Hard Drive Recovery

[Brainonska511]

A friend of mine's Macbook hard drive died recently, so he replaced it. Got a case for the old drive to see if he could pull any data off of it, but when you try to connect the device to the Macbook, it says that it cannot be mounted. When you run the disk utility to repair or verify the disk, it says it cannot be done, something about an "Invalid B-Tree Node".

I tried to connect the now external drive to my laptop (running XP), but then realized that the drive is not a in a FS that XP can read.

Is there any way that he might be able to pull any data off of that drive? Say, with a Linux LiveCD or something like that?

 

[TheStu]

DiskWarrior could probably do it.

 

[Tegeril]

DiskWarrior definitely - it will rebuild the incorrect structure and return the disk to its functional state unless... If the Invalid B-Tree Node(s) are a result of an actual failure of hardware, DataRescue.

 

[chcarnage]

I had the same error on an external HDD and Disk Warrior repaired it.

 

[Brainonska511]

Any other ways that would involve little to no money?

 

[umrigar]

tell him $74 for Diskwarrior is thousands less than paying someone like Drivesavers to recover data.

 

[Brainonska511]

Originally posted by: umrigar
tell him $74 for Diskwarrior is thousands less than paying someone like Drivesavers to recover data.

He has most of the data, it was only about a week to a month worth of stuff that was lost... I've also seen some people's post when I was looking around initially that had the same type of error and Diskwarrior was not able to fix it. Do they offer a trial - see what you'd be able to pull off and then if it will work, buy the license and continue to recovery process?

 

[umrigar]

no trial that i know of. maybe he could use a torrent, then buy it if it saves his bacon?
or look on ebay. it's true Diskwarrior doesn't always work - Drive Genius is a 2nd option (also not free).

sorry i don't know of any free rescue apps like DW. and didn't mean to sound smart-ass, that happens sometimes.

 

[Brainonska511]

Originally posted by: umrigar
no trial that i know of. maybe he could use a torrent, then buy it if it saves his bacon?
or look on ebay. it's true Diskwarrior doesn't always work - Drive Genius is a 2nd option (also not free).

sorry i don't know of any free rescue apps like DW. and didn't mean to sound smart-ass, that happens sometimes.

Well, I'll let him know his options. He'll probably skip out on doing it as he's already re-made most of whatever was lost (just a few figures from a paper he was writing and some processed data, but he has all the raw data).

 

[umrigar]

http://www.macosxhints.com/art...tory=20070204134513557

 

[KeithP]

I have DiskWarrior and SpinRite. If you want to pay for shipping it each way I would be happy to take a shot at repairing it.

-KeithP

 

[VinylxScratches]

try ddrescue.

 

[Brainonska511]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I think at this point, since I've been taking my time looking, he ended up reconstructing the data he had lost, mostly pictures and figures for a paper that was being prepared for publishing.