I can't get my computer back to Mac status?
 

Hi,

My sister was using my computer and wanted to use Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 in VMWare so booted a CD of Windows on my machine. There was a part that said you could put XP on the partition available so when she hit Enter it said that it couldn't be done but that she could go back and delete that partition and then reinstall it there. So she did that and then installed Windows on there.

Now everytime I turn my Mac on I get Windows XP. How do I get back to my Mac system?

I tried turning the Mac on and then holding down the option key as it started up but the only thing I get is an icon with the hard drive and the word Windows below it and an up arrow which I push and then it takes me right back to WindowsXP.

Right now I'm thinking my only option is to reboot from my original OSX install disk and don't think Keep User Preserved Setting will work because it's all been erased by Windows right? I know if you unplug and plug your Mac back in you get a file in the trash that says Recovered files and I haven't unplugged it at all.

Is this fixable to get it back to the way it was or have I lost everything? If so if I brought it in to a Mac technician could they bring my files back?

S.

looking like erase and install!!?!?! I Hope someone out there has a better idea than I.

sounds like you installed WinXP in 'BootCamp'

so you Mac now has two partitions.... one for Mac ... one for Windows..

DONT ERASE OR RE-INSTALL YET....

plenty of people have had similar problems.... (other may be able to help better than me)

If it was me, I would boot from your Mac install CD/DVD and choose the HD you want to start up from and restart... see if that works..

your problem might be that the 'beta' version of BootCamp may have run out...

i thought that was happening on the 31st? Anyway, when windows was installed, it wont have let you install over your mac partition, or at least i hope it didnt, check the hd space of windows to make sure.... well it is windows, what'd you expect

Or, booting from your installation disk, use disk utilities to verify that there are indeed two partitions remaining. Windows cannot install to an HFS+ partition, so unless it decided to completely reformat the drive, the other partition should still be available with your Mac OS on it. Just why it isn't showing up when you use the option key when you boot IS a good question, but you should be able to set the boot option while booted to your installations disk, as mentioned above. Good luck!

Joe VanZandt

Photek,

Nope only one partition.

kel101,

I checked the hard drive space and it says 146GB free space and 149 GB total space so it's all gone.

I tried to reboot with original install disk and then it came to the hard drive icon with caution symbol and said something about I had to choose options to reformat it and then I hit that and it had erase (which said it would erase and all data would be lost) or cancel and I hit Cancel and ejected disk as I was scared.

Wondering if I can try Prosoft Data Recovery X or I have a bootable version of Disk Utility as well. Don't have an external drive (I am getting one after this fiasco, and looking at the G-Tech G-DRIVE 500GB FW400/800 Hard Drive from Apple. It's sold out but I can wait.

S.

I hope you like your sister a lot!! I suppose that a drive recovery company could probably recover data, but it would be rather expensive. I don't think any commercial product can do anything in this circumstance. Right now, you have a very pretty Windows machine. This isn't how it is supposed to work, needless to say.

Joe VanZandt

The problem, if this is the only drive you have, is that every time you do virtually anything the greater the likelihood that just regular activity will overwrite more and more of the "deleted" files, thereby reducing what is eventually recoverable.

I can't categorically speak for all data recovery products, but DataRescue, for example, will recover files from a damaged disk to another disk. It seems reasonable to believe that any process that tries to save files from a damaged disk to another area of the same disk would be likely to overwrite files in what the header info believes is "free space", and thus defeat the whole purpose.

JDV,

Thanks. Yes, I like my sister. Sure I'm upset but it will all be forgotten in a few months time when I get it all back up and running. No, I'll never have those files but I'll start from scratch. At least I have hard copies of all my resumes and my website has been published so I can at least copy from there.

iampete,

Thanks for the advice. I'm living on my sister's machine right now and some of my stuff is on here machine so I'll have a tiny bit of it. Could I use Data Recovery in Target Disk mode using her Mac?

S.

I don't see why not - target disk mode just treats the other computer as if it were an attached hard drive.

I suggest you try DataRescue <http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php>.

The great thing about it is that you can try it for free to see what data is able to be "rescued". If, after having seen what the s/w says can actually be rescued, you actually want to save the data, then you can pay for the password that will enable the actual recovery function.

Disclaimer: I have no connection whatever with Prosoft. I tried it, then bought it because it saved most (but not all) of my stuff from a crashed drive.

iampete,

Thanks. I downloaded the demo but don't know what I'm doing. I had the demo on my sister's computer and then kept hers one while I restarted my Mac holding down the T then I saw my untitled drive show up but it's all windows stuff. Tried to drop the demo in but have no idea where it went. Then I tried keeping my Mac on and restarting hers with the T held down but her drive never showed up on my Windows XP screen.

