Hardware :: Hard Drive Crashed - Recovering Files Procedure?
Dec 21, 2009
My 500GB external hard drive (Hitachi DeskStar) crashed! The blue light comes on, and I can hear the hard drive spinning, then sounds like it's stuck, or clicking ...
Same thing happens to the internal HD on my iBook G4. Sometimes the internal HD works, sometimes not.
I desparately need to find someway to attempt to either fix the external 500GB HD, or recover the files. The 500GB was my main HD, and I have so much very important data that I need to recover (no backups!).
I have years of research (lots of family history), thousands of pictures (many very old), my personal journals that I've been keeping for years, personal information, letters, documents, family videos, and all of my e-mail.
Somebody was telling me that there is special software that will recognize the HD, and allow you to recover the files.
What would you recommend? At the present I have no money to do anything, but will save up for the recovery software. My uncle is getting me a new hard drive, so I'll have that to back up the files when I have the recovery software ...
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Jun 2, 2009
My macbook refuses to boot and freezes with either the blue or grey screen of death. I took my computer to the Genius Bar and the guy said my drive was dead but said I could possibly recover some of my files with an external hard drive. How exactly would I go about doing this? I've searched through posts but haven't really found anything specific. Do I go through Disk Utility or do I need a third party program like Data Rescue? He said to just boot from an external drive and then browse my old hard drive (which does show up in Disk Utility) and move things over.
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Apr 24, 2009
My hard drive crashed and could not be recovered without spending about $1500. (according to the guys at the local Apple certified store) We had quite a bit of music on it but not enough to justify spending that kind of money. Is there a record of the music we purchased and some way to re-download that music to our new hard drive without re-buying all of it?
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Jul 27, 2009
just a few minutes ago, i decided to install leopard on my mac. So i cloned my old install onto my external hard drive using carbon copy cloner. once that was done and verified that it was good, i inserted my leopard dvd and installed: erasing my os x install...now i booted up and was messing in disk utility and erased my external hard drive...i thot it was the other one i had plugged in for time machine! i just lost all my important files, including my itunes library, and everything else that i really need!!
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Feb 9, 2010
I recently upgraded to snow leopard because i needed to install logic pro and I decided to format the hard drive, I did my back up but there was to much music on it so I did a couple of dvd's just for the music I compressed them (.zip) with stuffit one of them did work but the other one where it has all of Itunes library doesn't unzip. I wonder if I can recover it from time machine?
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Oct 9, 2009
I had a PC before I had a MAC, and I started using my external hard drive (a FAT32 drive) with my MAC using NTFS-3g. Now my hard drive has stopped working - it is recognised by my mac although no files show up, and it is not recognised in the PCs I've tried it in, and seems to crash them. I tried DiskWarrior to recover the data, but it only works in NTFS. I am looking for a way to try and fix the drive and retrieve the data using a mac rather than a PC.
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Sep 8, 2014
If my hard drive was "scrubbed" by techs at the genius bar who thought that my computer had a software issue (it didn't) does that mean that a data recovery tool wouldn't be able to find the deleted files?
Info:
MacBook Pro
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May 3, 2012
I went to make a copy of an important drive and accidentally re-formatted it (re-formatted mac journaled, originally mac journaled). The drive contained a bunch of important disk image files which I need to retrieve whole. I'm fairly confident that the files are still there and only the table information got overwritten, as the re-format took about 30 seconds. None of the recovery software I've seen however, can retrieve .dmg files, or such large files (these are up to 32 gb each in size).how I can retrieve these disk image files?
Info:
Mac OS X (10.6.8)
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Mar 13, 2009
My sisters PC laptop's hardrive crashed last weekend. She lost 1000's of songs, but they are all on her iPod still. Whats the best Windows solution to get these songs off the iPod and onto a new HD? I do have an iMac, so if theres an easier Mac solution, I'd love to hear about that too. Will there be an issue copying over the music she purchased from the iTunes store? A quick google search brought up 5 year old results though.
