Feed: Data Recovery Tools ( Windows, Linux, Mac) - AggScore: 45.3

Find & Wipe every junk files, unwanted apps from Mac OS hard drive

Did you care to know how much amount of junk files, unwanted apps lives happily on your Mac hard disk drives? Perhaps you haven't care about that and it's not your fault either because after all a hard drive's storing capacity is huge (approx 500GB in my Mac mini). And who has got strength to locate each and every useless app and file from the HDD. Frankly speaking, I don't have that courage to even think about finding all the unwanted apps and junk data. That’s why I preferred to run a cleanup Mac tool which would wipe out junk in minutes.
 

:A screenshot of Speedup Mac tool in action:

It can be noted that the Speedup Mac tool has categorized the junk into the following files:

Caches files: Removing caches stored on Macs by scanning each and every sector of the hard drive and bringing them in front of the user. Cache stores the files of the requested web pages on the hard disk drive of the Mac. These caches files indeed help the user to quickly get back to the content of the web-page browsed recently. Depending upon daily Internet activities, these caches keeps on multiplying in the directory of the browser which at a time needs to be cleaned completely from Mac storage devices. Unbelievably, I had about MB of caches stored on my Mac mini.

Log files: Log files maintain records of all the activities that are being done while the Mac OS in use. Finding a log file on Mac is confusing and requires certain parameters to follow to do it safely & correctly. Take an instance of the log file, if you run an anti-virus tool on your system to scan all the corresponding volumes on Mac then it creates a log file holding the information about what if found & where. However, again with so many day-today activities going on the OS, too many log files are unacceptable and needs to be wiped off.

System Junks: System Junks again comprises of certain file types that are uselessly present on the HDD of the Mac. These files get stored on the Mac by on the daily basis. The files consisting of system junk could be of the following extensions:

• Temporary files *. tmp, *. _mp,
• Log files (*. Log),
• Temporary help files (*. gid),
• Disk check documents ( *. chk),
• Temporary backup files (such as: *. old, *. bak) and other temporary files.

Trashes & leftovers: When files are deleted by the user from the OS some files remains undeleted and said to be traces or leftovers. One such example of traces & leftovers would be filename with extension .plist. Developed by Apple, .plist files are the files that store serialized objects. PList files when expanded become property list files which also stores bundles & apps. These files hold the preferences for a particular application e.g. the bookmarks .plist would contain the bookmarks of your browser.

Manage Extensions: Speedup Mac tool governs the control of the extensions of installed software, widgets and apps. Conducts deep scan into the hard drive to bring in front the unnecessary extensions of applications, plugins and widgets.

Universal Binaries: Universal Binary files are executable files which runs on PowerPC & Intel based processors. Some users prefer to install software which runs on both PPC & Intel based processors but for users using Intel machine don't require binary files to support PPC. The PPC binary files become useless and needs to be wiped off so as to avoid them consume the space on hard disk drive.

Language Files: While an installation of an app or software did you notice that all the languages of different countries get installed alongside with the default language English. Other than English, are these languages any use to me or you? Certainly not, so why not gear up to get rid of them entirely. Thankful to the tool which brings out every single unwanted language files from my Mac mini hard disk drive.

Large files: To find large files from my Mac hard drive, I applied a filter for certain files like .doc, .pdf, .wmv, .MOV etc. I knew that large files would be of these above files extensions and this made the software to scan the drive for these particular files only. Furthermore, adding the size of the file in MB, GB and specifying the files not accessed over a certain period of months (say 2 months).

Duplicate files: Again redundant data is such a pain for the hard drive occupying unnecessary space. The tool locates the duplicate files on the basis of file types (extensions) and file-names. If any of the both parameters matches then it picks up the redundant files to show up in the list of unwanted duplicate data.

Conclusion: If I would have not chosen to clean my Mac, I bet I would have end up in a system/drive crash causing me to pay about 10 times the money to repair or buy a new HDD, which I spent upon buying the Speedup Mac tool (US$29).

iPAD – the newest sensation at work

Various Data sanitization algorithms

A look into the history of Mac malwares and Trojans

Thanks to the Sophos for providing the interesting and very crucial data regarding history of Trojans and malwares targeting Mac and causing damage. After reading this article, I realized why a Mac user must not feel himself to be very exceptional w.r.t viruses and infections. The history is in front of us and it dictates how Macs have been on the target since 1982 to 2012 and continues.

