Hard drive recoverable if unrepairable?

Macintosh software/hardware discussion and troubleshooting

Moderator: James Steele

Post Reply
User avatar
Tobor
Posts: 803
Joined: Mon Jan 31, 2005 10:01 pm
Primary DAW OS: MacOS
Location: Colorado

Hard drive recoverable if unrepairable?

Post by Tobor »

Hi,

I think my Macbook's hard drive is toast. I booted from my SL disc and tried to repair it, but it said 'not able to repair' and to back up, re-initialize, and restore. And something about 'nodes'.

It was running fine until it wasn't, now I can't boot and the external CD can't seem to access the volume. As I was attempting to boot up this morning I plugged my Axiom into the USB port, maybe the timing of that threw something off, or may be irrelevant.

Anything I can do to try to recover the data, or at least some of it?

Thanks!
iMac 2.7 i5, DP 9.5.1, 10.13.3, Apollo Twin, 828, MTPAV, Toontrack, Spectrasonics, BFD3, Drumcore, Reason 10, Live 10, Logic X, Spitfire, Zebra, Miroslav, Waves, Kronos X, MOXF 6, Axiom 49.
User avatar
bayswater
Posts: 11924
Joined: Fri Feb 16, 2007 9:06 pm
Primary DAW OS: MacOS
Location: Vancouver

Re: Hard drive recoverable if unrepairable?

Post by bayswater »

I was able to use DiskDrill to recover about half of the files on a 2T drive declared dead by DiskUtility. But in the end it wasn't worth it. The app cost me about $70 and it took two days to recover what it could. I should have just bought a new drive and restored from a backup.
2018 Mini i7 32G 10.14.6, DP 11.3, Mixbus 9, Logic 10.5, Scarlett 18i8
User avatar
mikehalloran
Posts: 15134
Joined: Sun Jan 25, 2009 5:08 pm
Primary DAW OS: MacOS
Location: Sillie Con Valley

Re: Hard drive recoverable if unrepairable?

Post by mikehalloran »

You have a Time Machine backup, right?

If you don't, see if you can option-boot into the recovery partition. If you can, select Disk Utility and run Repair Disk. If you get errors, run it again and again until you get the same set of errors three time in a row or it is repaired.

Plugging in the usb shouldn't have done anything but, if it did, DU will repair it in a pass or two and you may be ok. If it takes more than three passes, your drive is toast even if you get it to the point where you can get it working and pull your data off. Replace the drive.
DP 11.31; 828mkII FW, micro lite, M4, MTP/AV USB Firmware 2.0.1
2023 Mac Studio M2 8TB, 192GB RAM, OS Sonoma 14.4, USB4 8TB external, M-Audio AIR 192|14, Mackie ProFxv3 6/10/12; 2012 MBPs Catalina, Mojave
IK-NI-Izotope-PSP-Garritan-Antares, LogicPro X, Finale 27.4, Dorico 5.2, Notion 6, Overture 5, TwistedWave, DSP-Q 5, SmartScore64 Pro, Toast 20 Pro
User avatar
Tobor
Posts: 803
Joined: Mon Jan 31, 2005 10:01 pm
Primary DAW OS: MacOS
Location: Colorado

Re: Hard drive recoverable if unrepairable?

Post by Tobor »

mikehalloran wrote:You have a Time Machine backup, right?

If you don't, see if you can option-boot into the recovery partition. If you can, select Disk Utility and run Repair Disk. If you get errors, run it again and again until you get the same set of errors three time in a row or it is repaired.

Plugging in the usb shouldn't have done anything but, if it did, DU will repair it in a pass or two and you may be ok. If it takes more than three passes, your drive is toast even if you get it to the point where you can get it working and pull your data off. Replace the drive.
Thanks for the suggestions. I tried booting up with option with the SL CD in the drive, and lo and behold the hard drive showed up as an option. But no joy as it continued spinning endlessly after I chose it. Booting from the CD I tried repairing the disc at least three times to no avail.

In Disc Utility I was able to select 'verify permissions' once so ran it. This is interesting: the errors listed (X 50) all said 'Input error 5: input/output error.....etc'. That would perhaps lend credence to the fact that I plugged in my Axiom during startup?? That would seem fixable to me, but how?? Unfortunately I wasn't able to select 'repair permissions' to see if it would help.
iMac 2.7 i5, DP 9.5.1, 10.13.3, Apollo Twin, 828, MTPAV, Toontrack, Spectrasonics, BFD3, Drumcore, Reason 10, Live 10, Logic X, Spitfire, Zebra, Miroslav, Waves, Kronos X, MOXF 6, Axiom 49.
User avatar
mikehalloran
Posts: 15134
Joined: Sun Jan 25, 2009 5:08 pm
Primary DAW OS: MacOS
Location: Sillie Con Valley

Re: Hard drive recoverable if unrepairable?

Post by mikehalloran »

Repair Permissions won't fix anything if Repair Disk hasn't restored the volume.

Booting from the CD is slow -- booting from an external drive via USB is nearly so but, if the restore partition didn't get it, this is what you want to do.

You need to run Repair Disk it on the entire drive and this can only be done from an external drive. Note that when you click on the drive, Repair Permissions is not available. That's ok.

I have run Repair Disk over 50 times on a drive to bring it back for data recovery. The key is to look for the exact same report three times in a row before you give up. If you get different errors every time, it is a sign that Disk Repair is actually working.

Once you have the drive back with no errors, then run it on the mounted Volume. Once Repair Disk shows that as good, only then will Repair Permissions succeed.

It's possible that your action caused no permanent damage. If so, once you recover, it will stay good. I have been known to accidentally disconnect an eSATA drive during a task (the connector is upside down on my iMac and gravity...). It takes a few passes but Disk Repair has always brought it back to life,
DP 11.31; 828mkII FW, micro lite, M4, MTP/AV USB Firmware 2.0.1
2023 Mac Studio M2 8TB, 192GB RAM, OS Sonoma 14.4, USB4 8TB external, M-Audio AIR 192|14, Mackie ProFxv3 6/10/12; 2012 MBPs Catalina, Mojave
IK-NI-Izotope-PSP-Garritan-Antares, LogicPro X, Finale 27.4, Dorico 5.2, Notion 6, Overture 5, TwistedWave, DSP-Q 5, SmartScore64 Pro, Toast 20 Pro
dosuna11
Posts: 1130
Joined: Sat May 21, 2005 10:01 pm
Primary DAW OS: MacOS
Location: Mountlake Terrace, Washington
Contact:

Re: Hard drive recoverable if unrepairable?

Post by dosuna11 »

Running utilities disk repair multiple times worked for me just enough to get the damaged drive mounted and copy the files onto another hard drive.
iMac 2.7Ghz quadcore i5 16 gig RAM DP 7.24 OS 10.6.8, iMac G5 2.1GHz 2.5 gig Ram DP 5.13 OS 10.4.11 MOTU 828 MK2, East West Platinum Plus, Miroslav Philharmonic, Komplete 5, Kontakt 2 Garritan Big Band, Mr Sax T, The Trumpet, DrumCore, Trilogy and Trillian, Ivory, MachFive, Ethno Instrument, Reason 4, SampleTank 2 Sampletron, Samplemoog, Melodyne Editor, Nomad plugins, Vintage Warmer, Ozone 4, Amplitube Jimi, Xgear and AmpegSVX.
http:www.davidosuna.com
Post Reply