One idea I heard is to buy an external drive (looking at the G-Tech G-DRIVE Q 500GB Quad Interface Hard Drive through Apple) and then put OSX on it and then install Data Recovery on there but if it isn't working in Target Disk mode i I don't think it would work.

S.

Just for the heck of it, I tried to use DataRescue from one of my computers on another one in target disk mode and it seemed to work fine.

I'm confused about your situation. Is your sister's computer running OSX or Windows? The url I provided is for an OSX application.

If your sister's machine is running OSX, you need to install DataRescue on her machine. You should not install it onto the disk you want to recover data from. Once you have booted up your (bad) machine in target disk mode and connected it to hers, then start the application on her computer and navigate to your computer as the disk that you want analyzed.

It will then crunch through the data it finds on the disk of your machine, and provide a report of what files it can save. If you then decide it's worth the money, you pay the prosoft folks and they'll email you an activation code. (Make sure the email address you give them is accessible from your sister's machine.) When you do that, you can then start the recovery process, and DataRescue will copy the information it recovers from your computer to the hard drive of your sister's computer. Obviously, your sister's machine should have enough free disk space to accommodate all of the saved data from your machine.

If your sister's machine is a Windows machine, then everything above is essentially useless and you're either going to have to try with a Windows-type disk recovery program (and I have no idea how they might fare with a Mac disk) or you're going to have to wait until you get a new drive for your Mac from which you can boot and then try the recovery.

iampete,

Thanks.

No she is on a Mac but I tried to drop the application into the firewire disk mode of my computer hence why I was confused. So I wonder how much space I need. She has some but not that much. I've got your instructions open so will try it out.

S.

Ouch!!! If you actually did that, there's a good chance you overwrote some of the files you wanted to recover.

Well, the size of the damaged drive will give an upper bound, in the worst case.

By the way, the size of the report that will be created on your sister's drive is on the order of several 10s of Mbytes (not Gbytes), so that should be no problem. Even if you don't have enough free space on your sister's drive to do any "rescuing" now, you can at least get an idea of what you would be able to save when you get the new drive.

Again, when you get the new drive, install OSX on it, boot from the new drive, then install data rescue on the new drive, start up data rescue and indicate the failed drive as the disk from which you want to rescue data, and the report and any data you save will be saved onto your new drive. After you've completed the save process, you can then erase and/or partition or whatever and then start using your old drive again as you wish.

Remember, until you've finished extracting everything off your old drive, it's probably best that you don't try to boot from it, but, most important, don't write or copy files to it at all.

iampete,

Thanks for all your help. I've got the demo running now. The quick scan revealed nothing but now I'm on thorough scan and it says I've got 11.4 hours to go to scan it all. Curious to see if I'll get anything at all.

Appreciate the advice on an external drive as I have no idea how that all works but I hear it's pretty simple.

S.

When I did my own recovery, the quick scan indicated only a few hundred files that were salvageable, and the thorough scan indicated many tens of thousands. I eventually was able to recover virtually all that the thorough scan showed. I have no idea what your results will turn out to be given the fact that it was apparently a Windows-type install that occurred.

BTW, don't place a lot of reliance on the "time to go" indicated - in my case, it sat with no change at all for quite a time, then jumped to 80 hours, bounced back and forth for quite a while until it settled down towards the end. It ended up taking about 8 hours for a 250Gb drive.

Good luck!

I hope it all works out for you let us know how it goes, and next time you install windows on the right partition...
And really you should have backed up before something like this, Not everything but at least the impotent docs etc

iampete,

Thanks, for the advice. What hard drive should I get? I was leaning the way of the G Tech 500 GB with ethernet, USB/400/800 and the one review on apple was good. They have the same model without the ethernet for $30.00 cheaper with 6 reviews and 2 that were horrible. Prior to that I thought of going the route of the Lacie 500 GB d2 Quadra drive but I've heard mixed reviews of that one too. I'm in Canada so could get G Tech through Apple or LaCie through my local University apple reseller store. I want something that is quiet and will last.

kel101,

I know about backing up now. The partially good news is my sister's computer has some of my photos, older resume stuff, and a partial website file so that's something.

Should I be looking at a windows recovery program to use instead? Since Windows is on there?

S.

There have been lots of threads here about hard drive purchases, with lots of differing opinions and rationale, but not a lot of objective criteria. However, I urge you to check them out.

