hi all,

is there any one on here that can recover data off a broken macbook hard drive?
i've had it replaced by a friend who said that it is possible but expensive!

ive had 1 quote from a company but it made my eyes water....

music is backed up apart from the last 5 gig which i would love to get back.

but the biggest problem is my iphoto album
wedding photos
honeymoon
last 3 years of gigs with pals
bla bla bla...stuff i cant get back.

i know i should of backed up these as well but i didnt (what a donkey)

had macs for years and never lost this much data

any ideas (please leave smart arse answers out)

cheers

jim

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www.londonaerialsystems.com

Yes, data recovery is expensive im afraid. You can do a Google search for various recovery experts. There is plenty out there.

Out of interest, is it an early MacBook? Some of them were rather prone to failing HD's...

I've had a couple of drives fail in the past 2 years or so (one in an early MacBook!) and needless to say, I have a wireless TimeMachine based backup system now.

Good luck!

Paul

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Paul

hi paul,
it is bloody expensive!
i've been quoted £300+
and yes it is an early one (black core2 duo 2.16 about 2 years ish)

i had time machine installed today so lessons learnt. once bitten twice shy

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www.londonaerialsystems.com

Does the hard drive start spinning when connected to a power supply?

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www.thinkootb.com

Quote Big_al:

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Does the hard drive start spinning when connected to a power supply?

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hi big al,

it clicks, its out of the mac now still intact.

jim

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www.londonaerialsystems.com

Take it down PC World and you should be able to pick up a lead to link the hard drive to the mac via usb (about 15 quid) then download the free demo of Data Rescue.

http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php

If it does mount then it might be worth the $99 for the software, I've used it before and it's brilliant.

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www.thinkootb.com

i shall give it a try....

cheers

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www.londonaerialsystems.com

Quote fused-sound:

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Quote Big_al:

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Does the hard drive start spinning when connected to a power supply?

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hi big al,

it clicks, its out of the mac now still intact.

jim

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Hey,

Sorry to hear about your troubles. The big question is does it mount? If you can get it to mount at all you need to leave it plugged in and download / buy whatever data recovery software you can and don't power down that disk until you've got your data...

However, I fear you may need to read on...

It sounds like the platter is warped. This is physical issue with the disk rather than a filesystem problem. I assume you've powered it up a few times and no joy so my advice is don't power up the disk again! You're likely damaging the platters or heads every second it is spinning!

It sounds like you've reached the point where you need to decide to accept defeat or cough up for professional help... really, if the data is that important don't keep trying yourself...

I had a similar nightmare recently - had a backup of most stuff but it was worth the £600 quote I received in order to get back just a few files. Unfortunately the disk was beyond repair - mainly because I have got a few hard disks breathing again in my time by giving them a whack on the corner (after seeing a few Dell engineers do this successfully) which probably made things worse...

So... I lost my files but I did use a no data, no fee service based in London (don't want to advertise) so I only had to pay about £40 for a courier to learn the bad news... they even gave me new drive heads gratis (which were consequently destroyed by the warped platter...)

So... it's really a question of just how much that data means to you...

HTH

If it’s not only data corruption, but hardware failure as well, you might give the following method a try.

Bare in mind Hypnotoad’s remarks though: the described method below might damage your drive extra since it does, most likely, require you to power up the drive a few times.

Having said that, it did the trick for me.

The procedure is incredible time consuming and it requires you to buy Disk Warrior from Alsoft (http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/index.html) if you don’t already own it.

I recovered a disc that had serious hardware failures from an ‘old ‘ G4 Ibook with this method, whereas the local Apple shop couldn’t get the job done and the demo of Data Rescue didn’t help either --> probably due to hardware failure instead of –just- data corruption (I’m no expert, so I’m just guessing here).

Here goes...

1. Connect the HD. I had the disk connected via USB, just like Big_al described. I used Newer Technology’s USB 2.0 Universal Drive Adapter for this. The disk mounted without any problems.

2. Let Disk Warrior build a new index file. In my case DW worked the whole night thru…..just let it run. The cool thing about DW is that it keeps on trying to build a new index file: it doesn’t stop when the HD hardware fails (obviously there is a limit to this somewhere along the line, but DW will let you know and you don't have to stop it in its tracks).

I couldn’t let DW imprint the new index file on the damaged and malfunctioning disk, but still DW gave a mounted preview of the rebuilt disk.

3. I tried to copy this preview to a fresh HD in one go (simply from the Finder). This only worked so far because the Finder gives up when the HD hardware fails (10.4.x). I think I tried the same with the then existing version of Carbon Copy Cloner as well, but to no avail (probably due to the same reason: hardware disk failure).

