Help, my Mac drive failed...

[Blackadda]

Help!:shit:

The hard drive on my MAC failed. I had a mac shop have a look, and they can see te files, but can't recover it. They suggest Computer Forensics or some specialised Data Recovery experts, which is great, however they want $900 to $2500 to do it?:gob:

I want my stuff back, but it's not really worth that much?

Can anyone help?

[Sam I Am]

very odd they can see the files but not recover them ?
can you explane the porblem in more detail ?

[Zapf]

MAC's have its own file system? Or it is like FAT32 etc?

[xwhatsit]

very odd they can see the files but not recover them ?
can you explane the porblem in more detail ?

<hints id="hah_hints"></hints>Not really. The file allocation table may still be intact, or if HFS/+ (the file system Apples use) is anything like EXT2/3 then the inodes may still be readable, however it's not trivial to get the data even still.

There are programs, but they cost a lot too and sometimes you need some experience (and a spare computer that you can open up and stick the drive into) to use them. For many people $900-$2500 isn't too much to pay to get their data back, but that's not the case with everybody.

If it ever happened to me (god help me!) I'd try and do it myself, but I use Linux, which like Windows seems to have an abundance of these data recovery methods, whereas I haven't seen so many for HFS+ (the disadvantage of a closed source system; FAT32 at least is relatively well understood).

Bad luck, mate. Horrible thing to happen, but that's always a chance with hard disk drives. Saying to back up is a bit like saying `I told you so'. How old was the drive, for the sake of interest? Perhaps it was a software corruption rather than a physical breakdown.

[xwhatsit]

MAC's have its own file system? Or it is like FAT32 etc?

<hints id="hah_hints"></hints>Macs (no capitalisation) do indeed use their own file system, they use HFS, HFS+ (aka HFS Plus or HFS Extended), and then a journalled version of HFS+, but it basically is still HFS+ and can be mounted as a normal HFS+ file system without the journalling (just the same as EXT2 and EXT3 under Linux and other Unices).

There are utilities to read HFS and maybe HFS+ too under other operating systems, but I don't think they'd support the low-level access that HDD recovery requires.

[Lias]

Help!:shit:

The hard drive on my MAC failed. I had a mac shop have a look, and they can see te files, but can't recover it. They suggest Computer Forensics or some specialised Data Recovery experts, which is great, however they want $900 to $2500 to do it?:gob:

I want my stuff back, but it's not really worth that much?

Can anyone help?

I have access to some pretty decent data recovery tools, but the main one I use only does dos/winblows/linux/bsd drives.. No HFS support :-(

[avgas]

Hang on, since its a mac doesnt the mac manual say just buy a new one?

[Blackadda]

Hang on, since its a mac doesnt the mac manual say just buy a new one?

Yep, that's right, just 1 box, plug it in and it goes :yes:

[Skunk]

What tools have you tried?
Do you have another Mac (you can check the drive from a second Mac or import the data)
What OS is it?

[Blackadda]

What tools have you tried?
Do you have another Mac (you can check the drive from a second Mac or import the data)
What OS is it?

Running OSX. Tried it as a slave with my old Tower G3, but it won't even start up or show? It's now making a clicking noise, when I pullet it to bits, I noticed one of the reading arms is bent.

Had Techniq in Hams look at it, they caouldn't receover anything, suggested one of these specialists who want too much, so was hopng some clever clogs could help?

Don't mind paying a little cash, just not worth the thousands the other guys want.

[Disco Dan]

Running OSX. Tried it as a slave with my old Tower G3, but it won't even start up or show? It's now making a clicking noise, when I pullet it to bits, I noticed one of the reading arms is bent.

Had Techniq in Hams look at it, they caouldn't receover anything, suggested one of these specialists who want too much, so was hopng some clever clogs could help?

Don't mind paying a little cash, just not worth the thousands the other guys want.

How important is the information? ...may be worth paying the top dollar. I can recover data from ntfs/fat32 drives, never tried a mac drive though.

Have you removed it and tried putting it into a USB esternal drive case? You may be able to use the utilities tools to access it?? Im no expert on Macs as im a recent convert myself.

[Blackadda]

Not that important, more of a nusiance factor really. There are things I would like to get back, but if not, then no matter, I could live without it.

