Hardware :: Software To Recover Data From Failing Hard Drive?
Dec 24, 2008
My friend has a black Macbook that is extremely slow. It takes about 10 min. to boot up (literally), and when it does finally boot up, the good ol' beach ball comes up whenever I click on anything to do anything.
I then tried hooking up to a new iMac as a target drive. I was able to read some of the hard drive, but the User folder was empty, so I could not retrieve any of the data. Also, trying to access the target drive and trying to eject it made the new iMac slow way down.
And the hard drive was making a faint chirping sound, and then it turned into a crunching sound (much like that of the old 4200RPM hard drives of years ago).
I tried resetting the PRAM and also reset the power management. I also did a Safe Boot...all to no avail.
The DVD burner does not work. So, I could not do a hardware test or an archive and install. However, since the hard drive is most likely failing, an archive and install would not help any.
So, I'm guessing that the hard drive is going since the hard drives in Macbooks have been known to fail (it happened to a daughter of a friend of mine).
Is there a software out there that will allow me to retrieve the data from the drive? Trying to avoid having to go to a data recovery place.
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Jul 6, 2009
I replaced my daughters drive in her Macbook last fall. The move went without any issue and she had an additional 100GB after the upgrade.
Now it appears the drive is dying. It won't boot to get to the login - it gets to the blue screen and mouse cursor in the upper left, then circular spinning countdown in the center, then repeat, then hang at the blue screen. I can hear the drive making a repeated winding/reading type of noise when it gets to the point where the login should be coming up.
Here's what I've done so far:
- I've tried booting off the Leopard disk and verified disk - it passed.
- I also repaired permissions - it repaired about 2 dozen and passed as well.
- I've reset the pram with no impact
- It won't boot in safe mode - keeps getting some flashing text at the top and won't complete the boot.
- I took the drive out and ran Spinrite 6 on it - it got to about 53% and it started making the noise like it was stuck at the blue screen at Leopard bootup. It ran for 3 hours and the drive eventually passed with nothing fixed and no errors found.
- I'm afraid to try an archive and install since I think the drive is failing
So here is what I'm going to do.
- Purchase replacement drive and do a clean Leopard install
- Put the existing failing drive in my USB powered enclosure
I don't have a time machine backup to work from.
Now my question is where is my daughters user data and system files? She is the only user on the Macbook. Once I find them and bring them over - barring any other issues - where do I put them on the new drive/Leopard install and make her desktop, user data, music, photos, network settings, and apps the same again - like it would be with an archive and install? Is it as simple as copying over a user folder or series of folders? What about user login - does it have to be the same or does that come with copying the folders/data over.
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Sep 6, 2009
Today I went to plug in my Lacie 250 GB USB external hard drive into my 13 in. MacBook to get a shirt template for a design I am making. I discovered that the hard drive just would not mount and show on the desktop, and I remembered that this happened a few days before, but all I did was unplug it and plug it back in, and it worked... except that today, that didn't work at all. I tried the other USB port, and the hard drive showed up on the desktop for about a second, and then disappeared. I kept on replugging it back into both USB ports, but nothing happened.
Then I tried to see if it would work on the PC beside me, and it was recognized as an external device; however, a message came up telling me the drive was malfunctioning. I am guessing this is from ejecting it incorrectly (because I am in a hurry to head to my next classes...I use this laptop at school), but I have incorrectly disconnected it before in the past and this problem never happened to me before.
Every single project I have ever created for my design career is on that hard drive, and all I want now is to get my files back. All I need it to do is show up on the desktop for just the right amount of time for me to copy my files onto my computer.
I read online to put it into the freezer for a while and it should mount, but that didn't work. I tried using Disk Warrior, Data Rescue 3, and Tech Tool Deluxe, but the hard drive did not show up on any of those apps.I tried plugging the hard drive into an iMac as well, but it did not show up either.
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Apr 21, 2010
We have a client who has a MAC Mini running OS X. System is not booting into the OS, its freezing up during boot process. Data on the hard drive is critical to the user.
