Apple Mac Rescue Kit

Recover from errors with Paragon's free Rescue Kit

Hard disk drives are very reliable devices, in fact they are so good that we rarely consider that they might one day go wrong. We just carry on using our computers and assuming that the drive will continue functioning perfectly until we no longer need the computer.

Sometimes they do, but sometimes they fail. It doesn't happen often, but when they do, you'll be glad you have a backup. What, you don't have a backup? You are not alone and many people don't. Fortunately, there are many backup and recovery systems available and Paragon Software's Rescue Kit for Mac OS X is free.

Burn the CD
This is an unusual kit and most backup and restore programs assume that you can boot your Mac and run software, but Rescue Kit for Mac OS X doesn't need any operating system. You download the software and burn it to a CD-R - run Disk Utility in the Utilities folder and click Burn in the toolbar, then choose the .iso file.

Boot up with the CD
Once you have the CD-R you can insert it in the drive. A few seconds after switching on the Mac, just as the screen lights up, hold down the Option key until you see the boot options. You'll be presented with a choice of disks or the CD/DVD-Rom drive. Choose the CD/DVD and boot the Mac from it.

The disc has its own operating system and it takes a while to get going, but eventually you will see a menu on the screen. There is a backup wizard that enables you to copy the Mac's disk to some other device, a restore wizard that enables you to copy it back again, a file transfer wizard for copying files from one device to another, and a browser for exploring the contents of the drives.

Paragon Rescue Kit for Mac OS X

It's not your usual Mac software, but if you can't boot your Mac it could really help you to fix a serious problem. It reads Mac formatted disks fine and not many backup and recover systems do - they often assume you have Windows. It's free, so download it and play around with it.

OS X Lion includes a recovery partition on the disk drive, but Leopard and Snow Leopard don't. No matter which version of OS X you have though, you'll find this Rescue Toolkit useful.

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