[velodev]

DriveSavers? or Ontrack?

Mac Journaled drive, I was able to use Data Rescue (a Mac app) to thoroughly scan the drive and it came up with all the file name. However, when I try to pull the data off... it's corrupted. 100gb of data lost? I can't fathom not having this data.

What are the chances they have the ability to pull uncorrupted data off?

Are there better companies that have their own clean room?

thanks.

[tooki]

I have used DriveSavers before for a client. They did a great job. For a drive that is still functioning, as yours seems to be (otherwise Data Rescue couldn't do anything), they won't need a clean room.

Nonetheless, I will warn you that data recovery services are extremely expensive. The fairly simple recovery we arranged for the client was $1700 to recover 4GB of data from a dropped drive.

tooki

[velodev]

would you know if the service charges are based on the size of the rescue. because my drive is 200gb in size, and about 100gb needs to be rescued.

i'm cringing right now... please be gentle.

[Spliff]

Have you tried freezing the hard drive first before trying to access your data?

Could you give us more details about how your hard drive is failing? Is it internal or external?

[velodev]

IMO, I think it has a lot to do with a kernel panic that corrupted the index of the drive. I've heard of freezing many times before but I don't see the relationship on how that would solve it.

Thanks for the advice.

[Spliff]

Originally Posted by velodev

IMO, I think it has a lot to do with a kernel panic that corrupted the index of the drive. I've heard of freezing many times before but I don't see the relationship on how that would solve it.

Thanks for the advice.

I know I'm asking the obvious, but have you tried DiskWarrior?

[velodev]

yes, DiskWarrior said that the drive contains errors and couldn't "rebuild".

I just read something on another site, is it possible these recovery places charge per Gb? One person wrote that it's $1000 per Gb. I think I'm about to have a heart attack...

[Spliff]

Originally Posted by velodev

I just read something on another site, is it possible these recovery places charge per Gb? One person wrote that it's $1000 per Gb. I think I'm about to have a heart attack...

$1000/GB? No way. No one would pay those prices.

[Spliff]

I doubt they would charge more than $5000 at the most.

DriveSavers says hard disk recovery costs anywhere from $900 to $3500, depending on the work involved.

http://www.pcworld.com/resource/arti...59,pg,4,00.asp


OnTrack appears to be less expensive cheaper.

[Shaddim]

Originally Posted by velodev

DriveSavers? or Ontrack?

Mac Journaled drive, I was able to use Data Rescue (a Mac app) to thoroughly scan the drive and it came up with all the file name. However, when I try to pull the data off... it's corrupted. 100gb of data lost? I can't fathom not having this data.

What are the chances they have the ability to pull uncorrupted data off?

Are there better companies that have their own clean room?

thanks.

tried Diskwarrior?

[Spliff]

Cost of hard drive recovery

You'll probably find this helpful.

[Mastrap]

Not to kick a man while he's down but 100GB of critical data and no backup? Man!
Data loss is a 'when', not an 'if'.

I do hope it all works out. Freezing the drive only works when the actual drive is damaged and only if the platters are metal rather than glass.

[velodev]

Originally Posted by Mastrap

Not to kick a man while he's down but 100GB of critical data and no backup? Man!
Data loss is a 'when', not an 'if'.

I do hope it all works out. Freezing the drive only works when the actual drive is damaged and only if the platters are metal rather than glass.

Actually, I never did explain myself and it is a complicated story. And mostly a case of Murphy's Law.

I use the Miglia Mediabank for RAID 1 storage. About one week or so ago, the drive shows me the secondary drive failed. So I turn it off and eject the drive. Primary is still intact, by the way. Call Seagate and they ship out a replacement. Replacement arrives.

Primary is still in the upper bay and I put the secondary in for replication. The first attempt sits there at 0%. And then I notice that the primary drive has this funky thing going on with the trash. A folder named "8" with a subfolder named "7" are in it. I tried to empty trash and it never went away saying it was in use.

The second attempt went so far as 10% and then replication failed from the primary. Major, major stomach drop... so I turned it off and started again. Finally went to 100%. I checked the drive going back to Seagate and it was still functional... so I formatted.

Yesterday morning, Primary failed out of the blue. So I figured I have a brand new secondary drive, and an RMA that might never had problems. The problems might stem from a messed up B-Index. I will use my other firewire enclosure and put the secondary in there (the one not failing, and with data). I will format the primary drive and then hand copy over data from the secondary. Replicate it on the drive going back for safe measure, and then format the second and replicate again from the primary. Basically a big game of leapfrog.

So everything is all set up, and I am about to copy over data. I have two main directories (SORTED and UNSORTED). I figure I'll copy over UNSORTED because if I lose data it won't be that important. It copies 10Gb over and completes. As soon as I click on the Finder window to bring it back to main focus, the computer kernel panics. Upon reboot, the single enclosure with everything is corrupted and can't be repaired in Disk Utility.

I located Disk Rescue and I already owned DriveWarrior. DriveWarrior could never fix it. Disk Rescue found all 300,000 files and then provide an accurate list. When I was allowed to pull one off in trial mode, the file I chose is corrupted.

