HD Recovery, Steps and Suggestions

[cheerful]

Note:
Decided to copy-n-paste these information as I feel these are useful to a bunch of us here. I do recall Hardmac sharing the news on having the HD in the snow too. She managed to get that working then too. Neat!

Feel free to edit using the KISS theory for easy reading. I was being lazy by the cnp method. Pardon me ok?

Quoting Chris from MacHeist Forum
"if you cannot get your drive to mount, you may see if its recognized in Disk Utility (can you hear if the drive is rotating?). If DU recognizes it, try (Micromat) Tech Tool Pro, (Alsoft) Disk Warrior, (Prosoft Engineering) Drive Genius, and (Apple) Disk Utility. If they cannot bring your drive back to life, you can try (Prosoft Engineering) Data Rescue II, (Subrosa Soft) FileSalvage, or (Micromat) Tech Tool Pro.

If you cannot hear the drive spinning, and wish to recover your data yourself, either put it in the freezer overnight, or the oven at 350 degrees for 1 hour. If you put it in the freezer, let it sit for the morning, or if you put it in the oven, let it sit for 1-2 hours.

If you wish to have your data professionally recovered (It will likely be over $1000 for this option), you can check http://drivesavers.com/, or http://www.essdatarecovery.com/. I have not used either one of these services, so I cannot make a recommendation on a company to use. The price tag keeps me away .

If I can be of any more assistance, please don't hesitate to email me.

I should warn you that whichever option that you use, you likely will not be able to go back and choose another data recovery option.

Basically, you would remove the hard disk from the computer, and put it in the freezer or oven.
To remove the hard disk, follow these steps: http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Mac/MacBook/Hard-Drive

Basically, freezing the hard disk makes the parts contract if the head is touching the platter, so that it will not scratch data off, and the platters will be able to spin. Putting it in the oven makes the parts expand, so they will hopefully not touch. Also, if the problem is not that the drive will spin, if you purchase a drive of the same kind, you can replace the control board of the drive and may be able to use the drive. If the motor is dead, you will likely need to get it professionally serviced, but it is worth trying freezing/baking the drive.

http://www.hackaday.com/2005/11/17/hard-drive-resurrection/
- Chris"


My replies/thoughts:
Chris gave a very comprehensive reply.

Ticking/Clicking isn't a nice thing, however I do know that there was a family of IBM HDs they produces those sounds (considered normal operation). I also read that Seagate had a series that did that too, however not sure how that turned out.

I personally have had the "good" fortune of working on those HDs (most were Maxtors) and though not 100% recovery was always in place with the methods Chris pointed out, but they are user doable apart from the professional services (darn expensive! not worth it unless your data is really critical, that said, one would tend to backup not just once but 3 times usually).

With regards to the freezer and oven:
In short, it boils down to simple heat expands, cold contracts physics theory. However, do note that as what Chris mentioned, it is a irreversible step. It is the final struggle just before death.

For me, the order of how I use the apps is a little different,
1) Apple DU
2) DW
3) Micromat (A friend will do it for me as I didn't purchase this software)

The above is the simple steps, not as time consuming as the next few steps ... ...
4) Data Rescue (very effective but darn long, also a friend will do it)
5) Pro handles (bye bye $s and ¢s)

Also to note, DO NOT do anything to the affected HD until you are sure on what you want to do. Because the last thing you need is to scratch the platters or rewrite data on it. That means, don't try booting it or accessing it till you have a plan of action.

lol Chris replied you while I was typing my message. Anyway, he's further touched on the replacement using an exact clone of the HD. Here's another vote of support of what he wrote. And it is true cause I've done so, but always be in a "clean room". You know, those wafer-fab style ... ...

If you have old HDs, it might be quite difficult to locate the exact model (though using 2nd hands can do too).

Anyway, all the best and you will need to be really patient in data recovery if you're performing it yourself. I worked on a couple of HDs over more than a year actually.

To Chris:
In your experiences, what brands of HDs or family series were most prone to failure? Most I've experience for Desktops are Maxtors, as for notebooks, there's a series by Fujitsu and Toshiba I know of.

[cheerful]

Please note that this article is not completed yet, but you are encouraged to post me questions on parts which you are more interested in and I'll reply asap. I just want to post this out quickly so that if anyone who are in similar positions can discuss and seek assistance from the others here.

Thank you for your kind understanding.


Recent personal experience:
In a nutshell, I recovered 99.9% of my data using DiskWarrior 3.03 preview feature. This took less than 4hrs including the transfer of 7GB of data into my Firewire HD. (do note that i do not consider this a major hardware failure and i was expecting to fix it easily.)

The more detailed story:
1 partition of the internal HD for my TiPB G4 400MHz developed bad blocks. 6 bad blocks, reported by TechTool Pro 4.5.3 (TTP), to be exact.

To my surprise, TTP does not map out bad blocks. So I seeked google's help to determine if there was any hidden prefs in TTP that allows me to repair these blocks or at least make the file(s) readable. "This test can find and report the number of bad blocks on a drive, but it can’t repair them." Link Source: MacWorld

So after copying out all the data (other than 2 files: unreadable), I ran Apple's Disk Utility which reported the following ...

Verifying volume “Mac Repair HD”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Invalid node structure
The volume Mac Repair HD needs to be repaired.

Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit


1 HFS volume checked
Volume needs repair

[hreak]

Hi,

Here is one more very good software which provides data recovery Mac for Macintosh hard drive and lost data. I have used it and recovered my lost images from Mac hard drive. Best thing about the software is demo version shows the preview of recovered data.

[cheerful]

hreak, thanks for the link. it sure looks good. have you tried data rescue? how does it compare to Stellar?

[bipsa]

For recovering data from mac hard drive you can use data recovery mac software, for which very few steps has to be followed for recovery like launching the application, and initiating the recovery process after selecting the drive from where data is to be recovered. It's very easy to use and data recovery is ensured.