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.