Data Recovery Recommendations

[kgdrum]

To clear Disk Warrior is a great app for repairing permissions,directory's etc... ,sometimes when a drive will not boot but the drive is physically OK it's a directory problem, that's what I use Disk Warrior for.
If the drive is actually bad for other reasons DW will not fix the issue.
If the cloned boot is good and everything works,authorizations etc...I'd try making a bootable clone on a fresh HD from the cloned boot and think you'd be good to go.

[James Steele]

As far as the Caviar Green aspect. It will spin down in its own from what I understand regardless. It's why they are not good drives for audio. It may have been that it was seven hours before Data Rescue started part of its process that stopped accessing the drive for a while and it spun down, and when Data Rescue resumed and didn't see the drive it failed. May explain why you got one project off fine. It was a small enough job that the WD Green drive was never inactive long enough for it to spin down. Perhaps you'll have to recover the drive in smaller amounts... like 5 or 10 project folders at a time or something?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

That's correct about the green caviar drives. It's what make them green and turns user red.

[toodamnhip]

Hmm. Might have spoken way too soon.

Although Data Rescue saved the day by rescuing the one project I needed, efforts to recover the rest of the data on the disk hasn't been successful. DR said it would take 13 hours to extract the data so I set it up and went to bed. In the morning it said "Rescue aborted because of loss of power to one of the disks" (or something like that) - the drive I'm trying to save is a raw drive running on a dock, so I thought I'd mount it internally and try again tonight, but: When I tried quit DR I got a "background process is still in progress logout to continue" (or something like that). Since the MP was on all night I thought I'd restart instead of logging out. However, instead of restarting I got a No Disk icon! As it is right now I can only boot my Mac into safe mode. I don't know if DR caused this, but since this is the first time anything like this has happened one has to consider that it may be a factor.

…stay tuned. I'm in mid-diagnosis at the moment. I have a reasonably up to date clone of my system so I should be okay eventually.

For all the time and trouble you are putting, + the 100oo you spent, I think you are beyond what it would have cost you to send the drive into the professional recovery place listed above.

[kgdrum]

Hmm. Might have spoken way too soon.

Although Data Rescue saved the day by rescuing the one project I needed, efforts to recover the rest of the data on the disk hasn't been successful. DR said it would take 13 hours to extract the data so I set it up and went to bed. In the morning it said "Rescue aborted because of loss of power to one of the disks" (or something like that) - the drive I'm trying to save is a raw drive running on a dock, so I thought I'd mount it internally and try again tonight, but: When I tried quit DR I got a "background process is still in progress logout to continue" (or something like that). Since the MP was on all night I thought I'd restart instead of logging out. However, instead of restarting I got a No Disk icon! As it is right now I can only boot my Mac into safe mode. I don't know if DR caused this, but since this is the first time anything like this has happened one has to consider that it may be a factor.

…stay tuned. I'm in mid-diagnosis at the moment. I have a reasonably up to date clone of my system so I should be okay eventually.

I had a similar problem a few months ago, I was updating my clone boot drive, it was taking much longer then expected, it actually seemed to have stalled(not a green drive)........I tried to to quit the clone update and restart the computer before the clone had finished the update and the drive was ruined,luckily it was a WD black still under warranty, so WD honored the warranty.
trying to stop this kind of procedure midstream is the problem.

[mikehalloran]

I have a great deal of experience with the WD Green drives. In the last 5 years, I have probably purchased 40. I have sent one back under warranty and its replacement is one of my two TM drives.

I have no problem with WD Green drives when connected internally, externally via eSATA or inside Apple Time capsules over ethernet or wireless - in fact, I recommend them for that use as they bring down the internal temperature dramatically. I have never had a Time Capsule fail, even a first gen and these were known to have heat issues with the power supplies.

As far as the Caviar Green aspect. It will spin down in its own from what I understand regardless.

Where I do not recommend them is in usb 2 or FW housings. Some FW housings can wake them after spin down but I have not seen the usb housing that can (I am looking at a shelf with 8 different brands of various ages). Even the FW housings that could somehow "lost" that ability after OS 10.6.8 - one of the many reasons I keep preaching that, except for my MOTU devices, FireWire is dead.

It's why they are not good drives for audio.

See the above. The ones with the 64MB cache are better for audio but the fact is that they are slow. The Green are best for Time Machine and, if you have run out of ports, used 1st and 2nd gen Time Capsules are cheap - the Green is much easier on the power supplies than the Apple drives. These are easy to set up and install and you can disable the wireless if you have no need - it's faster over Ethernet.

