If your disk is suffering physical damage or suspected of having a physical hardware failure recovery may not be possible.
You may consider physically removing the disk from the computer and placing it in another, known working Mac for recovery. In the event that the cable and port are not the issue and the disk is still unreadable there may be another issue. Even though a cable may appear to be in perfect condition this does not necessarily indicate functionality.
Trying a different data cable may be useful too. It often helps to try an alternate port on the computer (plug the cable into a new port). If the drive is known to be good and working we suggest verifying the data cables used are functional. In case the unbootable hard drive is not detected or recognized by Disk Drill, this may mean that the drive is suffering from physical damage. What If Your Hard Drive Fails To Display On The Desktop? Doing so on the scanning computer system will slow the scan process. Once the scan has commenced, do not carry out another task on the computer system until the scan ends. Alternatively, you can manually define it by clicking the “drop down” gear next to “Recover”. Remember that by default Disk Drill will try all available scan methods. This is the same process as any other recovery and does not require any additional steps. This means that you can start a scan by simply opening Disk Drill and clicking “Recover” next to the disk in the list of available disks. One thing you will discover when the system is in Target Disk Mode is that your screen will show the Thunderbolt or FireWire icon.ĭisk Drill will now recognize the target disk from the other computer as if it were connected locally. This can be done by powering off the target (unbootable or High Sierra) computer and then powering on again, this time by long pressing the “T” button or key. Starting Up Mac in Target Disk ModeĪfter connecting your Mac running OS X High Sierra (10.13+) (or a computer you wish to recover with Disk Drill that is unbootable) to another Mac that is working, the target Mac can be started in Target Disk Mode.
Please continue reading this guide to learn how to configure Target Disk Mode. You only need to connect your Thunderbolt or FireWire cable to establish a connection between the two Macs.
Remember that using Target Disk Mode is only one of several means of recovering from Mac OS X High Sierra with Disk Drill. The use of Target Disk Mode requires that you have another computer that is working and a Thunderbolt or FireWire cable to link the two of them. All you need is another working Mac and you can “remotely” access the disk on the Mac you wish to recover.Īnother great use of Target Disk Mode is if you still possess an older, unbootable Mac that is not mounting well and the internal drive from which you want to recover files no longer boots, Target Disk Mode can be used to access the drive. While there are multiple solutions to this situation, one of the easiest is Target Disk Mode. Due to the new restrictions introduced by Apple, some third-party apps are unable to access the main boot disk for operations like file recovery. One of the most recent uses is file recovery on the latest macOS release, High Sierra. Target Disk Mode has several uses in correlation to Disk Drill (and in general).