When your Mac won't turn on, iBoysoft Data Recovery can be launched in macOS recovery mode through Terminal without creating a bootable drive when saving your files.
Note: Both methods require an external storage device with enough capacity to store the recovered data.
How to run iBoysoft Data Recovery in macOS Recovery mode?
The following two methods are only suitable for a Mac running macOS 10.8 or above, excluding Macs with Apple Silicon M1 chip.
• How to recover data from M1 Mac that won't turn on?
You can know which operating system is installed on your Mac Recovery HD partition by going to macOS Utilities > Reinstall macOS.
Method 1: (Requires macOS 10.12 or above)
The video below demonstrates the detailed procedure about how to recover data from Mac Recovery Mode.
- 1. Press Command + Shift + R + Option keys when restarting your Mac.
- You can release the key combinations until you see the spinning globe or any startup screen.
- 2. Choose a network for your Mac. You need to make your Mac connected to the Internet all the time.
- When you see the macOS Utilities menu, your Mac is in the macOS Recovery Mode.
- 3. Open Terminal from Utilities drop-down menu.
- 4. Run the following command and wait a moment. This will launch iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac in macOS Recovery mode.
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sh <(curl http://boot.iboysoft.com/boot.sh)
Tips:
- There are two spaces in the above command, one space after sh, another space after curl.
- If you see a message "No such file or directory" after running the above command, it means you entered the wrong command, please enter the correct one and try again.
- If you see a message "Could not resolve host: boot.iboysoft.com" after running the above command, it means your Mac has not connected to Internet. When running iBoysoft Data Recovery in macOS recovery mode, it needs to load iBoysoft Data Recovery from our Server, please connect your Mac to Internet and try again.
- If you see a message "syntax error near unexpected token 'newline'" after running the above command, it means you entered the wrong command, please enter the correct one and try again.
- If the entered command is not found, please check if you entered wrong command or your macOS is older than macOS 10.12 (The old macOS doesn't have curl command).
- 5. After iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac launched, you can continue to get data off the unbootable Mac.
- 6. In iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac, you can select the Mac hard drive in the list.
- If it is a corrupted drive with APFS encrypted file system, click "Find Lost APFS Partitions" at the top and continue.
- 7. Click on the Scan button. The program will start scanning for lost data on the drive.
- 8. Preview the scanning results and choose the files you want to get back.
- 9. Click on the Recover button. You will be asked to choose a location to store the recovered files. Please select a different location, such as an external drive. But make sure the external drive is not formatted with NTFS file system because macOS cannot write to NTFS drive.
Method 2: (Requires Mac OS X 10.9 - OS X 10.11)
You need to prepare those things before you go further:
a. A healthy Windows PC, Mac or Android mobile phone which is connected to the Internet.
b. A USB drive.
c. An external disk to save recovered files.
- 1. Plug the USB drive into the healthy computer or the device listed above. Please remember the name of the USB drive.
- 2. Download the two files as below and save them to the root directory of the USB drive.
- http://boot.iboysoft.com/boot.sh
- http://boot.iboysoft.com/iboysoftdatarecovery.dmg
- 3. Plug the USB drive into the unbootable Mac.
- 4. Boot the problematic Mac into macOS Recovery mode. You need to restart your Mac, and immediately hold down Command + R + Option + Shift keys until you see the OS X Utilities.
- 5. Open Terminal in top Utilities, type the command below, and then press Enter.
mount- From the listed drives, find out the USB drive and remember its path. For example, /Volumes/Work Space as showing in the picture below.
- 6. Type the following command and press Enter. For example, /Volumes/Work Space is the path, then you should type in cd '/Volumes/Work Space'.
cd 'the USB drive location'- 7. Then type this command:
chmod 777 ./boot.sh && ./boot.sh- If the entered command is not found, please check if you entered wrong command.
- 8. After iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac launched, you can start to scan and preview lost data via the tutorial mentioned above.
- 9. Connect the external storage device to the Mac and select files you want to recover to restore them to the external disk.
Tips: When activating iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac, make sure the Mac is connected to Internet.