Last year we heard about DevilRobber and Tsunami playing foul games with the Mac OS X. Recently in 2012, came the SapPub – a data theft Trojan. Growing number of such events have made users like to come out of the locking that 'Macs are way safer and won't be intruded by any malware or trojan'. It's time now to lay stress upon choosing a good or perhaps the best Mac anti-virus software to install and secure Macs with upcoming threats.

Image Source:- nakedsecurity.sophos.com

Year 2010 – Threats to Mac

Some of the striking facts that happened in 2010 when a Trojan named HellRTS aka OSX/Pinhead emerged out of nowhere and passed authority to gain remote access of your Mac OS X by the hackers. Imagine the hackers who made their unauthorized entrance into somebody iMac or Mac book pro would have stolen huge amount of valuable data from the system. The year 2010 didn’t stop to OSX/Pinhead Trojan only, but later came some new names of malwares that try to create headaches for Mac users. Among them were the Boonana cross-platform worms, Spynion etc.

Year 2011 – Threats to Mac

With year 2011 no exception to previous years, Macs were again intruded by hackers gaining remote access of the systems. The Trojan responsible for this mess was named as BlackHole RAT. The creator of the BlackHole RAT made a note which openly challenged the security of Macs and would say made fun of our locking.

Image Source:- nakedsecurity.sophos.com

How to de-clutter your Mac hard disk drive?

• Select any unwanted files manually and trash them,
  

• Use a back up media like external hard drive to save your files and wipe them from the system,

• Don't store files and folders in the trash bin. Timely empty trash,

• Remove any unwanted application or software,

• Clear temp files,

• scans the entire hard disk and logical volumes,

• scans and lists unwanted files and applications, junk files, redundant files, unwanted language packs,

• wipes clutter,
  

• fasten the slow Mac,
  

• wipes system junks to augment the system's performance,

• gives power to my Mac,

• frees up plenty of disk spaces,

How to repair corrupt Acrobat files (PDF) in Mac OS X?

• An improper download of a PDF file from the Internet can corrupt the PDF partially or completely. To do PDF file download safely, you need a good Internet connection service and moreover the file to be downloaded must not be corrupted too (well that's not in your hand).

• PDF file created and uploaded inappropriately from the up-loader's side. Many PDF creation tools and software sometimes fails to create and maintain the quality of these PDF files. The same file when downloaded fails to open or display signs of corruption.

• PDF file may also go corrupt if while working or creating the PDF, the Mac system shuts off abruptly causing corruption of the files.

• Viruses and Malware threats cannot be ignored for PDF file corruptions.

• PDF file download must be successful without any interruption. No matter how incorrectly PDF file is downloaded no tool will able to repair the file.
  

• Choose 'Abode Reader' over Mac's in-built 'Preview'. Preview does not hold any authority to repair a corrupted PDF file.
  

How to wipe Mac files of your old Mac?

To deal with sensitive data requires to some and great amount of technical skills and use of data security software. Recently, when my colleague, Josh in the accounts department discusses about selling his old Mac online, I asked him curiously if he had taken some measures to keep his data secure in the hard drive. Josh replied saying that, he had already backed up his required data on an external device and formatted the drive. So, according to Josh, formatted hard drive assures him that no one would be able to find out what once stored on the drive.

I asked Josh to come up for a coffee while I share you my experiences on selling my old Macs. Formatting is a good option to wipe all the data, but if you sell off your system and the drive to a person who expertise in recovering deleted, formatted data then you can conclude that your data is still in reach of the world. I also told him that, non technical or semi-technical users obviously choose formatting as a trusted medium of securing their data from the outer world. But, knowledgeable person do the same in different manner.

I can assure you a way by which you can 200% erase all of your sensitive data from the logical volumes as well as the main drive. Based on the strong wiping algorithms, Mac file Wipe tools cleans the selected files, text document, images, media files from the entire Mac drive. By the use of this tool, the things which you can easily wipe are the -

• Internet Browsing Data - Josh is a net addicted person, so I told him this stuff would help you get rid of all your Internet activities.