[mikehalloran]

Right now I'm dealing with a boot drive that won't boot.

If anything interrupted your transfer, it can hose your boot drive. I've caused ... er ... uh... seen this a dozen or more times. I can assure you that Disk Warrior has never fixed this - not once not ever even after running and declaring it has. Your disk is probably fine, however.

Your best friend is Apple's Disk Utility. Yep, that's right, not TechTool, DW nor any commercial program. I have seen DU fix many drives that DW and TTP had declared unrepairable.

You cannot repair a boot drive. Boot from another drive, preferably. If not then from a system restore DVD or an OS 10.6 DVD that will boot your Mac. Since you have an Intel processor, make sure it's from an internal or usb drive. Run Disk Utility until you get the exact results twice in a row if they are green (repaired) or three times in a row if they are red (unable to repair). If you get red but the results are not exactly the same, keep running Disk Utility over and over - sometimes, DU can only fix one or two problems at a time. I once had to run it 20 times on a drive before it passed - still in service, BTW.

If you get the exact red message three times in a row, then the drive has a physical problem that was undiscovered until you tried to write to it (can happen) or the directory/file corruption was so great that All the Kings Horses...

So, in this case, it's time to re-initialize the drive and restore from backup using Time Machine or Migration Assistant.

Again, use Disk Utility and nothing else. In the Security Options under Erase, select Write Zeros - the second fastest in OS 10.8. One pass is fine - you do not need anything slower. This will cause DU to examine every block looking for bad sectors (all drives have them) and it will write a new sector map into the drive's firmware. Whatever computer you install it in will use this new map when writing data to avoid those blocks.

At some point, purchase a tool that can examine for bad blocks - if more ever show up, it's an early warning sign of drive failure. Since Apple uses Tech Tool, probably not a bad idea to do the same. One license can run on three Macs. It will also find memory problems that the freeware doesn't know exists - but can still cause problems. If the drive works fine but TTP gives you a graph that looks like these, you know to budget for a new drive really soon.





These were both Apple drives that I pulled out of Time Capsules and hooked up to an eSATA dock. You cannot read this data over usb, FW, wi-fi or ethernet.

In case anyone is curious, replacing a Time Capsule drive is quite easy. Slowly peel back the silicone rubber base, use a #0 or #1 Phillips to remove all the base screws, lift the drive out, disconnect, reconnect, transfer the temp fan sensor and four locating pins (small vise grip pliers are easiest to loosen them, then your #0 Phillips). Reassemble. There's enough stickum on the rubber already and it only goes on one way. A Green drive will make the top much cooler to the touch, it will run noticably quieter, too.

[dix]

Okay. After a full day of dealing with this my system seems to be more or less stable running from the clone of my boot drive I made a few weeks ago with Super-Duper. For awhile I was getting intermittent endless gray screens on start up and other anomalies, but I'm not seeing them today.

I'm still stuck with the dead Caviar Green disk (I bought it for archival purposes btw. Not for audio. A few years ago when I bought it the price dif between green and black made it seem worth it). Putting it in any internal bay makes it so my Mac won't boot, so I won't be able try Data Rescue that way. I think I'm stuck with what James suggests - getting smaller bits off one at a time while it's in the dock. However, even though I can hear it spinning, it's getting harder and harder to get DR to see it. I may end up having to send it away after all.

2 more questions:

This new boot disk was not created by TimeMachine or Migration Assistant as suggested above. Is there any reason why a Super-Duper clone is not a viable boot disk?

Mike, I'm using 10.6.8. Would placing the dead drive in a FW enclosure work for me? I'm still suspecting the dock as possible suspect for why the original recovery went bad.

Thanks again for all this amazing input and advice!

[MIDI Life Crisis]

The WD Green drives also spin at 5400. Again, not a great audio choice and personally, I still don't like the auto sleep mode.

[buzzsmith]

The WD Green drives also spin at 5400. Again, not a great audio choice and personally, I still don't like the auto sleep mode.

+1 (No, this doesn't mean that you are any closer to the C7!)
I swear, though, when I bought mine the box clearly showed 7200 rpm. Must have not read the fine print.

And, yes, they do go to sleep and when they do it bogs down the entire Mac. Restart required.

Correction: My internal drives do not sleep. It is my two external Iomegas that do.

Buzzy

[bayswater]

Mike H, I don't follow what you mean when you say a Green in a USB enclosure will not spin up again if it spins down.