- The hardware utility on the OS X install cd says there's no problems, but when removed from the mini, connected to a PC, and tested using bootable cd IBM Drive Fitness Test and Seagate Seatools, the drive fails both tests.
- The drive has been connected to our data transfer system (running Windows XP) and unsurprisingly XP sees the drive in disk managment, but doesn't see the partition in Explorer.
- Research online led us to HFSExplorer, which dies see the MAC partition and file tree. But any attempt to extract files results in a Java runtime error saying that the source cannot be accessed. Once this error is received, HFSExplorer crashes and must be relaunched, and will not detect the MAC partition again until the computer is hard shutdown and restarted. THe physical drive vanishes from disk managment when the error occurs also.
- Further research led us to MacDrive, which mounts the drive (after reporting that it detected an error and asking if we still want to mount). We can again browse the file tree, but as soon as we attempt to copy anything, it fails and the explorer window with the MAC partiton vanishes. Again, the system must be hard restarted in order to restore access to the partition.
- Found a repair utility in the MACDrive program. Running that results in the error "80070002: The system cannont find the file specified."
- I'm out of ideas at this point.
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May 6, 2009
A friend emailed last night saying he had a drive that had been 'acidentally formatted' (that's a lot of accidental mouse clicks if you ask me), that it took 2 seconds to format so it should have not actually wiped any data on there.
I've used Disk Warrior in other circumstances but never tried on an initialised drive. Nor would I know how to get a copy of such old software.
Does anyone have any ideas as to what software from that time might recover the data?
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Jun 19, 2009
Long story short I dropped my 500GB Maxtor external HD (which is really just an internal HD in a chase). The drop was about 3 ft. It was not on so I don't think there will be much damage to the disk, but it no longer mounts. I was wondering if anyone could think of a way to get the disk to mount so I can recover files saved to it. I have Tech Tools, and Data Rescue II to recover the drive but as long it is not being recognized by the computer those applications are useless.
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Aug 17, 2009
my imac crashed last week but thankfully i had back up of all my files via my western digital my studio hard drive. thankfully right? well i royally screwed up and while trying to fix my crashed hard drive on my imac, i guess i accidentally reformatted my external drive, deleting EVERYTHING
I am pretty sure that I can go to a vendor and have them restore the HD correct? If so, what does something like that cost? I had probably 50 gigs lost, mostly photos, MP3, AVIs, and programs.
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Mar 27, 2012
An external hard drive, 4TB Iomega...connected via eSATA cable...had a power outage and the drive won't be read by OSX now. (Yes, it was on a surge protector and no I did not have a backup. I was actually preparing for the process of creating a backup when the power went out!) Anyway, I have tried using Data Rescue 3 and DiskDrill to try and recover data from the drive. I can recover the first 1/3 of the drive, but it ejects when either app tries to access the bad block. how/what software to use to recover the data? I know there are programs that will avoid the bad block but I've only found them for Windows. Are there any that will do such a thing in Lion? I can not afford a data recovery service. Trying to do this on my own.
Info:
Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), early 2008, 2 quad-core Intel Xeon
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Sep 4, 2009
So, I've been searching the forums, as I just had a 1TB (well actually a dual 500GB) external drive stop mounting and start clicking on me. I'm trying to find a way to recover files, and I know I've seen a lot of posts on DriveSavers, which. I was searching around, and I was wondering if anyone has ever heard of a company called "OneWorld Data Recovery." It was something I stumbled across, but I can't find any reviews, or nail down anybody who's used it.
Clearly, this seems fairly suspect, but I figured I'd check and see if anybody had ever heard of it or used it. Thanks!
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Mar 5, 2009
Our old Toshiba External Hard drive has failed ( approximately 3 years old ). It powers on and the blue light comes on, but the fans don't spin and you can't see it in the finder or on my computer ( we tried on both PC and Mac ).