Now probably this was the point I lost the whole preview again or my Mac crashed or whatever…can’t remember exactly….but I do know that I had DW working again for the whole night. Even in the following steps there were occasions where the mounted ‘trouble drive’ would disappear and I had to run DW again for hours and hours.

4. Same strategy as in 3, with a small, but time consuming, difference: copy the files from the DW preview disk on a folder by folder or even on a file by file basis to a fresh HD (from the Finder). You can start with copying folders and see what it brings you, if that fails, try to copy a few files at a time or even one file at a time. With this method you can recover the files that are untouched by hardware failure areas on your drive.

As said before, you might lose the mounted preview and disk occasionally (or when you’re unlucky constantly). It's also possible that you can't successfully copy certain files from the preview, period (without the drama of losing your precious preview). Make a mental note of when this happens (which file or folder did you try to copy / recover from the preview) and leave that file / folder on your next try (or a few ones after that) alone. Sometimes several tries to make a copy of a file made the difference between succeeding and failing in my case.

I hope Data Recue can help you out cause it would be a much faster solution, if not and when a professional data rescue service is not an option, you might give the above a try. In the end I had most of the disk recovered which for me was just ‘a lot of time spent and an ego boost thanks to the failure of the Apple professionals’, but for the person I was helping out worth a lot.

Well....I hope this helps a bit... get those files, all best!
Merlin.

thanks everybody for your help......

i need to sit down with a mate of mine who is a bit more of a tech nerd then me and go thru all of these posts.

once again THANKS A MILLION FOR YOUR TIME..

jim

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www.londonaerialsystems.com

Quote Big_al:

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Take it down PC World and you should be able to pick up a lead to link the hard drive to the mac via usb (about 15 quid) then download the free demo of Data Rescue.

http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php

If it does mount then it might be worth the $99 for the software, I've used it before and it's brilliant.

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Data Rescue saved my butt once on a failing drive.

I was lucky because the next boot after the recovery, the drive totally died.

I also use their Drive Genuis2 product.



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G-Dub
Studio G-fx 15inch quad-core i7 Macbook Pro Logic913

The situation is not as much devastating as you think as the data is completely recoverable through Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery Software . This is possible in all cases of data loss due to the fact that data never gets deleted permanently.This tool can recover deleted, inaccessible and corrupt data from HFS, HFS+, HFSX, HFS Wrapper and FAT file system volumes.

Quote aaram:

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The situation is not as much devastating as you think as the data is completely recoverable through Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery Software . This is possible in all cases of data loss due to the fact that data never gets deleted permanently.This tool can recover deleted, inaccessible and corrupt data from HFS, HFS+, HFSX, HFS Wrapper and FAT file system volumes.

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Hmmm. Joined: 05/05/09, Posts: 1 - You work for Stellar Phoenix... am I right?

Nice use of bold but surely a link too?

Your statement is completely misleading because you don't know the nature of the failure - if the disk is physically damaged then your software ain't gonna work....

You can't 'always' recover data from a buggered drive.
For example, many of the failed MacBook drives failed because the heads would become detached from the arms. And then the heads impact the platter, damaging the drive further. When you have bits of drive head rattling around on a platter thats spinning at 4500rpm+ things quickly get damaged to the point of no recovery.

Paul

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Paul

Yep - you certainly can't recover data "in all cases of data loss". Doesn't need a hardware failure. Simply delete a file by accident, and a modern OS like OSX will quite likely be scribbling over the blocks that once contained the data (ie. writing new stuff) before you can even go "Oh Sh****t".

The "aaram" post was clearly some sort of advertising b*llox. I hit the notify-SOS button, but it doesn't look like they've seen fit to take action.

Recovery of data of a dead hard drive can be done in two possible ways including backup files and using a data recovery program for Mac. you just need to select any of the recovery solutions according to your needs. just use the solutions and get you back to your lost data.

recovery solutions

We don't appreciate 'drive-by' advertising here, but given the OPs situation I'm going to leave this post intact. Please don't abuse the SOS forum rules again. HR

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http://www.datarecovery-mac.net

Edited by Hugh Robjohns (23/02/13 11:15 AM)

Quote Sara:

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Recovery of data of a dead hard drive can be done in two possible ways including backup files and using a data recovery program for Mac.

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Well yes...for certain definitions of "dead" and certain interpretations of "two" :-)

It constantly amazes me how robust hard drives and their file systems are. If a drive spins and hasn't physically disintregated, software remedies often get everything back working.

But, unless you KNOW the fault was caused by you doing something silly in software, get the data off that disk then throw it away. You very likely won't get lucky twice!

I rescued a Windows laptop yesterday. Sweet young girl had no backup, and was desperate for her data. I wouldn't mind, but she had a similar experience last year with another computer. No backup then either. You just can't help some people!

No matter this is an old thread - the advice isn't time-dated :-)