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jbartlet · Jun 16, 2005, 08:40 AM

My iBook G4 drive (30GB) has sadly failed, and no amount of DiskWarrior/Drive10/Norton/Disk Utility/UNIX utilities seems to be reviving it. I'd like to send it to a drive recovery service, but Drive Savers wants more than it would cost me to buy a brand-new PowerBook, and there are a ton of other companies that appear to have varying degrees of shadiness. Anyone know of a good service that can recover a relatively small (~1-2GB) of files without causing me to take out a second mortgage? Any advice is more than welcome. Thanks.

J

(I posted this in hardware as well)

bubblewrap · Jun 16, 2005, 09:14 AM

Have you tried to start it as a target drive?(Makes the PB a firewire device)

jbartlet · Jun 16, 2005, 09:42 AM

Yeah. The host Mac doesn't see it, nor does Disk Doctor, but both Norton Unerase and DiskWarrior see it. I chose DiskWarrior to start. It correctly identifies the drive size, type, etc., but it's been "Inspecting disk..." for two days. I'm quite sure it isn't hanging as it's mildly responsive, and I can hear the drive in target mode chattering away as though it's being inspected, but I'm not sure if this is completely futile or not. I intend to let it go a few more days as DiskWarrior changed from just plain white to showing a progress bar (no actual progress yet though). But on the probable chance that I need the media removed and put into another drive, I don't think my email archives and vacation photos are worth $2-3K that Drive Savers wants.

Randman · Jun 16, 2005, 09:46 AM

Norton? That will only cause more problems, most likely.

You do have stuff backed up, don't you?

Jens Peter · Jun 16, 2005, 09:48 AM

I have used BinaryBiz.com to recover some important data ( 800 Mb ) from a drive that would not boot.
It took a few hours, costed $99 and worked as it was supposed to. This was on a PC, but there are also a mac-client.

Prehaps that was an idea ?

Mithras · Jun 16, 2005, 09:50 AM

I've heard of people having success with this program, VirtualLab.
http://www.binarybiz.com/vlab/mac.php

EDIT: whoa, beaten to the punch.

GFitzy · Jun 16, 2005, 01:27 PM

is the cost $99 per recovery event/session? per X MB of data ??

-gfitzy

Gene Jockey · Jun 16, 2005, 01:31 PM

I sent a drive off to drivesavers once. It was a full on head crash, damaged platters and all. They quoted me some absurd range of $400-$3000 to recover. It ended up being $400.

effgee · Jun 16, 2005, 01:39 PM

Before sending it off to a recovery service, you might want to give Data Rescue a try - it's slow as a dog (as in: way more than 8-10 hours for larger drives) because it scours the entire drive for file fragments but it might be worth a try.

Use BootCD to create a startup CD (10.3 only!!), add Data Rescue to the CD, burn it and try booting from that disc. Then run Data Rescue and see what it finds.

HTH

Mac Write · Jun 16, 2005, 01:55 PM

DiskWarrior will take a long long time on bad drives (though I popped my Beige G3 HD into my MDD and it was fixed in 3 hours). Let DW run for as long as it needs to (couple be 1-2+ weeks) since your on a slower CPU. but it should work (will tell you if it doesn't). Sounds like you have another Mac - so let it do it's work for as long as needed.

Mithras · Jun 16, 2005, 02:02 PM

Incidentally, VirtualLab lets you see what and how much it recovered BEFORE you have to pay anything.

typoon · Jun 16, 2005, 04:54 PM

Originally Posted by effgee

Before sending it off to a recovery service, you might want to give Data Rescue a try - it's slow as a dog (as in: way more than 8-10 hours for larger drives) because it scours the entire drive for file fragments but it might be worth a try.

Use BootCD to create a startup CD (10.3 only!!), add Data Rescue to the CD, burn it and try booting from that disc. Then run Data Rescue and see what it finds.

HTH

I'ave also had success with a Program called File Salvage. Similar to Data Rescue. It's made by SubRosa or somebody like that. I used both of them and recovered 95+ percent of stuff on somone's drive. It took many hours though. pretty much 8-10 hours for it to recover everything, I did it in target mode and saved to another drive. I would hate to think how long it would take doing it from CD.

GFitzy · Jun 16, 2005, 05:08 PM

Mithras . . .

is the cost for use of VirtualLab per recovery session ?

-gfitzy

Jens Peter · Jun 16, 2005, 05:31 PM

Originally Posted by GFitzy

Mithras . . .

is the cost for use of VirtualLab per recovery session ?

-gfitzy

You pay for how much data you will recover. I paid $99 for 1Gb, but if you need more, you can purchase more space to recover your files.