How to recover files from an external hard drive on Mac
Short answer
To recover files from an external hard drive on Mac, stop writing to the drive first,
then work through the free options: your Mac’s Trash, the hidden .Trashes folder on
the drive itself, and Time Machine if you have a backup. If the files are truly deleted
and no backup exists, the data usually still sits on a spinning hard drive until it’s
overwritten, so a scan can often recover your photos and videos — as long as the drive
is healthy.
Which situation are you in?
Recovering files from an external hard drive on your Mac depends a lot on what actually happened. Four situations cover almost everyone:
- You deleted files (or emptied the Trash) and want them back. Good news — on a spinning hard drive, deleted data usually stays put until something overwrites it.
- The drive was formatted or erased. A quick format (Disk Utility’s Erase) rebuilds the file table but leaves the data behind, so recovery is usually possible. A full or secure erase overwrites everything, and recovery is very unlikely.
- The drive won’t mount or shows up but you can’t open it. Often a file-system problem, not lost data — First Aid can sometimes fix it.
- The drive is clicking, buzzing or not spinning. This is a physical fault. Stop, and skip to the caution near the end of this guide — repeated scans can make it worse.
Step 1: stop using the card or drive
The single most important thing you can do is stop writing to the drive the moment you notice files are missing. Deleted photo and video data is only recoverable while it’s still sitting on the disk, and every new file you save — or every app that quietly writes a cache or thumbnail — can land on top of it. Unplug the drive, or at least don’t copy anything to it, until you’ve tried the steps below.
Check your Mac’s Trash and the hidden .Trashes folder
When you delete a file from an external drive in Finder, macOS doesn’t erase it right
away. It moves the file into a hidden folder called .Trashes on that drive, and shows
it in your normal Trash while the drive is connected. So your first, completely free
check is the Trash in your Dock.
- Reconnect the external hard drive and open the Trash in your Dock.
- Look for your missing photos and videos. Anything still there can be right-clicked and Put Back, or dragged to a safe location.
- If you don’t see them, they may still be in the drive’s own
.Trashesfolder. In Finder, open the drive and press Command-Shift-Period to reveal hidden files.
The .Trashes folder only holds files until you empty the Trash. If you haven’t emptied
it since deleting, there’s a good chance your files are sitting there intact — no
software needed.
Restore from Time Machine
If you back up with Time Machine and the external drive was included in your backups, this is the most reliable route. Connect your Time Machine backup disk, open the folder where the files used to live, and enter Time Machine from the menu bar. Browse back to a date before the loss and click Restore. Time Machine keeps documents too, so it’s worth checking even for non-photo files that a scan can’t recover.
If the drive won’t mount, try First Aid
A drive that powers on but doesn’t appear in Finder often has a file-system problem rather than lost data. Open Disk Utility, choose View › Show All Devices, select the drive (the physical device, not just the volume under it), and run First Aid. If First Aid repairs it, your files may simply reappear. If it can’t, don’t reformat — move on to scanning, which reads the raw data regardless of the file system.
If you see “The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer,” click Ignore — never Initialize or Erase. See our guide on the disk you inserted was not readable for what to do instead.
Recover files from your external hard drive with Shotback
If the free checks came up empty and the drive is healthy, scanning is the next step.
This is where Shotback comes in. One thing to be clear about: although this guide is
about recovering “files,” Shotback recovers photos and videos specifically — the
JPEGs, HEICs, RAW files, and video clips from your cameras and phones — not documents,
spreadsheets or PDFs. For those, lean on Time Machine and the .Trashes folder above,
or a free general-purpose tool.
Shotback reads the drive block by block and rebuilds photo and video files from the raw data still on the disk. It’s read-only, so it never writes to the drive it’s scanning, and scanning and preview are free — you only pay when you want to save what it finds.
- Connect the external hard drive and open Shotback.
- Choose the drive as the source. Shotback opens it read-only, so nothing is written back to it.
- Let the scan run, then preview the photos and videos it finds before deciding what to keep.
- Save what you want to a different drive — never back onto the drive you’re recovering from.
Recovered files lose their original names and folders, because the drive’s index that stored them is gone. Shotback renames what it finds by the date each photo or video was taken and the camera model, so you’re not left with a folder of numbered files.
Prefer a free, open-source option?
If you’re comfortable with the command line and want a free tool, PhotoRec is a well-regarded open-source recovery program that runs on macOS. It’s capable and carves out a wide range of file types, but it has no preview UI — you recover everything it finds and sort through it afterwards, and the interface is bare. It’s a fair option worth knowing about, especially if you’d rather not pay for anything.
A caution for failing drives
If your external hard drive is clicking, buzzing, grinding, or not spinning up at all, treat it as a hardware failure, not a software problem. Every time you power it on or run another scan, you risk turning a recoverable drive into an unrecoverable one. Don’t run recovery software over and over on a dying drive.
The safer path is to make a single copy of the drive’s raw data — an image — before you scan, so all the recovery work happens against the copy instead of the fragile original.
If the drive is physically failing and you can’t safely image it yourself, a professional data-recovery lab has the clean-room tools to read a damaged drive that consumer software can’t. It costs more, but for a drive that’s clearly dying — or an older SMR drive, where writes shuffle data around and make matters worse — it’s often the only route that won’t finish the drive off.
What about the internal drive?
Everything here is about external hard drives, where deleted data lingers. If your photos were deleted from your Mac’s own internal drive, the story is very different — encryption and TRIM clear that data almost immediately. See recover photos deleted from your Mac for where to actually look. And if your trouble is a memory card that won’t appear at all, start with SD card not showing up on Mac.
Frequently asked questions
Can I recover files from an external hard drive on Mac for free?
Often, yes. Start with the free checks: your Mac's Trash, the hidden .Trashes folder on the drive itself, and Time Machine if you back up. If those come up empty, a scanning tool can look for the raw photo and video data still on the disk.
I emptied the Trash. Are the files gone?
Not necessarily. On a spinning external hard drive, deleted data usually stays on the disk until something new is written over it. If you stop using the drive now, a scan can often still find your photos and videos.
My external hard drive is clicking or won't spin up. What should I do?
Stop using it. A clicking, buzzing or silent drive is a physical fault, and every scan or power-cycle risks more damage. Don't run recovery software over and over — a professional data-recovery lab is the safer route for a failing drive.
Why did my recovered photos lose their names and folders?
When files are deleted, the drive's index that stored their names and folder paths is cleared, even though the photo data remains. Shotback renames what it recovers by date taken and camera model so you can sort through them.
Can Shotback recover documents from my external drive?
No. Shotback recovers photos and videos only, not documents, spreadsheets or PDFs. For those, check Time Machine and the drive's .Trashes folder, or a general-purpose recovery tool like PhotoRec.
What is an SMR drive and why does it matter?
SMR (shingled magnetic recording) is a way of packing more data onto older and budget external hard drives. Writes on SMR drives are slow and can shuffle data around, so the sooner you stop using the drive, the better your chances.