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Jul 9, 2009
I recently killed my PC laptop by spilling liquid on it. It died instantly. I replaced it with a Macbook, which I love, but all my iTunes music files and photos were on the hard drive in the PC laptop. Is any of that information recoverable and capable of being added to my Macbook?
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Jul 20, 2009
The USB flash drive is Sandisk, 4GB, formatted for Mac. It became corrupted and I don't have access to stored files. The messages on screen is that disk can not be read and invitation to reformat it. I found special software for recovering files from corrupted drives but it is not affordable for a student like me. I've tried to find in forums and word of mouth some shareware/freeware working on Mac OS 10.3.9 but all I got is programs that take space on HD and do nothing, that is, software that is about selling and marketing stuff, not the real thing. Tried with 3 different such a programs, sheer time wasting. I found that this area is pretty much absolutely dark. Do experienced fellow mac users know about some truly working shareware/freeware that can help me retrieve the files from this corrupted Sandisk USB flash drive?
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Dec 5, 2008
Data Rescue II was recommended to me recently to retrieve erased files from an external 1TB hard drive, where the files were accidentally erased whilst initializing another (now discovered as a faulty) external hard drive. I was led to believe by the sales person that the lost data could be recovered completely with no change, but now since using the software it seems this is not the case. As recommended, I scanned the drive using the scan specifically for deleted files, proceeded with the recovery (happy to see it had recovered all of the expected files, plus more) but then discovered that none of the files had their original file name (everything is now renamed with numbers relating to the file, and the file type). I have tried calling ProSoft several times now during their opening hours, and sent several emails to enquire further about the recovery process, but never receive an answer.
It would be great if anyone here has had a similar/same problem or knows if there is a way of retrieving the lost files with original file names intact. I fear that this software has left me with no choice but to open each file and rename individually, which is sure to be an epic task for the amount of files that were on the drive!
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Apr 16, 2012
My hard drive on my iMac died. However, I saved my music on my back-up Seagate Drive. Now my iMac has a nice new drive and a freshly downloaded copy of iTunes. I found the music on the back-up drive. So far, so good. Now, all I gotta do is get the music files from the back-up to iTunes.So:
(a) How do I do that, since my efforts so far have been unsuccessful.
(b) Can I assume all my original lists and albums are kaput and will have to be recreated and reorganized?
(c) When I sync my iPod to the new library, can I assume it will scramble my existing iPod configuration to meet the new lists and album configuration?
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.8)
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Jan 7, 2010
I just had my first Hard Drive crash on me . When I turn it on it makes a clicking sound for a few and then nothing happens. Its a Western Digital 500gb HD. I was wondering two things. 1) How can I get my stuff off the HD and 2) What's the best HD to get that wont give me any problems. I want to get a 1tb or 2tb HD.
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Sep 19, 2009
On my new MBP I fired and set-up the system, and SL was already installed.
I followed the procedure of cloning my Leopard HD on to a local back-up drive, using CCC, plugged it in to the MBP and booted from the clone.It has booted up without any noticeable issues but when I go to open Disk Utility, or any other program on the cloned disk, I get the '...application X quit unexpectedly' dialogue box
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Jul 28, 2010
I did a search for this problem but all the solutions seemed to involve using your iPod or old hard drive to recover. I recently had two tragedies in a short period of time. First, my iPod broke - a tragedy, but one I could get past. The second was the horrible death of my laptop's hard drive. I had some backups of important school and work related files, as well as a few other things like old tax documents, and much of my older files, but I did not have my iTunes folders backed up, because I was under the impression that I could download these songs again through iTunes should the need arise, since I had purchased them in the past.
Now, on my new computer, I have downloaded iTunes, and have been trying to recover my old songs. I authorized this computer, but when I "check for available downloads" it says everything has been downloaded, and that I should try to transfer the songs from the other computer. This is of course, impossible at this point. I can still see my purchases in my history, and if I try to purchase a song I had before, it warns me that this will create a duplicate. Will I have to purchase these songs again? I can see how I should have backed up my music, but I thought that iTunes would allow me to acquire them again.
