APFS Data Recovery: How to Recover APFS Files on Mac/Windows

Can you recover APFS files in macOS High Sierra, Mojave or Catalina? Here, you can apply the best APFS data recovery software to recover files from deleted, formatted or encrypted APFS drive with three easy steps.

Table of Contents

What Is APFS

APFS, short for Apple File System, is a faster and safer file system first enabled in macOS High Sierra. It has replaced the HFS+ and will be deployed on all Apple products from Apple Watch to Mac in the future. Except for optimization for flash and SSD drives, APFS provides a uniform encryption method for each Apple device, multi-key encryption for each file, and a separate key for sensitive metadata.

APFS Data Recovery

With these great features, APFS decreases the chance of data loss due to hard drive/system crash or virus attack. You may lose files most likely because mistaken deletion, hard drives formatting, trash emptied, or other scenarios. However, nothing is absolute. Data loss is inevitable during the daily use of Mac. What matters is how to recover files from APFS drive on Mac when accidents come.

How to Recover APFS Files on Mac

Due to the macOS requirement, you are not able to access the built-in APFS system drive from any apps. Therefore, if you happen to lose some critical files and want to recover deleted files from the system disk under macOS High Sierra 10.13, macOS Mojave10.14 or macOS Catalina 10.15, you have to rely on a professional and reliable APFS data recovery tool.

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Free for Mac is such an APFS data recovery program that enables you to retrieve accidentally deleted videos, audio, photos, documents, archives, and other files from APFS SSD/HDD. You can recover emptied Trash on Mac, or restore lost files on APFS partition after formatting, macOS upgrading/corruption, etc.

Besides deleted file recovery, EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac is simple and reliable APFS data recovery software for all data loss situations:

01

Encrypted APFS Drive Data Recovery:

Let you recover deleted or lost data from encrypted APFS drives of Macintosh HD and external drives. Simply enter your password to decrypt the drive in the first place and continue scanning.

02

APFS Formatted Drive Data Recovery:

Able to recover files after mistaken formatting, disk repartition, initialization or any unexpected manner that erases APFS drive data under macOS Catalina/Mojave/High Sierra.

 
03

Unmountable APFS Drive Data Recovery:

Recover data from unmounted APFS boot volume on Macintosh HD as well as on all types drives like external hard drives, USB flash drives, memory cards and so on.

04

Inaccessible APFS Drive Data Recovery:

Recognize, scan and recover data from the inaccessible APFS hard drives, external hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, memory cards and more.

 

Now, download and install EaseUS APFS data recovery tool on your Mac and follow the solutions below to get data back on the APFS drive.

Step 1. Select the location to scan

Launch EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac and choose the hard drive, SSD,  SD card, USB flash drive, or TF card where you lost data. Click "Search for lost files" to start scanning.

Note: Before data recovery, you'd better click "Disk Backup" from the left sidebar to create a backup of your Mac to avoid further data loss. After backing up, the software can recover data from the Mac backup, and your computer can wirte new data again.

select a location and click search for lost files

Step 2. Filter lost Mac data

The software will automatically scan for lost data on MacBook/iMac. When the scan completes, filter wanted data through the "Type" and "Path" buttons.

filter lost files in types

Step 3. Recover lost data or files

Double-click a file to preview it. Then, click the "Recover" button to restore the lost data to another place. 

click recover to recover lost data

As you can see from the above operation guidance, it's effortless to do APFS data recovery on Mac with the help of EaseUS Mac Data Recovery Software. Further, you can still use the software can recover lost data from HFS+, as well as NTFS, FAT & ex-FAT disk on Mac.

Windows 10 APFS Data Recovery

As far as we know, Apple File System (APFS) is a new file system for macOS, iOS, and Apple devices. Have you ever thought that setting up an APFS drive on a Windows-based computer? Or, is it possible to connect an Apple APFS drive to a Windows PC and access data in it? If this is the case you're concerned, there is third-party Windows 10 APFS data recovery software that will make it happen to read and write files on APFS file system HDD, SSD, and removable flash drives.

APFS for Windows by Paragon Software

Paragon, a third-party developer, solves the incompatibilities between file systems of each OS with its product called APFS for Windows, to enable users to freely access, modify and share files on an APFS drive across Windows and macOS platforms. To read and write APFS data in Windows 10, here is a simple guide for you.

Step 1. Download and install APFS for Windows by Paragon Software.

Step 2. Connect your APFS drive to your PC.

Step 3. Your drive will show up in Explorer. Now you can open the drive and manage data in Windows 10.

APFS for Windows - Windows 10 APFS data recovery

Conclusion

By reading through the article, you've learned how the APFS file system works on Mac and how to use the best APFS data recovery tool for recover lost, deleted, formatted, encrypted or inaccessible APFS internal hard drives as well external ones. Meanwhile, to help Windows users who need to read and write data on an APFS drive, we find APFS for Windows by Paragon Software is reliable and workable.

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Updated by Cedric

Cedric Grantham is a senior editor and data recovery specialist of EaseUS. He mainly writes articles and how-to tips about data recovery on PC and Mac. He has handled 10,000+ data recovery cases and is good at data recovery of NTFS, FAT (FAT32 and ExFAT) file systems, and RAID structure reorganization.

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