subject: Mac OS X Extended Recovery after Hard Drive Formatting [print this page] Mac OS X Extended Recovery after Hard Drive Formatting
Mac OS Extended or HFS+ is a journaled file system, invented by Apple Inc. HFS+ is the successor of HFS (Hierarchical File System). It is an advanced and stable file system and offers you excellent performance in storing, retrieving, organizing, and manipulating the data. Along with all advanced security and performance features, the file system supports journaling feature to prevent file system corruption in case of improper system shutdown and prevents need of Mac data recovery solutions.
Journaling is a file system feature, which helps protect file system against improper system shutdown, system crash, power outages, and hardware failure, minimizing the need for file system repairs. It improves the computer's availability and the fault resiliences that is particularly noteworthy for the servers. The journaling feature protects integrity and consistency of HFS+ file system.
Although, HFS+ is a reliable file system, in some cases it faces several integrity and consistency issues that may corrupt it. In case of severe file system corruption situations, you need to replace the corrupt file system with a new one.
It is possible to replace the file system only by formatting the hard drive and reinstalling operating system. Formatting is the process of removing all the data, applications, data structures, file system, and operating system from Mac OS X hard drive and then reinstalling them.
Though, this process helps resolve most of the file system related problems, it also causes critical data loss. All your precious data is removed from the disk after formatting. You may run across grave situations after hard drive formatting, if there is no clean and current backup in place.
Most of the Mac OS X users think that the data is deleted forever after hard drive formatting. But, this is not the case. Data recovery Mac is still possible. When you format a HFS+ file system based hard drive, only the system data structures are removed. These data structures are used by the operating system to locate the files. When these data structures are removed, the stored files can not be located or accessed.
You can easily recover your valuable data from HFS+ file system volumes after formatting using Mac disk recovery software. They help you to methodically scan entire Mac OS X hard drive and extract all lost data from it. The Mac recovery programs offer safe recovery.
Stellar Phoenix Macintosh Data Recovery is an excellent solution for handling all data loss situations, including hard drive formatting. The software supports recovery from HFS, HFS+, HFSX, HFS Wrapper, and FAT file system volumes. is the software can be used with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, 10.5 Leopard, 10.4 Tiger, and 10.3.9 Panther.