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Sep 10, 2009
I swapped out my stock 160GB HDD for a 500GB WD HDD a year ago and put the old HDD into an enclosure. I guess I didn't screw it in tight enough and after jostling around a move or two, I just plugged it in to clear the clicking sound of a crashed drive. I can't even mount it onto my computer, so I pretty sure it's gone. My question is: I was about to take it to Best Buy to put in their electronic recycling bin, when I wondered if whatever data that was on there is secure, and if there's another step I should be taking before disposing of it properly.
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Apr 24, 2012
My hard drive crashed.
Info:MacBookPro
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Oct 30, 2010
A while back I removed a Apple Hard Drive after I thought I had shut down the computer. Instead, it had just slept and so still had the power on. This caused the file system in the hard drive to fail, so I erased and rebuilt the file system on the Hard Drive. It worked fine for another day, and then failed. When I went to see if I could fix it, Disk Utility said the S.M.A.R.T status had failed and the send the hard drive to an apple specialist. Is there any way I could fix the Hard Drive myself?
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Dec 21, 2009
My 500GB external hard drive (Hitachi DeskStar) crashed! The blue light comes on, and I can hear the hard drive spinning, then sounds like it's stuck, or clicking ...
Same thing happens to the internal HD on my iBook G4. Sometimes the internal HD works, sometimes not.
I desparately need to find someway to attempt to either fix the external 500GB HD, or recover the files. The 500GB was my main HD, and I have so much very important data that I need to recover (no backups!).
I have years of research (lots of family history), thousands of pictures (many very old), my personal journals that I've been keeping for years, personal information, letters, documents, family videos, and all of my e-mail.
Somebody was telling me that there is special software that will recognize the HD, and allow you to recover the files.
What would you recommend? At the present I have no money to do anything, but will save up for the recovery software. My uncle is getting me a new hard drive, so I'll have that to back up the files when I have the recovery software ...
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Sep 26, 2010
Luckily, this is not my primary Aperture library, but another one that I started a few weeks ago as I thought my first was getting a bit large. I am unable to open Aperture at all, nor can I copy to or from the drive. Because the drive is (I believe) bad, I can't repair the library, plus, as I mentioned, I can't open Aperture anyways. I can pull the drive, but then how do I get Aperture to redirect itself so that it opens my original library, instead of trying to open this new one? Pulled the suspicious drive from my Mac Pro. On restarting, Aperture asked which Library I wanted, adding that one was no longer available. So, I'm back on the original library and things look to be running fine. Unfortunately, I hadn't vaulted yet, so the last month is probably gone. Luckily, I think I already exported the few keepers I had during that time.
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Dec 30, 2009
I have a 2007/2008 MBP 2.4Ghz running 10.6.2. I was having repeated hard crashes
due, I think, to some stupid firefox mods I made a few days ago. Every 1-3 hours, the system would freeze, make that crackly thinking really hard noise, spin the beach ball, and wait for me to hard restart. This happens 3 or 4 times today, and on the last crash, the system hangs on restart. Grey screen, spinning grey circle of circles for 10 or so minutes. I can't wait any longer, so I hard restart again, and again the system hangs indefinitely. Now I start to get a bit worried. I boot from the Snow Leopard install disk and open disk utility. From there, I attempted to verify permissions, but the process hangs with one minute remaining for at least 20 minutes. A crash while trying to repair a crash. Great.
So I hard restart AGAIN, and open disk utility, this time selecting repair disk. The utility detects a few errors, supposedly corrects them, then hangs for about 2 minutes, finally culminating in the hard drive disappearing act. The bar looks complete, but the hard drive is gone from the list! GONE! I can't select it from the sidebar in Disk Utility. It doesn't show up in the Startup Disk menu. The only drive I can access is the dvd drive with the Leopard disk. I opened System Profiler and looked under Serial-ATA, and found the only entry was for an Intel ICH8-M ACHI. I don't remember that being there. It used to be a Matsushita drive. Can't find anything on google, and I want to do whatever I can before giving up hope on all my data. Haven't made a backup in a while.