• Hard drive - Wipe your drive in a single go.

• System Traces - The tool wipes undesired traces on the hard drive which consumes the space of the drive.

• Files and Folders - For Josh, his collection of thousands of photographs of his Girl-Friend is sensitive and I know he will definitely go beyond the limit to wipe them off before he sells his Mac.

• Wipes free spaces - to ensure that no one can perform deleted data recovery.

The list of wiping algorithms to choose from -

• ‘Zeroes,

• DoD 5200.28-STD’,

• ‘Pseudo Random’,

• ‘DoD 5220.22-M’,

• ‘German Standard’, and

• ‘Russian standard’

The coffee breaks end but Josh understood the need of wiping the data with the strong Mac wipe tool so that he left no chances of anyone able to get back the deleted, formatted data with any advance data recovery software for Mac.

Mac OS X users beware of SabPub malware

Kaspersky, a leading antivirus software development company confirms the presence of two related Trojan that affect Macs. Both of them are versions of SabPub – a data theft Trojan. One of the SabPub versions exploits Java vulnerability and the other targets Ms-Office for Mac OS X. The malwares have been taking full advantage of the fact that mostly Mac users won't choose to install an anti-virus program on their system.

Being an advanced persistent threat, SabPub has the capability to resolute its particular target. Sabpub outburst is due to two infected Ms-Word documents.

The second variant of SabPub uses the same CVE-2012-0507 Java vulnerability the Flashback Trojan used to infect Mac OS X. Kaspersky Lab Expert Costin Raiu, had stated that Sabpub is still an active attack and expects the attackers to attack with new versions of the malware in coming days.

Speed up Mac tool says Good Bye to duplicate files

To choose from Mac Software, Mac Accessories, iPod Accessories, iPhone and iPad Accessories, the only place a Mac user must visit is the APPLE Store. One can get to know about the recently updated versions of their favourite applications and tools. Updating software is no big deal with Apple Store, but what should be carefully noted is that when an update is completed successfully, you may not expect the files of older version to be still present on the drive location. But this is a fact that updates sometimes may not replace the older version of files. Instead the system adds extra application files with the same name. This is nothing but duplicity of the files in your Mac and this is not good for the long term performance of a Mac. And if you do not care to check regularly the duplicity of files due to software updates or any other reason than the performance of your Mac and speed will soon degrade gradually.

The files which most often cause the Mac to suffocate on its performance are the duplicate files, applications language files, universal binary files, caches, logs and other temp files.

Now to curb file duplicity in Mac, if you go manually then it may not be a very good idea because your time is valuable and depending upon the size of disk as well as the amount of duplicate files present on the drive the removal process of duplicate files may stretch to very long. The smart way to do is bring home a Mac utility like the Stellar Drive Toolbox which has a 'Speed up Mac' as a tool which appropriately takes care of duplicate files.

Speed up Mac removes duplicate files!!

It scans the drive for duplicate files and lists them in front of you in order to get completely removed from the system. Filters like setting up a definite file size which lists all the duplicate files greater than the set file size. Another filter option let you either include or exclude a certain file type while removing duplicate files. E.g. if you want the tool to scan all the drives for duplicity of files other than MS-Word files then you can add the word file type to the filter option and click 'Scan excluding these files'. The scan result will not display your excluded Ms-Word files. Isn't it that simple?

How John solved the “Mac hard drive full” error?

My friend John who is a banker by professional rings me around 5 0’clock in the evening just to tell me that he is unable to install software on his Mac due to the following error message which is “Mac hard drive full”. This error is flashing on the screen every time he starts his Mac. Being a banker, John engrosses himself into dealing with other's saving accounts which makes him very good at accounting and balancing. However, he is also interested in learning new technologies which is why he brought a Mac system to his home. But since the first day John is struggling with the Mac and he finds out to be very hard to learn Mac and to maintain it. Because his office system as well as his laptop is Windows, needless to say why John struggled Mac OS X at first place.

