Data Recovery Recommendations

[dix]

Yes. As I mentioned above, I'll mount it in one of the internal bays and try again.

Right now I'm dealing with a boot drive that won't boot. My cloned system boots fine. I can see the boot drive ("Macintosh HD") and repaired it with Disk Utility. It had nothing to report. The drive seems fine except it won't start.

Any suggestions? I'd rather not have to reauthorize everything on a new drive.

Thanks.

[kgdrum]

Yes. As I mentioned above, I'll mount it in one of the internal bays and try again.

Right now I'm dealing with a boot drive that won't boot. My cloned system boots fine. I can see the boot drive ("Macintosh HD") and repaired it with Disk Utility. It had nothing to report. The drive seems fine except it won't start.

Any suggestions? I'd rather not have to reauthorize everything on a new drive.

Thanks.

Disk Warrior has fixed this kind of problem for me when Disk Utility didn't many times on multiple systems.

[dix]

Which version of DW are you using?

I guess I'll buy the Disk Warrior upgrade too now. Since Data Rescue could see the files on the dead drive I went with that yesterday for $100 rather than the $50 upgrade for Disk Warrior. Which did see the bad drive at all.

Am I being paranoid and/or superstitious? Before I downloaded Data Rescue I launched Disk Warrior 3 and also a very old version of TechTools Pro. I didn't attempt any actions either, but since my drive is now unbootable my suspicion falls on those three apps for causing the issue. …I'm actually a little afraid to launch DW3. If you're recommending DiskWarrior4 I'll download it and give it a try.

Thanks

[dix]

Surprisingly, everything works fine when booting from my cloned backup. No reauthorizations needed. Believe it or not this is the first time I've had my boot drive go down. I was under the impression that the authorizations were attached to the drive itself so apps on cloned systems would need to be reauthorized, but so far neither DP nor none of my VIs or plugins have asked to reauthorized.

Also, looks like DiskWarrior is DVD only. Not downloadable. But I guess I'm okay for the time being using the cloned system. However, I am afraid to reattempt recovering the data from the (original) bad drive until I clone the clone of my OS drive to another drive, since that action could be related to the current (new) problem.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Some authorizations are tied to the machine and iloks.

[kgdrum]

Surprisingly, everything works fine when booting from my cloned backup. No reauthorizations needed. Believe it or not this is the first time I've had my boot drive go down. I was under the impression that the authorizations were attached to the drive itself so apps on cloned systems would need to be reauthorized, but so far neither DP nor none of my VIs or plugins have asked to reauthorized.

Also, looks like DiskWarrior is DVD only. Not downloadable. But I guess I'm okay for the time being using the cloned system. However, I am afraid to reattempt recovering the data from the (original) bad drive until I clone the clone of my OS drive to another drive, since that action could be related to the current (new) problem.

I'm not sure which version I have at the moment as I haven't had to use it in a while.
If the clone is working why not wipe the old drive and clone from the clone?

[dix]

So not the boot drive? I was sure DP would want the install disk, but no. I guess the sample libraries, EWQLO etc. authorizations are on the drive they're installed on. Not the boot drive.

…apart from buying and the waiting for DiskWarrior to show up. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix my boot drive?

[dix]

Surprisingly, everything works fine when booting from my cloned backup. No reauthorizations needed. Believe it or not this is the first time I've had my boot drive go down. I was under the impression that the authorizations were attached to the drive itself so apps on cloned systems would need to be reauthorized, but so far neither DP nor none of my VIs or plugins have asked to reauthorized.

Also, looks like DiskWarrior is DVD only. Not downloadable. But I guess I'm okay for the time being using the cloned system. However, I am afraid to reattempt recovering the data from the (original) bad drive until I clone the clone of my OS drive to another drive, since that action could be related to the current (new) problem.

I'm not sure which version I have at the moment as I haven't had to use it in a while.
If the clone is working why not wipe the old drive and clone from the clone?

Nah. It's the original drive that came with the machine in 2008. I might as well put in a fresh one. This one is now suspect until I can figure out what happened anyway. …I wonder what would happen if I cloned the bad boot drive onto a new one.