I have stopped working it, and realized I'd rather have a professional tinker with it from this point.

Sorry for the long post, but I'd think this serves two purposes... if anyone has an idea (minus freezing) please! and rightfully showing I was trying to maintain a backup strategy (although not the best).

[rambo47]

Maybe this is a bit simplistic, but how about this: Boot from the CD-ROM, either a Mac OSX disk or DiskWarrior, then attach an external USB or FireWire hard drive. Drag your files from the damaged drive to the external drive.

[JoshuaZ]

Backups help. I only lost a few days worth of files when my Powerbook hard drive went south, as opposed to everything.

[tooki]

Originally Posted by velodev

would you know if the service charges are based on the size of the rescue. because my drive is 200gb in size, and about 100gb needs to be rescued.

i'm cringing right now... please be gentle.

The fundamental charge is hourly, plus a certain per-MB cost for the storage media, IIRC.

As for the claims of $3200 tops... nonsense. Recovery from a drive damaged in, say, water damage, could easily exceed that. Manually reconstructing a RAID? Let's look at 5 digits.

As I said, they charged $1700 to do one of the simplest kinds of recoveries possible: swap out a broken part on a drive and copy everything off. If they have to manually fix the data itself, it could be a lot more.

Data recovery services are for when you are, well, screwed if you can't get it back. Sometimes it's cheaper to re-do the work than to have it recovered.

tooki

[velodev]

Got some more information this afternoon from the report I ran:

Drive's Partiton Map can not be read

Here's to hoping this isn't a difficult task...

[velodev]

Welp, I had a weird feeling this would happen...

I read a post on a forum and almost missed the saving grace. Holding down Option within DiskWarrior allows it to run in scavenge mode. I ran it in repair mode (duh?) and it never worked.

After a test or two, I hooked up the bad drive. And thank you, thank you, thank you DiskWarrior... my nightmare of thousands of dollars was reduced to a measly $79.

So... it's safe to say, I'll be sure this never happens again. Picking up two more Seagate drives on Monday for RAID replication.

Thanks to everyone for the support and advice.

[mdc]

damn, glad everything worked out for you.

my powerbook drive died a few weeks ago, thankfully i had bought a firewire drive a few weeks before that for backupds. i can't imagine how you were feeling.

[AKcrab]

DiskWarrior is simply awesome. Glad things worked out. DW saved my ass once.

[Spliff]

Originally Posted by velodev

Welp, I had a weird feeling this would happen...

I read a post on a forum and almost missed the saving grace. Holding down Option within DiskWarrior allows it to run in scavenge mode. I ran it in repair mode (duh?) and it never worked.

Holy crap! I never knew that DiskWarrior had that option. Thanks for the tip. At which forum did you read that? Obviously a more helpful one than the MacNN forums

[Mastrap]

Excellent news. Glad to hear it all worked out. Just reading what you went through got me panicked about my own back up policies.

[AssassyN]

Wow, just saw this, but awesome to hear. I would've been terrified at spending that kind of cash.

GG DiskWarrior.

[badidea]

Originally Posted by velodev

Welp, I had a weird feeling this would happen...

I read a post on a forum and almost missed the saving grace. Holding down Option within DiskWarrior allows it to run in scavenge mode. I ran it in repair mode (duh?) and it never worked.

After a test or two, I hooked up the bad drive. And thank you, thank you, thank you DiskWarrior... my nightmare of thousands of dollars was reduced to a measly $79.

So... it's safe to say, I'll be sure this never happens again. Picking up two more Seagate drives on Monday for RAID replication.

Thanks to everyone for the support and advice.

What are you talking about??

I had exactly the same problem like you a few days ago (catalog B-Tree error and then total drive failure) and I am still trying to recover my files with DataRescue X but it looks like I also only will get about 50-60% back...
...I can't wait to get home and try this Option-DiskWarrior trick!!

[velodev]

Originally Posted by Spliff

Holy crap! I never knew that DiskWarrior had that option. Thanks for the tip. At which forum did you read that? Obviously a more helpful one than the MacNN forums

macoshints:

http://forums.macosxhints.com/archiv...p/t-18359.html

which led me to research how the heck to get into scavenge mode.

[velodev]

Originally Posted by badidea

What are you talking about??

I had exactly the same problem like you a few days ago (catalog B-Tree error and then total drive failure) and I am still trying to recover my files with DataRescue X but it looks like I also only will get about 50-60% back...
...I can't wait to get home and try this Option-DiskWarrior trick!!

I'm sending some good mojo to you... good luck.

Trust me, when I finally solved this issue... I think the entire neighborhood heard the loudest "HOLY MF'ing SH*T" they've ever heard. Yes, I can vulgar sometimes when I pWn my computer.

[badidea]

Originally Posted by velodev

I'm sending some good mojo to you... good luck.

Thanks but it didn't help - still the same message that the directory is too severely damaged...

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by MacNStein

tried Diskwarrior?

Tried reading the whole thread ?

*SCNR*

-t