John told me that the Mac which he brought home is not a new one, eventually he purchased from his relative who were actually looking to dispose their Mac and ready to bring a MacbookAir. However, I don't know how much dollar he spent for the system but his Mac is having the latest 10.7 installed with 2GB RAM and Intel Core2Duo processor.

About the Error:- “Mac hard drive full”

Initially, I asked John to come online and told him to check the space used and left in the volumes and hard drives so that he could make it very easily that why his system is bothering him with such an error message. He replied me back that Mac HDD seems to stuffed with lots of data mostly in the form of music files, video files of many different format like avi, 3gp,.mov etc., applications & widgets, some video editing software and plenty of photos like wallpapers, screen shots which were no use of him. John's relative is an aspiring video and image editor so that’s why the much of the HDD space was occupied by the stuff like this. I told him this is the only reason why you are getting such a message every time you start and try to install any new software on your Mac. You Mac HDD is preoccupied with files that are either duplicate or unwanted files as well as unwanted system files.

John understood that he might have to launch a cleanup operation on his Mac HDD which would definitely take lots of his time and energy if he goes manually. 'Is there a cleaning software available' quickly asked John'. I was hoping for this question and replied him 'Yes John and trust me I have used this tool several times on my Mac during many years when I found my Mac to be pathetically slow.' You must give Speed up Mac a try, I replied. Further I shared the link of the software explaining the below mentioned benefits that he receives -

1. The tool will scan each and every volume, HDD for duplicate files, unwanted files, Internet and caches files, system junks.

2. Improve HDD performance by generating GBs of space and removing unwanted
   files and applications.

3. Not only this, the tool's interactive GUI will allow you to uninstall any useless application and widget just by drag and drop.

4. Clear unwanted language files from many application software folders. And it don't even touch your by default language which is English in your case.

5. Removes CLUTTER.

I insisted John to purchase the copy of Stellar Speed up Mac tool asap so that if can be prepared to face any kind of speed up Mac issues or hard disk drive space issues further.

Whether to defrag a Mac OS X?

Today, I read an interesting article whether Mac users should defrag their HDD and volumes. Apple clearly suggests that users don't need to defrag/optimize their HDD if they use Mac OS X. Here is what you can read all about Apple's not to optimize theory – http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1375. Apple also tells the user that optimizing hundreds of thousands of small files which are rarely accessed, requires huge time and effort with actual small gain.

Then the big question arises that why many software giants are producing Mac drive defrag software when Apple clearly suggests that the OS X Mac itself optimizes the HDD and further no need of defragging is required. But if a user's hard disk drive is full and user often perform big tasks like videos editing (which requires big space), composing and customizing large files then probability of disk getting fragmented is all time high.

Simple tips to optimize/defrag a Mac

• Simply restart the Mac

• Ensure proper backup of your HDD, format the OS X and reinstall the OS X.

• Lastly, third party defrag drive tool defrag the Mac HDD.

Conclusion:- Apple is confident enough to make sure that Mac OS X is itself capable of optimize the volumes and HDD and suggest 'NO' for defragging. That is why disk utility does not seems to have a defragging HDD feature. Anyhow, you still require your disk to be optimized and defragged then trust only Stellar Drive Defrag tool.

Another file system corruption scenario and data recovery Mac OS X

-123 wrgVolTypErr Not an HFS volume [wrong volume type error or (obsolete) operation not supported for MFS]

The above file error is usually caused by a grave file system depravation which disallows the OS X to read the file information from the partitions, leading to the inaccessibility of the system or that particular partition. And if a partition or entire system becomes inaccessible due to file corruption then the user won't be able to access the data from the system as well as corrupted partitions.

Note: - File system corruption is a common scenario of data loss situation in Mac

A user may judge that if the file system corruption has led to the inaccessibility of the Mac and its volume then there is possibility of the data too getting corrupted and unable to recover. And, if the data is recovered then will it be of any use to the user? But this is not the case always, as even in the occasion of dreadful file system corruption, the data may remain untouched and easy to recover and use further.

