Data Recovery Frequently Asked Questions

FAQ: Apple Mac

Before deciding to use a data recovery service to recover your data, many of our customers have questions regarding what went wrong or why did they lose data.
Here in the FAQ section, we have added some of the most common questions that we have been asked and you may be able to find your answer here.

For brand-specific hard drive related questions, please click here.

If you cannot find an answer to your question, please click here and we will be glad to answer any questions you may have.

I have Mac laptop which boots to the utility screen and will not boot normally, why?

From what you have described we suspect that the hard drive is faulty, without professional help at this stage you may lose your data.

I have been told that Mac OSX is a Unix based system and that Linux is a Unix based system, so why are they not just called Unix?

Unix is a closed source operating system which was developed for mainly high end servers.
Linux is the shortened name for GNU/Linux, The GNU Project was launched in 1984 to develop a complete UNIX like operating system which is free software: the GNU system, (GNU is a recursive acronym for “GNU's Not UNIX”; it is pronounced “guh-noo,” “noo” being like the American “new”). Variants of the GNU operating system, which use the kernel Linux, are now widely used; though these systems are often referred to as “Linux”, they are more accurately called GNU/Linux systems.
Mac OSX is derived from BSD, the version of UNIX® developed at the University of California, Berkeley.

My computer dual boots Debian Linux and Windows, can you recover the data from both operating systems?

Yes - Debian, Red Hat, Suse, Gentoo, plus most other flavours of Linux can be recovered along with your Windows data.