Some points to consider (my opinion, not necessarily objectively verifiable):

1. Most drive mechanisms are probably not that different in reliability, as a general rule. Even the most reputable brands have had their instances where a particular model or manufacturing lot(s) have had their share of clunkers, and you're pretty much at the mercy of their warranty policies in that case. Anecdotal evidence makes me want to avoid Maxtor (even though they've been acquired by Seagate), but I can't point to objective info to back that up. The G Tech has a Hitachi mechanism, about which I've not heard any negatives. LaCie doesn't identify the brand of their mechanism; this leaves me a little unsettled, but, again, purely subjective.

2. I was unable to find the manufacturer of the chipset for either drive, so I can't even guess which might play better with a Mac. I would hope that Apple selling the drives through their store means that they think there would be no problem, but, I can't vouch for the thoroughness of their V&V processes when selling third party merchandise.

3. Effective cooling is important. The LaCie has a fan, although that can be seen as a pro (apparently thermostatically controlled cooling) and a con (a fan motor, thermostat, and controller is just one more electromechanical element with a potential to give you problems (although to be fair, it is a very simple device)). Also, while good fans can be very quiet, they are not silent - that might be important to you. There is no reason why a well-designed, heat dissipating enclosure can't provide adequate thermal control, and the G Tech claims it does so.

4. The actual performance specs of both drives are roughly equivalent, so that seems like a wash.

If I were faced with a choice between those two, I'd probably go with the G Tech, but mainly because of a single bad experience with a LaCie branded device many years ago (yeah, I know, real rational decision-making:)).

However, I'm curious, why are you limiting yourself to those two choices? For example, there's the Iomega 500 GB UltraMax Desktop hard drive (not the model at the Apple store) but Iomega part number 33991 that sells for $200, rather than the 220-260 for the other two (add in the GST and PST and whatever, we're talking real money here). That has FW400, FW800, USB2, and eSATA connectors. <http://cnet.nytimes.com/hard-drives/iomega-ultramax-desktop-hard/4507-3186_7-32731734.html?tag=specs>
Granted, Iomega's greatest claim to fame is the abysmal quality of customer service, but the drive might be worth checking out, as are those offered by others.

Also, I'm curious how your disk recovery attempts turned out.

I think the chipset isn't a function of the drive, iampete, but of the enclosure which houses the drive. In that case, some enclosure chipsets have been problems. But that is independent of the drive it holds. Both LaCie and G-Tech are KNOWN to have Mac-compatible enclosures, though. LaCie has traditionally been very good with Macs, but of late their enclosures seem to have problems. This is, of course, anecdotal.

I have some experience with G-Tech and can attest that their passive heat dissipation is quite good.

If it is of any use, here is a link to a pretty well respected site that can give you SOME comparisons among drives: http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage.html

You did a very good job of covering the information for Spiral Girl. I wish I was optimistic about the data recovery, and, like you, will be anxious to hear the results, but this was a pretty ugly situation, since presumably Data Rescue won't have the OSX file system database available to use in the scavenge process. I hope it is able to get around that somehow!

Joe VanZandt

iampete,

Thanks for the great review of both drives. A local store near me is selling the iomega but I don't remember which model. Just had no idea if that was a good brand or not. If not that one then probably will go the G Tech route or deal with OWC which I've heard sells great drives.

Still doing recovery. Tried the demo last night but it took too long and didn't want to leave both computers running that long so started again earlier today. It's still sitting at 1.8 hours and has been for the last hour or more. The initial part was only 3.5 hours, it's stuck now on the postprocessing CBR data and 84112=mp3 below it and I don't know what that means but I'm waiting for the 1.8 hours left to move at some point.

JDV,

Thanks for the info about G-Tech and I'll definitely check out that link. All I've had to go on as far as G-Tech is Macworld always says it's the top drive every month.

I'm not expecting this Data Rescue II to find anything but I would hate to someday find out there was a solution I just didn't know about at the time other than big money which my data isn't worth to me.

S.

With data recovery, it shouldn't matter, because the utility should ignore the OS completely and read the drive on it's own.

Be careful, model is important. Iomega on the Apple site is Iomega part no. 33904 but it only has FW400 and USB2, while the model I mentioned in the last post has FW400, FW800, USB2, and eSATA. It's a new model that just came out a couple of months ago.

I've used Iomega in the distant past (for Zip and Jaz drives) and found that they were just fine quality-wise. I have no first-hand knowledge of the quality of their current h/w line.

