Hard drive question along the lines of johnnyd's thread (1 Viewer)

[Shawn]

I had a 750GB external hard drive plugged into a Mac. When I rebooted, the drive came up as unreadable. The drive itself mounted and showed up as healthy etc, but it said it needed to be formatted. I plugged into a PC and got the same thing.

I've dropped the drive off to be looked at--but after looking at johnnyd's thread--does anybody here think I should try to use Disk Warrior to retrieve my data? They're going to charge me an arm and a leg, I'm sure, to do this.

Thoughts?

 

[eaux-yeah]

I am going to assume that this is NOT the system drive?

Step 1
Make sure that the Open Firmware has been set to defaults.
This can also fix 'weird' memory error issues:
(WARNING, you can render your Mac un-bootable through Open Firmware commands, so type exactly what is below)

Reboot holding the Option-Apple-O-F keys
(you will get a white screen with text when it comes back up)


Type the commands below EXACTLY as they appear and hit RETURN (enter) after each command:

reset-nvram
set-defaults
reset-all

After typing 'reset-all' your Mac will reboot.


Step 2
Go to Applications --> Utilities --> Disk Utility
In Disk Utility does the drive show up in the list?
If so, select it and run the Verify/Repair tool on it. I have had this fix drives before.

If this is your system drive, you will need to boot to your original install CD (hold C key while booting) and you can then run the Disk Utility on your system drive after booted to the OS X install CD.

Also, if you have your original Cds, you may have the Apple Hardware Test, as well. It's not the best, but can point out problems.


Step 3 (if it still doesn't work)
You can run the built-in command line UNIX tool, FSCK (File System Check) through the Applications --> Utility --> Terminal.
You will need to boot to CD if it's the system drive.
If it's not the system drive, you can run it from the command line via the Terminal but you will need to activate the root user account.

More Information (scroll half way down the page):
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214

FSCK can be tricky, and could cause harm if you mess up.
I would recommend just booting to a Disk Warrior CD if you don't feel comfortable with fsck.


Disk Warrior, as I have mentioned before, RULES! It really does. I have seen it fix drives that NOTHING else would. Cost about $100

Tech Tools Pro is also another very nice program for troubleshooting/testing the Mac system and hardware. Not cheap, though.


I can tell you, most Apple shops will run the Apple Hardware tools, Tech Tools Pro, and Disk Warrior on you machine. You really can save the $$ and do it yourself.

 

[Shawn]

I have to reread what you've put here, thanks for the info.

I'm having some luck going another route, and I'm going to try your approach after.

But here's where I get the pat on the back, for now. I took my drive in immediately to a Apple Certified service place, a place I've used before. The guy there was pretty slow about getting to my drive, and said he was doing analysis to see if he could retrieve the files. I went in and told him that I needed to take the drive home for the holidays, and would just have him look at it when I got back. Well, I happened to see what software he was using, bought it online, and am running my own file slavage. I'm getting everything back, but without the original file structure, names or metadata--which is an acceptable compromise--though a huge pain in the butt.Took about 10 hours to retrieve the files, after about 12 hours of "diagnostics." You do the math on that, at $45/hr.

I don't think I'll get Disk Warrior, only because I've already spent $100 on this software--Data Rescue II.

Next I'll try your fix and see if I can retrieve the original file structure--

Thanks for the help!

 

[eaux-yeah]

Cool! glad you got that drive away from there before paying all that money to him.

Pretty clever looking to see what he was using.

You'll have to let me know how good Data Rescue II works. I've heard of it, but haven't used that one. I use the Stellar Phoenix tool, but it runs around $150.00.

What I mentioned above is not a "recovery" technique per se, but a way to 'hopefully' fix the file system itself.
FYI, Disk Warrior is something completely different than a data recovery tool, though. Still recommend it for ALL MAC owners.

 

[inetnawlins]

Shawn. Good luck with your drive, but I doubt the guy was going to charge you every minute for diagnostics. I work on macs and if something takes 12 hours to run, I charge a set charge for the work not every minute. Good luck with your drive.

 

[Shawn]

OK, so I "think" I've retrieved all the data from the drive, but decided to tinker around to see if there was some way to get it back up and running, in order to avoid the likely 20-30 hours of work it's going to take to sort out these files.

eaux-yeah, I tried all your suggestions, without luck:

Disk Utility won't recognize the disks to Verify or Repair. They show up, but that's it.

I bought Disk Warrior, which turned out to be a waste of money for me. Since the disks won't mount, your dead in the water with DW. Plus, it seems they have to have been originally formatted in the Mac extended format--which this disk might have been. But it's not being recognized as such.

The drive in question was a Seagate External drive that came pre-formatted. I just started using it with no problems. But there is one interesting thing that come up. When attached to the Mac, the drive seems to read as having a Windows FAT 32 partition--I got that from Disk Utility. But when I attach it to a Windows computer, it reads as unformatted.

Anyone have any ideas? It really does seem that it should be a corrupted directory, due to improper removal. We had a power outage one night, and I believe I was using this drive--that could have had something to do with it.Anyway, maybe I'm just spinning my wheels, but I thought I'd try a few more things before I throw in the towel.