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Apr 23, 2012
My hard drive crashed and i ended up replacing it. I had downloaded LION OS from the app store and know i would like to re-install on my new hard drive.
Info:iMac (24-inch Mid 2007), LION OS
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May 18, 2012
hard drive crashed after loading lion
Info:iMac
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Dec 28, 2010
My hard drive crashed so before I sell the laptop, I heard I should do a "7 pass sweep". I'm not sure how to do this from the OS install disk though
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Aug 30, 2008
Just want to know the proper type to replace it with. Is there a size (gigabyte, not physical!) limit I need to be concerned with?
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Jan 2, 2010
Background Info: Earlier today, I experienced a what I am 99.9% sure was a hard drive crash on my white MacBook (about 36 months old). Everything stopped responding, and I heard a clicking noise coming from where the the hard drive is located. I forced a shutdown by holding down the power button, and tried to reboot, only to be greeted by the little question mark folder and the clicking sound. Fortunately, I had just backed it up the previous night, so I knew I hadn't lost anything of value. Then, about an hour ago, a made another attempted to start it up again, and to my surprise, was greeted by no clicking and an logo.
Actual Questions:
I am guessing this is not a one time occurrence, and that the noise and another crash will be back, am I correct? If so, does anyone have any guess on how long until it does return, and ultimately, how long can I put off my trip to the genius bar?
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Mar 10, 2010
I recently lost access to my Seagate eSATA HD after my Mac froze up and I had to do a hard shut down of both the Mac and my eSATA drive. When plugged in, OSX says I must initialize the disk before use (Windows says the same thing, but uses the word "format"). I figured out the drive is now in RAW format. I found a nifty little program called Recover My Files, (which cost a cool $69.95, far less than professional data recovery services) and ran a scan on my drive. It found what appears to be all of my files, but it doesn't look quite like what it did on the drive. Several top level directories are gone, and their content folders and files just spread out in the list.
All of this is OK by me, but when I try to save the files to another location, the software says my selected files take up 2.43 TB of space to save! The eSATA drive itself was only a 500 GB hard drive, so I don't know how it could find 2.43 TB to save. And I had only used around 350 GB of space on the drive. I did go through and found it had several duplicates for many of the files, that looked like maybe older versions or temp versions (with a ~ in font of the file name). I'm not sure how all these files could fit on that drive, but maybe I am misunderstanding something. Anyhow, I want just to save the correct files. A) I don't have space for all that stuff, my max to copy to is 500 GB (minus used space), and B) I don't want to have to sort through all of those files to get the one's I need (assuming there are tons of dupes in there).
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May 29, 2012
My computer had frozen up so I had to restart it by holding down the power button. After I had done this, I kept getting a recurring kernel panic error. I had taken my MacBook the Apple Store and the tech who looked at it said that my hard drive was no longer good and that I would either have to replace it or purchase a new laptop. Regardless of whether I replace my hard drive or just purchase a new laptop, would there be any way to get my data that I lost off my old hard drive. I have some stuff backed up, but not recent data.
Info:
MacBook
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Jun 27, 2012
I have an early 2008 Macbook pro 15" 2.4ghz (T8300). Now when it attempts to startup I get the white screen with the spinning circle but it stays stalled at this screen indefinitely. While the icon continues spinning theres also a constant clicking sound coming from the hard drive. I have the Snow Leopard Install disc, but unfortunately the disc drive malfunctions ever since the laptop was dropped several years ago. (This happened a good year before the hard drive began failing) So booting from the disc wont work.
I have an external usb drive that I thought I could boot from but would need to make a separate partition, thus losing over 2TB of music, movies, and documents. What I think I should do...?: Buy a small SSD to replace the failing hard drive. Using another mac, plug in the SSD via usb and install Snow leopard onto it. Then plug the SSD into the Macbook pro via usb and boot from it to make sure everything works. Then install the drive internally.
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
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