Best App to Recover Files?

[DocDVD]

I have a Firewire 800 Drive that has a major issues with the Volume Structures, and neither Disk Utility nor TTP will rebuild the structures. I can see all my files, but I can not copy them off my drive to another drive as it fails. What's the best software that will at least allow me to recover and copy off most of my files?

[trevor]

I don't know of any definitive way to make a judgement call of 'best', but the one I personally use is DiskWarrior.

Trevor

[DocDVD]

Disk Warrior can't be purchased and downloaded, can it? It looks like it can be purchased and shipped or picked up at a store only.

[styrafome]

That might be because DiskWarrior comes on a boot CD. It requires that the target disk be unmounted during the process, so you can't download it and run it on the same disk it's running on. You need the actual CD to boot from, and that CD has a specially licensed compact version of OS X you aren't allowed to create on your own.

Would be nice if they did let you download it, since for speed's sake I usually run DiskWarrior from a bootable hard disk or from a Mac attached via Target Disk Mode. Don't need a boot CD for that!

[trevor]

Quote: Originally Posted by DocDVD Disk Warrior can't be purchased and downloaded, can it? It looks like it can be purchased and shipped or picked up at a store only.

Yes, it can be purchased on-line: http://alsoft.com/alssales.html

This will get you both the download and the CD shipped to you.

Trevor

[tbsingleton73]

Recovery Force

[yubbie2]

Data Rescue II

Highly recommended

[agentx]

diskwarrior is just so invaluable it has saved my bacon so many times.

I tend not to use the boot CD as it is very slow. I have it installed on a partition with a clean os.

Data rescue also is excellent. I had a recent faliure with loads of bad blocks in directory, so diskwarrior would have taken days to repair. So i used Data rescue and got about 85% of drive back.

As a mac tech supporter these two programs rock ! I have used them so many times and they have worked excellently.

[DocDVD]

I am using Disk Warrior now on this drive as we speak; last night, in about four hours, it found the directory data, created a preview, and then took a proverbial dump when it could not re-unmount the disk. I have run it all day today and it is yet to find the directory data again.

Any ideas?

[agentx]

ok in this situation it generally means that the directory is knackered( or major drive damage). It could be that you have bad blocks on the drive (maybe in the the directory). Diskwarrior could take days to find and rebuild but it may well still fix it. Now generally most people dont have the time to do that. So i would advise using Data Rescue 2. You scan the entire drive ( Save the scan file !) and then you can recover to another drive. Some of the files may be corrupted they will be labelled in red.

It may be worth finding a terminal command that scans disks for bad blocks. I have used drive genius to do this in the past. If bad blocks are showing up then you will need to do a zero format of drive after you have done the recovery. (not sure if free demo will work)

[kainewynd2]

I've had decent luck with bad drives that still mount jumping into commandline and using:
sudo ditto -V /Volumes/externaldisk/Users

And watching where the drive stops responding, writing down the file/folder name where it died and then beginning again, but avoiding that file/folder. In fact, I've had awesome recoveries using that method but it is VERY time consuming.

Also, this was covered in a hint awhile ago, but sometimes this will make a readable disk image:
dd bs=512 if=/dev/rXX# of=/some_dir/foo.dmg conv=noerror,sync

[DocDVD]

OK...Data Rescue is running in Throrough mode overnight and still has 300 hours left.

[tatilsever]

A utility called "photorec" mentioned in

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...60207071933143

worked OK for me. However, I don't know if it would actually be faster than other software.

[DocDVD]

Data Rescue quit 20 hours later and said my scratch drive was full, which it has 2TB empty, so I don't know what happened.

[Koz]

<<<it has 2TB empty>>>

It's telling *you* it has 2 T-Bytes empty, but the system knows there are still shards and fragments of old broken files still littering the platters.

You need to start getting used to the idea of rebuilding all the data on that drive from outside sources.

"She's dead, Jim." (McCoy, usually)

Where you are is where the Systems Operators usually give up and put a new drive in. Once the data structure starts failing right before your eyes, it means the spinning platters are slowly eating themselves.

Koz

[tbsingleton73]

I use RecoveryForce if I really need to get the data back.
It's not cheap, so I guess this option would depend on how much you're willing to pay for it.

[outdoors9]

My drive crashed on a Win PC - NTLDR is missing (MBR corrupted.) Windows computer doesn't even see the drive. Plug it into Mac (eSATA to USB adapter) and TestDisk and PhotoRec see it as a 2TB drive (it's actually 500 GB) with an unknown partition. Trying to recover files with PhotoRec says it will take about 1027 hours. This is not acceptable. I've got Tech Tool Pro - don't know if that has any recovery routines. Probably just used Disk Utility to make this a new Mac drive - unless any one has any suggestions about a faster way to recover the data. Thanks.