Any ideas as to how I can retrieve the data... without going to a specialist and pay ���, or would that be the only option
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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 2, 2008
My friends iBook hard drive has crashed and I'm in the process of replacing it. However, he had a lot of important data on that hard drive that he needs recovered. Is there any software that you can recommend (for Windows or OS X) that will recover data from corrupt/bad hard drives? I have software for NTFS/FAT32 but don't know of any good ones for HFS.
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Nov 5, 2009
My iMac G5 is basically dead. Logic board failure. Apple is going to replace it by giving me a credit toward the purchase of a new iMac but that is a different story. I need to send my G5 back to them. Can I take the internal hard drive out and transfer the data to a PC and then get that data off the PC onto an external HD?
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Mar 9, 2012
I am using mac OS X 10.6, during the time to create a installation disk using disk utility by mistake I have selected my partition drive and after that I couldn't find any data in that drive, how to get it back data.
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6)
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May 14, 2012
I had mounted my drive to a G5 tower and it was severely frozen and would not let me shut down. I forced the computer off while the drive was still running and now when I try to mount it it, every computer tells me that the drive I inserted is not readable, and it gives me the option to initialize, ignore, or eject. I don't want to lose any of that data, is there anyone that knows how to recover these files?
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Sep 24, 2009
I have a student who put most of her project work for the past few semesters on an Western Digital hard drive which was in a I/O Magic shell. It was dropped and immediately started a grinding noise. She took it to the local mac guru who has been unable to recover any of the data. My gut tells me it's a goner but I wanted to run it by the gurus here to see if they might recommend anything that we might try before giving up.
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Sep 6, 2006
I have a EMac with Mac OS X vs 10.3.9 Prior user erased hard drive. Took to ADR data recovery and they scanned the hard drive and were unable to recover any data. Looking for input on other techniques to recover data from hard drive or other companies that specialize in Mac data recovery.
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Nov 22, 2006
My PM G5's Hard Drive has been making wierd noises lately and I'm really beginning to worry that it's failing. How can I be sure?
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Dec 9, 2010
is it possible to recover data from a crashed Mac hard disk on a windows platform.
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Jun 18, 2009
I have a LaCie Big Disc Extreme that has failed. The drive indicator flashes continuously, and the disk utility can not see it. I have tried FW800 and USB to no avail.
Here's the problem: it is a 500 GB drive, but when I opened it, I found that it is actually 2 250 GB drives with an ATA interface. Is anyone familiar enough with these drives to know how they are formatted, and how to recover the data? I am running an early 2009 Mac Pro 8x2.26GHz.
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Jan 22, 2009
I just got a notice that my hard drive is failing. I can't access any of the data on it.I posted a picture of my problem here:[URL]I totally out of luck?
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Oct 23, 2010
So unfortunately, the hard drive on my 2005 G5 crashed, atleast that's my guess. All it does is click when I attempt to turn it on. I'm fairly good with computers, but when it comes to fixing one - I hand it off to someone with a little more knowledge.
I have two hard drives in the computer - one that's got the OS installed (factory 150GB), and another I use for saving videos, pictures, music, etc (750GB). Now, I'm assuming that because the computer doesn't boot up, that the hard drive with the OS is the one that crashed? Is that a safe assumption?
Secondly, is it possible to recover the application files and other data that's been stored on the crashed drive? If so, how much should I expect to pay? Is it something a local 'work from the home' computer tech could do? The reason I ask is because craigslist is full of guys willing to work on the computer for a decent price.
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Apr 30, 2008
I'm so desperate for my hard disk. I have recently lost the partition table on a 300GB Samsung Firewire drive which contains my works. I would like to try to recover the data from this drive, but I can find no (command-line or otherwise) to do this. I have got 5 Journaled HFS+ partitions in my external hard disk.
Before this problem exist; I selected the fourth partition which capacity is 56GB, and choose 'Erase' with as a disk type 'MS-DOS File System' with Mac OS 10.4.11. But Disk Utility failed in 3 seconds, and gives an error. Then all my 5 HFS+ (Journaled) partitions stopped mounting and is not even recognized by Disk Utility which says no partition map found, and drive is unformatted. And isn't even recognized in Disk Utility which shows only disk name.
