How to Recover Data from System Drive of Mac OS 10.13 or Higher Versions

This article applies to:
EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac 10.13 and higher versions
Mac OS 10.13 and higher versions

Introduction

System Integrity Protection prevents EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac from scanning system drive in Mac OS 10.13 (APFS file system) or higher Mac OS. In this case, the software cannot recover lost data from the Mac OS 10.13 system drive.

We offer 3 methods to help you solve this issue:

1. Close System Integrity Protection temporarily
2. Create Bootable Media
3. Connect the drive to another Mac OS 10.12 or lower systems
 

Methods

1. Close System Integrity Protection temporarily

Actually, System Integrity Protection is a security technology in OS X El Capitan and later that's designed to help prevent potentially malicious software from modifying protected files and folders on your Mac. However, the system will be still in good status without any harmful things happened after you disable this function, and you can enable it after data recovery.

To disable System Integrity Protection, you must boot to Recovery OS and run the csrutil command from the Terminal.

1. Boot to Recovery OS by restarting your machine and holding down the Command and R keys at startup.
2. Launch Terminal from the Utilities menu.
3. Enter the following command:
csrutil disable

After enabling or disabling System Integrity Protection on a machine, a reboot is required.

Once you finished the data recovery from the system drive, please enter Recovery OS again and use "csrutil enable" to enable the System Integrity Protection.

Video Tutorial:

2. Create Bootable Media

Create a Bootable Media of EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac, then boot the computer with this Bootable Media to recover data from Mac OS 10.13 system drive. You need to prepare an empty USB flash drive to build the bootable media. Please follow the video tutorial below:

3. Connect the drive to another Mac OS 10.12 or lower systems

Actually, it's not recommended to use this method as it's not an easy operation for ordinary users that do not have enough computer knowledge. You need to take out the hard drive from the current computer, then use a hard drive enclosure to connect the drive to another Mac computer. Meanwhile, the Mac OS on the new computer must be 10.12 or lower versions.

How to take out hard drive from iMac:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w6E2_XqaBw

How to take out hard drive from MacBook:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2CxSAVwFqE

You can play the video tutorial below to get more information.