Hard Drive failure recovery

PSUCOBRA96

Active Member
Established Member
Joined
Apr 21, 2007
Messages
9,210
Location
Maryland
Wife's Macbook appears to have had a hard drive failure, what's the best program or way to recover what we can. She wants her pictures she never backed up even though she has an external hard drive, which I use because I have had it happen to me before. According to her Macbooks "never" fail.

I would like to stay away from the Mac store, I can only imagine what those geeks will try and charge me. Anyone use Best Buy or some other service?

Edit: weird thing is she was just commenting how she was worried she needed to back up her files today. I restarted the computer and bam premonition came true.
 
Last edited:

Steve@TF

Authorized Vendor
Authorized Vendor
Premium Member
Joined
Feb 24, 2006
Messages
19,702
Location
So Cal
happened to me this week! external drive took a crap and it was only a few months old! :cuss:

did a lot of research over the past week. it largely depends on if its physical or logical failure. is it "working" but you just cant access it, or its corrupted? or is it making noise?

if its "working" than its logical and can possibly/probably be saved with software. after much reading i found this
Data Rescue 3 - Digital Data Recovery Software for Mac | Prosofteng

on cnet
Data Rescue for Mac - CNET Download.com

they have a few demo download. i downloaded it and walaa! it found my files within a few minutes. i ordered the full version and am working on it right now.

if its a hardware failure than you'll probably need to send it out for repair which is $$$
 

PSUCOBRA96

Active Member
Established Member
Joined
Apr 21, 2007
Messages
9,210
Location
Maryland
the Mac apple comes up for start up but it never boots up the log in screen. I assume its a bad failure, I did all the system checks and it said it couldn't open the hard drive, like a driver failure.
 
Last edited:

zak88lx

Future SVT *****
Established Member
Joined
Jul 15, 2008
Messages
2,578
Location
Calgary, Alberta
If you're going to take it to a place, I would make sure that they are reputable as you may only get one chance to recover.
If the pictures are important, I wouldn't recommend taking it to Best Buy.
 

zak88lx

Future SVT *****
Established Member
Joined
Jul 15, 2008
Messages
2,578
Location
Calgary, Alberta
the Mac apple comes up for start up but it never boots up the log in screen. I assume its a bad failure, I did all the system checks and it said it couldn't open the hard drive

You could try placing the mac drive in an external USB enclosure and see if you can retrieve the data from another PC.
We had to do this on my brothers laptop. Windows was screwed but the data was still there.

17-392-032-TS

SATA to USB 2.0 External Hard Drive/SSD Enclosure
 
Last edited:

Steve@TF

Authorized Vendor
Authorized Vendor
Premium Member
Joined
Feb 24, 2006
Messages
19,702
Location
So Cal
the Mac apple comes up for start up but it never boots up the log in screen. I assume its a bad failure, I did all the system checks and it said it couldn't open the hard drive, like a driver failure.

the software i linked comes with a bootable cd if your computer's main hdd has failed.
 

03Sssnake

TK-421
Established Member
Joined
Dec 9, 2002
Messages
40,157
Location
not at my post...
You could try placing the mac drive in an external USB enclosure and see if you can retrieve the data from another PC.
We had to do this on my brothers laptop. Windows was screwed but the data was still there.

17-392-032-TS

SATA to USB 2.0 External Hard Drive/SSD Enclosure

the software i linked comes with a bootable cd if your computer's main hdd has failed.

This is a good option if you weren't using timekeeper in the mac os for backups. If timekeeper was used, you could try a restore, will need to boot of the Mac OS cd/usb stick to do so. You do have several options though. Have you tried booting from the installation CD that comes with macs? There is a disk utility native to that cd, would 1st see if the hdd is mountable and go from there. You could also buy another 2.5" HDD, install in the mac, reinstall your flavor of the Mac OS, and once completed with install, attach the old hdd via external enclosure/drive dock and grab all important docs/data.
 
Last edited:

Users who are viewing this thread



Top