[kgdrum]

clone the new clone onto a fresh drive

[James Steele]

Not sure what's going on there. Not sure why it affects how your Mac boots? You were attempting to rescue a project drive and not your boot drive I assume. Also, I don't know if your drive was somehow set to power down after a certain time in the Energy Saver control panel (or it was one of those drives like the WD Caviar Green that have a power saving mode) and that's why it failed. Hard to say. Sorry you're having troubles with it.

[dix]

Not sure what's going on there. Not sure why it affects how your Mac boots? You were attempting to rescue a project drive and not your boot drive I assume. Also, I don't know if your drive was somehow set to power down after a certain time in the Energy Saver control panel (or it was one of those drives like the WD Caviar Green that have a power saving mode) and that's why it failed. Hard to say. Sorry you're having troubles with it.

I'm not sure how or why installing or else anything that happened with Data Rescue would effect the boot drive, but the coincidence is conspicuous. …difficult to google "Data Rescue" for others with similar issues

As a matter of fact the original drive I was trying to recover from is a WD caviar green drive, so your theory is a smart one. My MP is set to never sleep, but the WD might not care. The only problem with that theory is that the recovery had already been running for 7 hours with no other activity on the computer, and was running fine before I went to bed. Once I get this boot drive sht under control I'll try again with the WD in an internal drive bay and not on the slightly janky dock.

…and yes, yes kgdrum. I'll clone the good, working clone. I'm just curious if I cloned the bad one if its clone would also be bad.

Thanks all!

[mikehalloran]

Also, looks like DiskWarrior is DVD only. Not downloadable.

Wrong. They have instructions for making a bootable CD (yes, CD) once you have purchased.

DiskWarrior does not recover data, however. If the directory is corrupted, it will let you find it. In all of the years I have used DW, the only times it has worked it was on hard drives that were failing - repaired the directory long enough for me to recover the data and replace the drive.

In other words, if you needed DW, chances are you still need a new drive.

Once you get the data off of the drive, you need to find out the health of the drive. TechTool Pro is the only tool I have used that really works. Sure, if it fails the SMART test, Disk Utility will tell you that but only TechTool will tell you before it fails.

DW brought this drive back to life so I could pull the data off but look at it - yet Disk Utility or any of the freeware apps say that the drive is still good. Well it is not and Seagate accepts this chart for an RMA. In another month or so, this will fail.



I don't know if the lite version of TechTool included with AppleCare gives the same graph. Anyone? You can update that for free at the MicroMat.com site.

You can only see SMART status of a drive through an internal or eSATA connection. I do not know about Thunderbolt - anyone know?

[mikehalloran]

I'm just curious if I cloned the bad one if its clone would also be bad.

Normally no but it depends what was wrong and how you clone it. For this reason, it is not recommended to use SuperDuper! to clone a known bad drive.

TechTool Pro 6 and 7 (not yet released) uses two methods. One acts like SD! and is not recommended, the other pushes in the way that data migration pulls and is safe.

Otherwise, it is recommended to use Migration Assistant to pull the data from the drive. Better yet, restore from a backup like Time Machine if you can.

[dix]

Thanks Mike.

Yeah, it's the upgrade that's not downloadable (is it?) They say : "DiskWarrior 4 Upgrades are only available on DVD. The upgrade is not available via electronic download."

There's actually two issues now being discussed in this long thread btw - confusing I know.

Recap: I attempted data recovery from a dead archival HD with Data Rescue, but that action possibly (?) messed up my boot drive. I did a backup recently of the boot drive that's good (in fact the original boot drive seems fine aside from not being bootable), but I wouldn't mind knowing I could fix this if the problem occurs again if I reattempt recovering with Data Rescue.

Thanks again for your help!

[dix]

And Mike. You seem like a smart feller. Can you think of any reason why recovering data with Data Rescue could possibly mess with my boot drive? As mentioned earlier, the operation went bad at some point. I'm thinking the OS took some kind of hit, but I'm just pulling out of my…'er, out of the air.