However, I don't like to give up and I'm sure there is a way without all the expense :yes:

Might try a USB drive, that may actually work ta!

[Skunk]

It's now making a clicking noise, when I pullet it to bits, I noticed one of the reading arms is bent.
That sounds like it's beyond software tools to recover. Time to decide what the info on it is worth. (And buy a backup harddrive to clone to).

I've recovered stuff by using the migration assistant in Tiger to transfer a User folder and Apps but that's about it. If won't go into Target mode that won't work. I do have ProTools (somewhere) but that won't work on Tiger.

[Blackadda]

Already have a new mac, will now set up my old G3 Tower as a backup server.

When you say clone, do you mean the old hard drive?? or for the future?

[xwhatsit]

Already have a new mac, will now set up my old G3 Tower as a backup server.

When you say clone, do you mean the old hard drive?? or for the future?

<hints id="hah_hints"></hints>He means for the future, for backups -- you know. Making a clone image is cool because if anything goes wrong you just drop your Last Good Image onto the hard disk and go from there.

Skunk's right, you're farked if the reading arm is bent. I have seen it done where you get the exact same model of hard disk, pull it to bits, and then swap the platters in. Often works, but that was with the smoke in the electronic bits let out, rather than physical damage -- if the reading arm is bent it probably hit the platters, and every time you've started it up since it probably erased more data.

What a hell of a thing to happen lol -- time to find a USB enclosure for my old 120GB HDD and back up my laptop, you've got me paranoid now :innocent:

[Lias]

Running OSX. Tried it as a slave with my old Tower G3, but it won't even start up or show? It's now making a clicking noise, when I pullet it to bits, I noticed one of the reading arms is bent.

Had Techniq in Hams look at it, they caouldn't receover anything, suggested one of these specialists who want too much, so was hopng some clever clogs could help?

Don't mind paying a little cash, just not worth the thousands the other guys want.

If you pulled it to bits enough to see that arm, your pretty fucked.. The tolerances between the head and the platter are absolutely microscopic and introducing any dust of foreign particles into it is generally disasterous. PS: if the drive isnt detecting at all, professional data recovery is pretty much your only choice..

The only "cheap" data recovery place was Peacock Technologies, and I believe they have shut up shop now as the website is gone and when i last spoke to Alan he was very sick with prostate cancer. Even his budget service was still $500ish (he did on the backburner, recoveries took a few months, he worked on them when he didnt have full-rate paying work)

[RantyDave]

Not that it will help you now, but the combination of SuperDuper! (http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html) and a firewire drive is absolutely killer for backing up macs. The resulting images are mountable and you can even boot off them.

Dave

[Skunk]

Carbon Copy Cloner does that too. Last time I checked it was free (complete with Scheduling etc...)

SuperDuper looks more Mac-like though and does the basics free. I might take it for a run...

[Drunken Monkey]

Yeah, Lias has it right, once you've opened it and looked inside the ONLY option is a data forensics specialist. That's pretty stuffed your chances of trying to get data off it cheaply.

What we would normally do is load the hard drive up on a linux box and run a tool that can image the drive sector by sector and not crash on bad blocks. The bad blocks will just get written as 0's. This image can then be mounted in another program and data that is intact recovered from there.

At the other end of the scale, data forensics experts can do all sorts off stuff like rebuild data of physically damaged plates bit by bit by measuring the magnetic residue, even if it's been damaged by fire/water/etc... It's an expensive and time consuming process though.

[Lias]

Yeah, Lias has it right, once you've opened it and looked inside the ONLY option is a data forensics specialist. That's pretty stuffed your chances of trying to get data off it cheaply.

That being said I've heard of people window modding their HDD's after opening them up but damned if I've ever been that keen lol.

[xwhatsit]

What we would normally do is load the hard drive up on a linux box and run a tool that can image the drive sector by sector and not crash on bad blocks. The bad blocks will just get written as 0's. This image can then be mounted in another program and data that is intact recovered from there.

<hints id="hah_hints"></hints>Are you talking about dd(1)? If so, dd is available on Mac OS X boxes, it has all those basic Unix tools. I used dd on girlfriend's Macbook to image her stuffed memory card then zero it out just recently.