the copying process:
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cp -r /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Users/USERNAME/FOLDERNAME /Volumes/DISKNAME/backup/FOLDERNAME
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FOLDER NAME stands for the name of the folder to be backed up. VOLUME NAME stands for the name of the external data carrier to which you want to copy the data. FOLDER NAME at the end of the command creates a new folder on the target drive. This must be created because not the whole folder but only the files from the folder are copied.
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Repeat this process until you’ve copied all the data you want to back up.
Check fuse
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give now ls /Volumes/VOLUMENAME/backup and confirm with the enter key. This command lists all directories in the “backup” folder on your external storage device. You can check whether the files have really been copied.
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If you want to look deeper into the folder structure, simply append the name of the relevant folder to the end of the command.
After data recovery: reinstall macOS
As soon as you have copied your data from the defective device to an external storage medium, you can reinstall the operating system to solve the problem. How exactly you can reinstall macOS on your Mac, we show you in the linked instructions.
Alternatives for data recovery
If the operating system is still working, but you still want to recover isolated files that you either accidentally deleted or lost due to some problem in the system, you can resort to MiniTool Data Recovery. The operation of the program is a bit easier and is definitely recommended for such problems.
Backup: The ultimate backup guide
With a backup or a data backup you can protect your pictures, documents and other important files with a backup copy. Netzwelt reveals in the ultimate backup guide how to create a data backup for Windows, OS X, Android and iOS.
Avoid data loss: Tips for backup
We recommend that you make regular backups so that you don’t end up empty-handed the next time the system fails and you don’t have to go through the entire procedure again. A Mac, for example, offers the Time Machine for this. If you want to get to know how to use the hard drive in macOS, we will also inform you here on Netzwelt.
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