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Revive · Support

Help with Revive.

Answers to common questions about Revive for Mac. For anything else, email us — we reply within one business day.

Getting started

  • Quick Scan or Deep Scan?

    Quick Scan lists the files that are still in a folder, drive, SD card or Photos library, including ones with a missing name or extension, so you can copy them somewhere safe. Deep Scan looks for deleted and lost files: it checks every block of a disk image for known file structures and rebuilds each file it finds. If a file was deleted or a card was formatted, use Deep Scan.

  • How do I deep scan a drive or SD card?

    Make a disk image of it first. Open Disk Utility, select the drive or card in the sidebar, then choose File › New Image › Image from the drive. Save the image on a different drive from the one you are recovering. Then choose that image in Revive; Deep Scan is selected automatically. Revive shows these steps, with an Open Disk Utility button, when you choose Deep Scan.

  • Why a disk image instead of the drive itself?

    Apps from the Mac App Store are not allowed to read a drive's raw sectors. A disk image holds the same sectors, deleted data included, and it also protects you: once the image is made you can stop using a failing drive and work only on the copy.

  • Which disk images can Revive read?

    Images from Disk Utility in any of its usual formats, compressed or read/write (.dmg), plus DVD/CD master (.cdr), .iso, .img, .raw and .dd images. Encrypted images and images compressed with bzip2 or LZMA need converting first: in Disk Utility choose Images › Convert and save a read/write copy.

  • Which files can it find?

    Deep Scan recognises photos (JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, HEIC, AVIF, WebP and Canon CR3), video (MP4, MOV, M4V, 3GP, AVI, MKV, WebM and Ogg), audio (MP3, AAC, M4A, WAV, AIFF, Ogg and Opus), documents (PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, EPUB and OpenDocument), ZIP and 7-Zip archives, and SQLite databases. Quick Scan finds files of any type.

Results

  • What do Excellent, Good and Partial mean?

    Excellent is an intact file found in the file system. Good means Revive found the file's complete structure from start to end, and it usually opens normally. Partial means the structure stops early, so the file is cut short or split up on the drive; it may open partly, for example the top of a photo. Partial files start unticked, but you can still recover them.

  • Why are deleted files named by date, or "Recovered_0001"?

    A deleted file's name lives in the file system, not in the file, so Deep Scan usually cannot get it back. When a photo or video records when it was taken, Revive names it by that date and time and shows the camera model; other files are numbered.

  • Can I see a file before recovering it?

    Yes. Click a file in the list to preview it on the right, including files found by Deep Scan. Press Space to tick or untick the highlighted rows.

  • Can I keep the original folders?

    Turn on Organize into folders at the bottom of the results. Files found by Quick Scan keep their original folder layout; files found by Deep Scan are sorted into Images, Videos, Audio, Documents and so on.

Recovering safely

  • Where should I save recovered files?

    On a different drive from the one you are recovering from. Writing to the same drive can overwrite the deleted data you want back, so Revive warns you if you pick a folder inside the source.

  • Does Revive change my drive?

    No. Revive opens sources read-only and never writes to them. It writes only to the folder you choose, and never overwrites a file that is already there: a second copy gets a number, such as "photo 2.jpg".

  • Some files were skipped. Why?

    A file can't be recovered when part of the drive or image can't be read. Revive skips it, recovers the rest and lists what it skipped and why on the last screen.

Problems

  • Deep Scan found nothing, or fewer files than I expected.

    Deleted files are lost once new data is written over them, and SSDs with TRIM often clear deleted blocks automatically. In Settings, turn on Thorough carving to check every byte instead of every 512-byte sector, lower the minimum file size, and make sure the file types you need are selected.

  • "Protected locations were skipped" during a Quick Scan.

    macOS limits which folders an app may read. Choose the protected folder itself in Revive's Open dialog, or drag it onto the window, to give Revive access to it.

  • The scan is slow.

    Deep Scan speed is mostly the speed of the drive the image is on. A USB 2 card reader or a spinning disk is much slower than an internal SSD. Keep the Mac awake and connected; Revive stops it from going to sleep while scanning.

  • Which Macs does Revive run on?

    Any Mac with macOS Sonoma (14) or later, with Apple silicon or an Intel processor.

Privacy

  • Do I need an account?

    No. There are no accounts, no sign-in, no ads and no analytics.

  • Does anything leave my Mac?

    No. Revive makes no network connections. Your files, previews and the activity log stay on your Mac. The privacy policy has the details.