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pcd2k · Apr 11, 2005, 07:51 PM

About a week ago my G3 hit the wall. The drives when hooked to another Mac as an external slave appear as unmounted, so I therefore need to find a reasonbly inexpensive method of data recovery. Having done some googling most packages have all mostly come up with a $99US price tag, in ozzie dollar terms thats about $200. Are there any other cheaper alternatives ?

CharlesS · Apr 11, 2005, 08:06 PM

The one that has the reputation of being the best is Data Rescue. It's a bit pricey, but since I don't know of any others that have a good rep, you might just be wasting your time on something that won't work.

The good news about Data Rescue is that they let you download a demo version that lets you recover one file from the drive. By doing so, you can see if it will work for your data before you spend money on it.

Mithras · Apr 11, 2005, 08:48 PM

Data Rescue apps are like wedding dresses -- when you need one, you need one. So they can pretty much charge whatever they want; if you truly need that data, you'll pay it. Sucks.

Kristoff · Apr 11, 2005, 08:50 PM

Did you try Disk Warrior?

I've had much luck with it. And it's somewhat non-invasive insofar that it wont make the drive any worse than it already is. Some other "recover" apps can really hose a disk.

CharlesS · Apr 11, 2005, 09:03 PM

Originally posted by Kristoff:
Did you try Disk Warrior?

I've had much luck with it. And it's somewhat non-invasive insofar that it wont make the drive any worse than it already is. Some other "recover" apps can really hose a disk.

Data Rescue is even more non-invasive than DiskWarrior because it doesn't try to fix the disk or change it in any way. All it does is try to get your data off, and it's read-only.

Of course, DiskWarrior is also an excellent tool if what you want is to fix the disk. Data Rescue can sometimes salvage data off of disks that can't be fixed, though.

pcd2k · Apr 11, 2005, 09:32 PM

OK I would prefer merely to repair the disks only because I have about 50 gig of data on both, but will the systems on both or either give problems, also should I put these disks in external cases or does it matter ?

CharlesS · Apr 11, 2005, 09:36 PM

Originally posted by pcd2k:
OK I would prefer merely to repair the disks only because I have about 50 gig of data on both, but will the systems on both or either give problems, also should I put these disks in external cases or does it matter ?

Nah, DiskWarrior will either be able to fix it or it won't. The OS on the disks won't matter at all.

DiskWarrior is an excellent program that you should probably have a copy of anyway. It's usually able to fix most disks. If it isn't, though, try Data Rescue and you might still have a chance.

One thing I would say with DiskWarrior would be to make sure to click the "Preview" button when it presents its report, so you can go through the new directory it created and make sure all your data is intact before committing the changes.

Kristoff · Apr 11, 2005, 09:48 PM

Exactly, the "preview" feature has allowed me to get data off a dying disk.
I was able to copy my user folder to another machine via Firewire Target Disk Mode.

I ran diskwarrior, the preview mounted and I copied my files off, then I had dw rebuild the dying disk. It booted, but didn't last long until the clicking started (IBM DeskStar).

I swear by DW, because I would have been SOL if it wasn't for that.

Incidentally, I have used DW to recover from the flashing folder icon, and recover iPods from the circle slash icon.

pcd2k · Apr 12, 2005, 07:57 AM

I remember Disk Warrior now. The problem I and some friends had with this package, from my memmory it does't have an 'unistall file'. We all experienced similiar problems, once you install it, it never seems to stop analysing your drives in the background it kept our drives in constant digging read spinning. So will it do this when I'm trying to recover disks ?