How to Fix a Crashing Mac and Recover Drive? [Best Methods]

In today’s digital world, Macs are widely recognised for their stability, high performance, and intuitive user experience. Despite these features, Macs are not immune to crashes. Sometimes, you may encounter unexpected crashes on your Mac, which can be extremely frustrating, especially if it holds important data. In serious situations, such crashes may prevent your Mac from booting properly, making its internal drive inaccessible.

This article explains the common reasons behind Mac crashes, provides step-by-step solutions to resolve them, and outlines safe methods to recover data from a Mac drive. Just go with the mentioned methods one by one to fix crashing issues on Mac and recover its lost data.

Understanding Why a Mac Crashes

Before you apply methods to fix a crashing Mac, it is important to understand the exact reason for such Mac crashes. Some main reasons include:

• Software Conflicts: If your Mac has outdated apps, incompatible third-party software, or corrupted file systems, it can cause frequent crashes. This often happens after a macOS update when older applications are no longer supported.
• Insufficient Storage Space: macOS needs free space for smooth performance. If your startup disk lacks enough storage, it leads to issues such as a freezing Mac, slow performance, or unexpected crashes.
• Hardware Issues: Faulty RAM, a failing hard drive or SSD, overheating, or damaged peripherals can lead to system instability and crashes.
• Malware or Adware: Though rare on Macs, sometimes malicious programs like viruses or adware can infect them and cause abnormal behaviour, including crashes and unexpected restarts.
• Corrupted User Account: Sometimes, the issue is not related to your Mac, but it’s a corrupted user profile that causes apps or the system to crash repeatedly.

Symptoms of a Crashing Mac

If your Mac crashes, you may encounter the following symptoms:

• Applications closing or crashing unexpectedly
• Sudden system restarts without warning
• macOS taking a long time to boot or failing to start
• Overheating or loud fan noise before a crash
• Kernel panic errors (screen turns black with a restart message)

If you find any of the aforementioned signs, it’s important to immediately proceed with the appropriate troubleshooting.

Quick Methods to Fix a Crashing Mac [Step-by-Step]

In this section, we’ve outlined various methods that you can try to fix a crashing Mac and recover its drive. These include:

Method 01: Restart Your Mac

Before you apply advanced methods, try restarting your Mac. A simple restart can fix temporary glitches, memory leaks, and stuck background processes. If your Mac freezes, force restart by holding the Power button until it shuts down.

Method 02: Boot Mac in Safe Mode

Safe Mode in your Mac allows loading only the essential components and helps identify whether the crash is caused by third-party software. Here’s how to boot your Mac into Safe Mode:

• Firstly, shut down your Mac.
• Turn it ON and immediately press and hold the Shift key.
• Keep pressing the key until the login screen appears.

If your Mac works fine in Safe Mode, the problem is likely caused by startup items or third-party apps.

Method 03: Update macOS and Installed Apps

An outdated OS or application installed on your device sometimes conflict with system files, and leads to frequent Mac crashes. To update macOS:

• Go to System Settings > General > Software Update.
• Check if any update is available.
• Download and install any pending updates, if any.

Also, update all installed applications from the App Store or developer websites.

Method 04: Run First Aid

macOS in-built First Aid feature in Disk Utility enables you to check your startup disk for errors and fix them. For this, first you need to boot your Mac in recovery mode. Here’s how to run First Aid on Apple Silicon-based Mac:

• Shut down your Mac.
• Hold Mac’s Power button until the startup options appear on your screen.
• Now, click on Options, then tap Continue to proceed.

• Enter administrator credentials and follow the on-screen instructions to proceed.

Method 05: Reset NVRAM

Resetting the NVRAM can fix startup-related issues and help you avoid sudden Mac crashes. Follow the steps below to reset the NVRAM:

• Firstly, restart your Mac.
• Keep pressing the Command + Option + P + R keys until the Apple logo appears on the screen.

• Release after 20 seconds.

This will reset the NVRAM and fix the crashing issue on your Mac.

Additional Tip: How to Recover Data after Frequent macOS Crashes?

Unexpectedly crashing of your Mac leads to data loss instances. Further, file system errors and kernel problems may make the storage drive inaccessible or delete all its stored data. If you ever find any file or folder missing from your Mac, try free Mac data recovery software such as Stellar Data Recovery Free for Mac to restore it. This all-in-one data recovery tool performs a comprehensive scan of your storage drive to locate missing or deleted files. This software allows you to restore files deleted due to accidental deletion, unexpected system crashes, formatting, partition loss, and other reasons.

The Stellar Data Recovery Free for Mac tool can help you recover deleted files of various types, including photos, videos, documents, etc. Another key feature which makes this free Mac data recovery software the best is its compatibility with different storage devices, including HDD, USB Flash Drive, Fusion Drive, Time Machine, and Encrypted Storage Media. It offers a simple and intuitive user-interface, allowing recovery of lost files in three simple steps, i.e., Select, Scan and Recover.

Wrapping Up

A crashing Mac can be alarming, but most issues can be resolved with basic troubleshooting. You can use the default macOS features, such as running boot mode or resetting NVRAM, to successfully troubleshoot the crashing issue on your Mac. However, when crashes make your drive inaccessible, free data recovery software tools like Stellar Data Recovery Free for Mac should always be your priority.

With the right approach and preventive measures such as keeping OS and apps updated, monitoring disk health and storage space, etc., you can restore your Mac’s stability and protect your data from future crashes.

Frequently Asked Questions [FAQs]

What should I do when my Mac crashes?

Restart your Mac to clear temporary glitches. If crashes continue, boot into Safe Mode, update macOS and applications, and run Disk Utility’s First Aid to check for disk errors.

How can I fix a crashing Mac without losing data?

When your Mac crashes, try updating its OS and installed software, freeing up storage space, resetting NVRAM/SMC, removing problematic apps, etc., to fix it on your own.

How can I recover data from a crashing or unbootable Mac?

You can use macOS built-in Time Machine backups or reliable third-party free Mac data recovery software to retrieve files from unbootable or corrupted drives.