I think my apple partition map table corrupted by Disk Utility. All my data still in hard disk, but I don't know how can I mount them again. Disk Utility's verify and repairs buttons doesn't appear for Samsung HDD in Tiger & Leopard. I used some applications for repair my hard disk and partitions. But all of them are failed. Desperately seeking a way to repair or recreate corrupted Apple partition map.
Please, could you help me for mounting my 5 partition in my hard disk. How can I have got my all data again?
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Jan 6, 2010
I have a dead La Cie Big disk terabyte external drive. It won't mount and it isn't recoverable the way it is. So I looked inside, it's 2 x 500 gig Seagate drives. So, I took the 2 drives out and installed one of them in a Mac Pro to see if it would mount on it's own. I figured probably not, since there were two drives mounted in this La Cie external case, they must have been RAID-ed together. I don't really know much about RAID, obviously.
Disk utility saw the disk, but it wouldn't mount and gave the unreadable message. Tried to disk utility it, and it gave file system errors, not surprised. It looks like you can't separate them, the RAID must split the files onto the two disks.
Is there any point to trying the utility Data Recovery on it? Or should I just tell my boss the only way to get the data back is to send it out to a data recovery place? I don't want to try and reformat them if there is still any possible way to get the data off them. I think the drives are fine and would work as a terabyte drive in the Fantom case if reformatted, but then we lose all these important projects.We seem to have the worst luck with external hard drives.
The odd thing is that I have another dead terabyte drive, a Fantom drive in which one of the 500 gig drives started clicking. I took both 500 gig WD drives out of the Fantom case and installed the two Seagate 500s from the dead La Cie case. It shows up in Disk Utility as an unformatted 1T drive. I was hoping it might just reconstitute itself in another case, but no go. If worse comes to worse, I will reformat it and it will probably be useable.
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Jan 13, 2011
so lately programs in my computer have frozen a lot and i get the beach ball often in safari. i just had my logicboard replaced because of flickering by Apple so i know its probably not that. so could this be a failing hard drive?
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May 7, 2009
I just got a new WD external drive to put some media files on. I went into disk utility just to make sure the external was working fine before I started moving things over and it told me my internal hard drive in my 08 iMac is failing! Good thing I bought the external when I did,
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Oct 1, 2009
I have a brand new MBPro15. The SMART status says I have a failing 7,200 RPM HD. Apple sent me a DIY for replacement. I am unable to run time machine for a backup. It receives and error each time. Most likely due to the failing HD. I was able to get all my important files backup to an external HD. Except for all my bookmarks, calendars, settings, etc. I do have a .Mac account with sync. I am hoping I can pull that data off and onto the new OSX. Is that possible? IS there any other way to transfer this important info before I replace the HD with the new one? Can I just make a clone of my current HD and put the OSX on the new HD? Or is a best to do a clean install, than transfer important settings and bookmarks?
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Dec 6, 2014
I have an external USB HDD that was originally formatted as Mac OS Extended (journaled), it was accidentally erased (using Disk utility) and re-formatted to FAT32. the HDD has not been used since (other than to try and recover the data using various tools), so no new data was been written to it.
Any methods that could be used to recover the data from the drive?i've tried DiskWarrior but that can't do anything with the drive as it's not a "macintosh disk".
Info:
Mac mini, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3), 2.3Ghz Core i5
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Nov 29, 2010
My 1.5 year old MacBook pro has what I believe is a failing hard drive. What is the likelihood apple will replace the drive? It should still be covered under the manufactures warranty.I just think that 1 year and a few months is a little early for a drive to fail...
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Dec 28, 2010
However, my hard drive appears to be running fine - haven't noticed any degradation of performance since receiving the warnings two days ago. And HD is still running quiet (no strange mechanical noises I'm accustomed to hearing prior to a failure). Nevertheless, I'm installing a new HD tomorrow and recloning it from a backup external drive (operating from external until then).
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