Obviously (based on JDV's comments), I wasn't very clear in my previous post. In general, most sellers of hard drive assemblies don't manufacture their own drive mechanisms. They install a drive mechanism into a box, add some interface circuitry (which contains the "chipset" JDV pointed out) and the connectors, add the power supply, often add a fan, flashing lights, etc. and then they stick their nameplate onto the box. Chances are, the drive mechanism you'd get with the Iomega is entirely equivalent to the mechanism you'd get with LaCie or other vendors.

I would expect that the fact that it's processing means it's finding stuff. If it weren't finding stuff to process, it should be able to tell you that relatively quickly. (NB: "finding stuff" does not necessarily mean it can be recovered, though)

You may want to have others chime in here, but in my opinion, it shouldn't harm either computer to let the churning go on overnight, if necessary.

iampete,

Thanks, I did check out your link for the iomega and it's not the same one at the local store.

I'm about to give up on this Data Rescue II. It's still stuck at the same 1.8 hours and I don't know how much longer I'll let it go. Maybe I'll let it go over night or for another few hours anyway. Then tomorrow perhaps I'll do the clean install.

When I tried to do a clean install the other day it said I had to go to options menu and then I could click erase or cancel. So it's okay to click erase so that it can reformat the drive? That seems to be the only option it gives me. I ejected it last time I did it.

S.

Yep! BUT, be aware that when you do that, for all practical purposes you have given up in ever resurrecting any data on that drive. (Not completely, of course unless you write zeros or load up the drive with new data, but you will drastically reduce the likelihood of ever getting anything back.)

One other thing - I don't know what the default settings of Disk Utility are, but make sure you verify in the "partition" section that the proper formatting option is selected, e.g., APM, GUID, or Windows, prior to formatting.

What do mean about writing zeros or load up the drive with new data? I know my chances are gone but I feel like there is no chance now anyway. I gave up on Data Rescue again after waiting for 4 hours at 1.8 hours. I may try again tomorrow.

S.

iampete is just making the point that if you reload before successfully recovering the data the chances of ever recovering it are greatly reduced. It is possible using disk utility to pretty much utterly destroy information on a disk by having the utility write random 1s and 0s to the entire disk, making sure there aren't any file fragments left. This is a measure to take only if you have sensitive data on the disk and want to be sure that nobody can use any data recovery utilities (except maybe the NSA or someone) could get to it. That's absolutely not necessary in your situation, but if you were to sell your machine, you might -consider- doing it, if you have financial information, etc., stored on the disk.

Joe VanZandt

OK, bear with me. I'm not sure where the disconnect is here, so let me start at the beginning (I'm not trying to be condescending).

On a "normal" disk, you have data written all over it, and you have what is called header and directory information. The directory is essentially a map of what files are on the disk and where they are. When the problem with your disk occurred, what happened was that some of the directory information and possibly some of the actual data on the disk was overwritten, so that the OS couldn't navigate to find the stuff that was on the disk. DataRescue tries to reconstruct the map by various means so that it can find the data without the original map.

Erasing is a actually a misnomer. When you "erase" a disk (sometimes erroneously called reformatting) all that really happens is that new header info is created and a new directory is created, but that directory is configured to show that the rest of the disk is empty, i.e, available for writing. Everything that was on the disk is still really there, but there is no directory information available to point to it, so it's not accessible by normal means.

When you install OSX, for example, OSX gets written into what the new directory thinks is empty space. Same for anything else you write onto the drive. However, it's not really empty, it still contains the stuff that was on it before the "erase", thus, theoretically, still recoverable via data recovery tools. But once you write something over it, it's gone and can't be recovered anymore.

Also, in disk utility, under erase, you can choose to "erase free space" and you have "security options". This will write zeros or other patterns onto the entire disk, thus really erasing all your data.

That's what I was referring to in the previous post. When you "erase" ("reformat") your disk, you will be creating a new directory that is likely to partially overwrite some remnant of the old one that still might exist. This would make it even more difficult to reconstruct the "map" of the old data. Similarly, if you install OSX onto the newly erased drive, you'll likely overwrite more of the old data, and so on.

So, if you want to give up on data recovery, go ahead and erase, etc., etc. If not, your best bet is not to erase until after you've completed the recovery process.

Hope that helps.

iampete,

Thanks, not being condescending at all. I want to learn and don't mind asking the simple questions to get knowledge. I appreciate you explaining this to me. This stuff fascinates me but I'm new to computer technology. I've owned a Mac for years but until a few years ago really got into learning more beyond basic word processing and surfing the net.

