Data Rescue II Saved My Data
As I previously reported, OSX update 10.5.7 rendered my Macbook's HD useless. To make matters worse, I had a number of important files which I had created in recent weeks that had not been backed up. What follows is my ordeal in rescuing my data.
Sunday afternoon was when I discovered that my Macbook was unresponsive. I was getting blue-screen infinite loading loops on startup. I called Apple Support, and after a number of steps through the basic methods of identifying problems, the rep decided to schedule me with an appointment at my local Apple store. I then had to rely on my Windows Vista desktop, which is mostly a gaming machine, to work for the next two days. It was manageable, but not quite as comfortable as the software I had gotten used to on my Macbook.
When I visited the Genius Bar on Tuesday, it took about 5 minutes for the rep to load a Firewire Drive on my Macbook and determine that my HD volume was unavailable and could not be mounted; the same result I got while on the phone with support. I asked a question I already knew the answer to; does Apple cover data recovery? Even considering that this crash was Apple's fault, the answer was no. When I insisted that data recovery was priority one, the rep gave me a couple business cards for data recovery shops and sent me on my way.
I called the one dedicated to Macs in South Jersey and got an estimate for $500 to over $1000 depending on whether the problem was software or hardware based. As much as I needed to recover my files, $500 seemed a bit steep, especially with the economy and whatnot. I walked back into the store resolving to give up on recovering the data and asked the rep if all there was to do at this point was to erase, partition & reinstall OSX on the HD. She said yes, so I decided to take it on myself.
When I got home, however, I couldn't bring myself to just erase the whole drive. I figured, I still had not tried everything possible. I started up the disk utility again and saw something different from what I had seen before; my faulty HD volume was actually showing up. After running "verify" and "repair," the volume could not be fixed, but I was motivated to find new solutions since I knew that if the volume could be found, then it could probably be repaired by 3rd party software.
I should mention at this point that a friend visited and brought his Macbook + firewire cable so we could try firewire target mode. This failed miserably. Since the drive could not be mounted, there was no way to detect it with another computer.
Back on my own, I resolved to dust off an old external HD and try installing OSX on it. This went fine, so I was then able to boot using this HD and install a demo of Data Rescue II. I would have done a demo of DiskWarrior, but there is no such thing. Not knowing whether either of these programs would actually recover my data, I figured the one with a demo option would be a better place to start testing.
After finally installing & running the Data Rescue II demo, I was able to run it on my internal HD and it managed to find all my files without any problems at all. Once I saw all my files waiting to be saved, I was immediately sold. I bought a license for Data Rescue II without hesitation and proceed to recover all my files immediately.
Looking back on the whole recovery process, I've come to think that maybe my hard drive was always on the brink of death, considering that I've had quite a few freezes over the past couple of months. While the Apple update was a complete mess on Apple's part, it was also the final straw as far as my HD was concerned. In the future, I'm going to take Time Machine more seriously so I don't set myself up for this kind of disaster again. Now, to get back to work!
For these instances i keep a live cd of Knoppix available. A linux version that boots from cd and has saved me before by letting me get to the hdd and safely copy off all my photographs, when windows had decided to shut me out. I'm not sure whether this would work on a Mac, but it is definitely something you might try.
I think you should try Stellar Phoenix Mac data recovery demo version which will show you the recovered files.This software is quite effecient and user friendly.Compatible with HFS, HFS+, HFSX, HFS Wrapper and FAT file system volumes.Give a try