I bought a 1T Green a while ago to replace an old 500G WD drive I was using for backups. It is connected to an Apple Extreme wireless router via USB in a Mediasonic Probox enclosure (the very cheapest one I could find). I has been working flawlessly for Time Machine and scheduled SuperDuper backups from two laptops and a mini with a mix of ethernet and wifi connections.

On that basis, I bought a 3T Green for backups on my iMac. I put it in an updated Mediasonic Probox that supports 4T drives, and it has been running TM backups for about 6 weeks with no problems. I also dump files I don't want on the internal iMac drive to it via the Finder.

I'm assuming this drive does spin down -- it goes dead silent, and you can clearly hear motors accelerating, heads moving etc, when I later access it. If it's not, I guess the question is why does it matter?

[mikehalloran]

. Mike H, I don't follow what you mean when you say a Green in a USB enclosure will not spin up again if it spins down

They don't for me unless I power down and power back up. I only use them for TM. I get a "Time Machine Disk cannot be found" error. I power down, power up, hit back up now, then it works. That gets really old. Not an issue with eSATA or Time Capsules. I am on OS 10.8 now.

If something works for you, my saying that something similar doesn't work for me shouldn't really make a difference, does it?

[bayswater]

. Mike H, I don't follow what you mean when you say a Green in a USB enclosure will not spin up again if it spins down

They don't for me unless I power down and power back up. I only use them for TM. I get a "Time Machine Disk cannot be found" error. I power down, power up, hit back up now, then it works. That gets really old. Not an issue with eSATA or Time Capsules. I am on OS 10.8 now.

If something works for you, my saying that something similar doesn't work for me shouldn't really make a difference, does it?

No, it doesn't make a difference. I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying. I've never heard of this happening. (All my stuff, except the Mini, is on 10.8.4. Mini is on 10.6.8.)

Maybe try a mediasonic enclosure. They're $29 here and probably a lot cheaper there. Not much to lose.

[mikehalloran]

Okay. After a full day of dealing with this my system seems to be more or less stable running from the clone of my boot drive I made a few weeks ago with Super-Duper. For awhile I was getting intermittent endless gray screens on start up and other anomalies, but I'm not seeing them today.

I'm still stuck with the dead Caviar Green disk (I bought it for archival purposes btw. Not for audio. A few years ago when I bought it the price dif between green and black made it seem worth it). Putting it in any internal bay makes it so my Mac won't boot, so I won't be able try Data Rescue that way. I think I'm stuck with what James suggests - getting smaller bits off one at a time while it's in the dock. However, even though I can hear it spinning, it's getting harder and harder to get DR to see it. I may end up having to send it away after all.

2 more questions:

This new boot disk was not created by TimeMachine or Migration Assistant as suggested above. Is there any reason why a Super-Duper clone is not a viable boot disk?

Mike, I'm using 10.6.8. Would placing the dead drive in a FW enclosure work for me? I'm still suspecting the dock as possible suspect for why the original recovery went bad.

Thanks again for all this amazing input and advice!

Ok...

A few Mac basics. You need to know how to boot from the start up drive you want. Shut down the Mac. Install the dead drive in an internal bay. Hold the Option key when booting. All bootable drives should appear - the dead drive may be one of them and this is why your Mac won't boot. Using your mouse or arrow keys, select the drive you want to boot from. Hit Enter or double-click.

Disk Utility will run five times faster on an internal bus and certain diagnostics are not possible over FW.

Also check your jumper settings.SATA drives in a Mac should never have any.

[dix]

Thanks.

Yes, I'm familiar with Option on Start procedure. I had to do it a million times the other day when I was trying to figure out what was going on with my boot drive. The bad drive that I'm trying recover the data from isn't a boot drive. It just contains archival data from old projects. However, I don't want to lose a TB of data (my boot drive was a different issue. it went bad when the recovery effort failed, but I'm good now using the Super-Duper clone of my boot drive that I made a few weeks ago).

If I put the bad archival drive in an internal bay my MP will not boot at all no matter what I do, so support at Data Rescue suggests mounting it in a different enclosure, than the cheap dock I was using, and trying the rescue operation again. I had some success rescuing individual files in batches as James suggested, but I again got a "lost power" warning from DR and the operation quit. DR support says continuing to try recovering that way may cause permanent data loss so I'm going to mount in another enclosure again and try their recommended method of recovering it all at once, which is safer apparently than recovering the files in batches.

I'll post the results once I can try again.

Thanks again!