Okay good news sort of. I'm running File Salvage which is showing thousands of files right now but I only got 4 GB of space on my sister's computer to save it to. I have no idea how it will save stuff or how it will all look. What gave me hope was I read something in File Salvage manual that said most people overwrite using the NTFS quick mode and that is what happened here so I thought it was worth a try.

Now two things I'm thinking about here. I could stop the scan and wait until my hard drive gets here from Apple (just placed my order on the G-Tech) which may be more than a week (that's fine I've got my sister's computer to use).

The other option is I do have a bootable Disk Warrior as well that I could stick in my computer and boot up from but will it cause more damage if I do so? Thinking of waiting it out stopping the scan and rescanning when I have my external drive. There are things I can delete off my sister's computer but no where near 160 GB worth. I don't want to do anything to lose what File Salvage is finding. I'll try Data Rescue II again later but happy files are being found right now.

I've heard something about file hierarchy and have no idea how this will configure files. (Does it just mean files won't be in the right spot and you have to configure them yourself?)

It is okay to stop the scan and rescan later on right? Nothing happens to the files?

S.

A couple of things to note: Running data recovery software such as DataRescue should not do any harm whatsoever. It doesn't write to the disk you're trying to recover data from. I would expect this applies to all recovery s/w, but I can't confirm that. Disk repair s/w, on the other hand, does write to the disk - it attempts to recreate the header/directory info so that the normal OSX read and write processes will work again. Attempts to fix the disk thus run the risk that the repair process will either overwrite info that might otherwise have helped in data recovery or it might result in the recreation of an otherwise valid but incomplete directory that doesn't include all of the data that might have been recoverable with recovery s/w. Most of the time, this is not a big issue because necessary repairs are relatively minor in scope and highly unlikely to screw things up. In your situation, though, my recommendation, is don't try to fix it until you've exhausted the recovery effort. I'll go even further and say that it's probably not even worth trying to repair - I'd just do data recovery and then go on to "erase/reformat" after recovery.

Since I know nothing about File Salvage, I am basing my comments on how DataRescue works - I expect that other data recovery s/w is very similar, but I don't know that for a fact. When the recovery s/w finishes running its scan(s), it creates a database on your sister's drive about what it found on your drive - that's all, it doesn't actually save any of the data from your drive. Therefore, it's OK to let the scan run to completion even if there's insufficient space to do any data saving. (NB - When you quit, at this point, it will ask if you want to save the database (not sure of the wording): make sure you click to save the database, even though you don't want it to continue with saving the data from your disk.) When you have a disk available with enough space to actually extract the data from your disk, you can then start DataRescue on the next step, i.e., to actually copy the data from your bad drive onto the drive with the free space. You can choose to have it start all over again or to use the originally saved database, which will avoid the many, many hours of analysis it went through the first time.

The file hierarchy issue is unknowable at this point - it depends on how much of the original directory info the recovery s/w is able to find. Originally, you had folders containing folders and files, etc., etc., nested many levels deep. In the worst case, the recovery process can't recreate any of that, so what you will end up with is all of your recoverable files all together in a single recovered files folder. The task of re-organizing them into your desired folder structure is going to be a purely manual process you will then have to perform.

iampete,

Thanks for the help. I poured over the File Salvage manual and there is an option to save it and import it in later which is great.

Will give Data Rescue II a try later on. There are tonnes of meta tag files as I've tried to search through and find something I recognized and saw pictures of apps in different languages but finally found a photo from iphoto I recognized which made me happy.

I won't use my Disk Warrior to reboot my Mac. I may at some point put it in my sister's computer just to see if it can recover anything via Firewire. I won't really know how things save ultimately until my hard drive arrives as you can save File Salvage things but when you actually put them on a drive it allows you an option where the app will attempt to name all your files based on the header and footer information it has.

Your help has been invaluable. :D I appreciate you taking the time to help me out and to better understand what is going on.

S.

DON'T USE DISKWARRIOR AT ALL ON THE HARD DISK THAT IS MESSED UP.

Ok, now that I got that out...

It doesn't matter where DW is ran from, it could be your sister's Mac writing to your other Mac via firewire, or your Mac booted from the CD, or whatever.

DW will attempt to move things around on your disk, which is a bad thing, as it could move files over things you are trying to recover, so DO NOT RUN DISKWARRIOR until you have successfully recovered your files!

ThreeDee,

Thanks, I won't touch it at all. :) Glad I hadn't done that yet. Well it will be awhile until I can get all my files anyway. I had File Salvage running for 8 hours today and will continue the rest of the scan tomorrow. I'll just stick with File Salvage and Data Rescue II then and see what I can get.

S.