Solution

With the Disk Utility feature you can choose the corrupted partitions and repair the corrupted file system to regain the accessibility of data. The disk utility is a helpful free tool to perform file/disk repair but if the results of the disk utility are insufficient then I would personally suggest you to move to a data recovery Mac HDD tool. Let us read the two cases that might arise out of the file system corruption:-

Case 1) Mac Data recovery from corrupted Partitions/Volumes – Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery 5.0, can detect any corrupted or inaccessible volume and lists in its user-friendly interface from where the user can select that volume to start the Mac data recovery process.

Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery 5 specifications

Processor: Intel, Power PC

256 MB RAM

40GB HDD space

Supported OS X - 10.7.2, 10.6, 10.5

Mac OS X data recovery with 'file system dirty' error

• abruptly shutting off the system
• inadequate supply of power to the Mac
• forcibly restarting the Mac system
• bad sectors in the hard drive
• hardware malfunction
  

• Boot the Mac in Safe Mode. The safe mode automates disk checking and perform repair if needed.
• If the safe boot does not fix the problem then move to Disk Utility to identify the corrupted files for repair. If the disk utility finds the error then you can easily to fix it with the utility itself. But even if disk utility does not find the exact corrupted files to repair then ...
• Run FSCK command to fix file system errors on your Mac. If the problem is solved with FSCK command then it is well and good.

Cloning V/S Imaging on Mac

To Clone your Mac hard drive refers to the fact that the cloning software simply creates an exact Xerox copy of your original hard disk drives and volumes. It copies the entire content as well as partition tables of the source drive on to the destination drive. Firstly to get the destination drive cloned of the original one, the size of the later must be equal or greater than the source drive.

E.g. - If a drive of 250GB needs to be cloned then the destination drive must be equal or greater than 250GB. If a source drive contains bad sectors then the cloning software skips all those bad sectors and delivers the destination drive free of bad sectors.

To Image a Mac hard drive – Disk imaging is also a method of data backup which helps to restore the data from an image file on a later date and time. Unlike cloning, the disk image feature need not required a disk space equal or greater than the source drive. The size of the destination drive can be lesser than source hard drives or volumes.

In case of bad sectors present on the disk drive, the image feature will fail to completely image the source drive. Also, the cloning process requires storage devices of equal or greater spaces whereas image can be stored on multiple locations of any storage devices like CD/DVD etc.

Concluding the fact that both Cloning and Imaging of the OS are helpful activities in concern of backing up the important data. Both the techniques have their own distinguish advantages and disadvantage. In this regard, it would be justified to mention the Stellar Drive Cloning software 2.0 which performs cloning of the drive, imaging a volume or a drive as well as restoring volume from a image file.

Misfunction of finder option may leads to unfortunate loss of valuable data

As, the title suggests, the finder option in Mac, if malfunctioned can lead to serious data loss and of course can give you depression any time. It won't be wrong to called the finder, a default file manager in Mac OS X whose is solely accountable for management of files, network of volumes and initiating the other application for launch. A finder also assist the deletion of unnecessary files and folders from our Macs and it prompts the user with a confirmation message before the user hits OK for data deletion.

But often a times, when a user choose to simply drag the unwanted files to the trash bin folder for deletion, the finder may not bother to deliver the confirmation message to prompt the user. The same case can occur when you delete a file without dragging it into the trash-bin. And in case you have mistakenly chosen to delete the most important data with the finder feature also going corrupt at the same time, then it’s time now to realize that the file is permanently deleted from the Mac system (and not present in the trash folder too).

For the fact that every Mac user is aware of the usage of finder, I won't go in deep into its functioning. However, any newbie’s who wants to connect themselves with this application can jump to read more about the finder - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2470

Some possible reasons behind finder malfunctioning -

• The finder itself got corrupted.

• The settings of the finder are set not to aware before deleting any file.

Recovery of deleted data due to misfunctioning of the finder -

You can blame the misfunctioning of the finder for all the mess, but at the same time you can appreciate a data recovery software for Mac OS X which would join hands to give you back the deleted data from the trash-bin folder or elsewhere. With a Mac file recovery software a Mac user can easily recover deleted audio-video files, office files, easy recovery from external hard drives, iPods and CD/DVD. So, don't wait for a data loss scenario to happen. Instead prepare yourself with a trusted recovery software like the Stellar Phoenix Mac File Recovery. (Reviewed by Mac authority sites like MacTech, Appletell etc).