Your SSD utilizes TRIM to erase sectors in order to keep write performance snappy. Because of this, traditional data recovery has been nearly impossible for these drives. With APFS, Apple introduced APFS Snapshots, which preserve the state of a drive at a specific point in time. Until recently, these were used to bridge the time between Time Machine backups. In Techtool Pro 13, the Techtool Protection preference pane can create Techtool Pro snapshots. These snapshots can be set to last much longer than Time Machine snapshots, making the snapshots a much more useful data recovery option.

To get started, first make sure that Techtool Protection is installed. If it isn’t already, the option to install it can be found in the Techtool Pro application menu. In Techtool Protection, choose the Snapshot Usage feature, and select any APFS volume that you wish to create snapshots for. Additionally, you can specify how long snapshots will last, and how often they are created.

When it comes time to retrieve data from one of these snapshots, use the Snapshot Recovery tool in Techtool Pro. Use the search field to find a snapshot for a particular file, or if you can’t quite remember the name of the file, or wish to recover an entire folder, click the Mount Snapshot button to open the snapshot in the Finder.

Note that while at first new snapshots don’t take up any space, as your files and folders change, the snapshot will take up the amount of space equivalent to the difference between a given snapshot and all the others. The amount of space taken up by snapshots can be seen in Techtool Protection in the Size column, or by hovering your mouse over a snapshot in the Snapshot Recovery tool. Both the tool and the pref pane provide the option to delete snapshots, if necessary.

Pro Tip: Consider keeping snapshots longer if you will be away from a backup for an extended period of time.