🚀 go-pugleaf

Daniel Cohen wrote:
> Philip Herlihy <thiswillbounceback@you.com> wrote:
> 
>> Apologies for the cross-posting - this is an urgent problem (to me!) and
>> I don't know which group to ask.
>>
>> A friend with a Mac (sorry I don't know more yet) has had a hard disk
>> failure and has lost important data.  No more details available yet, but
>> the chap isn't very technical.
>>
>> I know very little about Macs, but have successfully recovered data from
>> PC hard disks several times where the problem is with damaged 
>> information, rather than damaged electronics or physical components. 
>> I'd glibly offered to help - entirely forgetting that his machine is a Mac.
> 
>> Q2: can anyone recommend a suitable specialist in the London area who
>> _does_ know what they are doing?
> 
> It depends quite a bit on what has failed (and also on what machine and
> OS are involved). It could be quite easy to solve, particularly as he
> has a second Mac. It could be difficult, needed the kind of
> professionals who specialise in recovering data from damaged disks.
> 
> Suggestion 1. Hook up the faulty Mac in target disk mode, and see if the
> data can be recovered.
> 
> Suggestion 2. Boot from a DVD containing Disk Warrior and see if Disk
> Warrior can repair the disk.
> 
> Suggestion 3. I am not sure if this would require target disk mode, or
> booting from a suitable DVD. But there is a program called Data Rescue
> (and there are other such programs) which can reclaim damaged files,
> saving them to another disk.
> 
> Suggestion 4. This is for later. USE A BACKUP STRATEGY TO AVOID LOST
> DATA. It's so easy nowadays.
> 
> I'm in London myself. If he's near enough I could at least have a look.

Thanks, Daniel.  We're in Walthamstow.

Looks like we'll tackle this on Tuesday.  I'll hook up the drive via a 
USB adapter to his other Mac and see if it can detect that there is a 
drive there.  If it doesn't, I'll try it on my Windows machine, and if 
that can't detect it I'll assume there's a physical problem needing 
specialist help.

If it is detected, the we may be able to copy the files he needs.  If 
not, then I guess I'll be needing a utility to detect and repair a 
partition.  DiskWarrior does get good notices, but we'll have to buy it 
before we can know if it will help us - a trial would have been useful. 
   I see Data Rescue II has one. Maybe I could mount the disk on a PC 
and use TestDisk with  HFSExplorer...

Phil