Disk Warrior vs Data Recovery 3

The subject is basically my question. It seems as though my hard drive has completely crashed and is not even bootable in any manner whatsoever. It is a G4 mini with what I believe was OS X (10.4.8).
Does anyone have any experience that would make you prefer one over the other. After reading reviews on sales sites I find they are both heavily recommended. So, for a HDD that seems to be fried, which is best or is either up to that type of challenge?
Thanks for your advice.

Diskwarrior and DataRescueIII serve different purposes.
DW is good to use when the directory structure is messed up but the drive is mechanically healthy and you want to repair the messed up filesystem in place on the same drive.
DR3 is useful when you need to get important data off a dead or dying hard drive and move what can be salvaged to another healthy drive.

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I have a G5 imac that is using Disk Warrior as the start up disk and can't change back.

I am using a G5 imac (OS 10.4.8 I think the last update is) and I was attempting to use Disk Warrior to recover a lost file. On my other Macs you made Disk Warrior the start up disk to use it, which I did here but I think that was a mistake. Now I can't change back to the regular start up disk.
I tried starting in safe mode but I think I'm getting kernel panic because it goes to a gray screen and tells me to restart.

I don't think Disk Warrior does file recovery. See:
Basics of File Recovery
Files in Trash
If you simply put files in the Trash you can restore them by opening the Trash (left-click on the Trash icon) and drag the files from the Trash to your Desktop or other desired location. OS X also provides a short-cut to undo the last item moved to the Trash -press COMMAND-Z.
If you empty the Trash the files are gone. If a program does an immediate delete rather than moving files to the Trash, then the files are gone. Recovery is possible but you must not allow any additional writes to the hard drive - shut it down. When files are deleted only the directory entries, not the files themselves, is modified. The space occupied by the files has been returned to the system as available for storage, but the files are still on the drive. Writing to the drive will then eventually overwrite the space once occupied by the deleted files in which case the files are lost permanently. Also if you save a file over an existing file of the same name, then the old file is overwritten and cannot be recovered.
General File Recovery
If you stop using the drive it's possible to recover deleted files that have not been overwritten by using recovery software such as Data Rescue II, File Salvage or TechTool Pro. Each of the preceding come on bootable CDs to enable usage without risk of writing more data to the hard drive. Two free alternatives are Disk Drill and TestDisk. Look for them and demos at MacUpdate or CNET Downloads.
The longer the hard drive remains in use and data are written to it, the greater the risk your deleted files will be overwritten.
Also visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Data Recovery.

Data Recovery from TC 4gen drive

HI,
I just had problems with my TC, it shows "drive needs to be repaired" in Air Port Utility. After trying some backup via a connected USB drive (connected to TC) i did not succeeded so I just reinitialized the TC, keeping in mind using diskwarrior or disk drill for data recovery afterwards. The bad thing is, I can't reach the TC anymore with those tools, because it is a net drive?!?
Any ideas how to recover my data (photos, itunes lib etc.)?
Note: My question has nothing to do with Time machine.
Thanks in advance.

thanks for your reply, no other chance but replacing the drive out of the box?
I just read the
http://pondini.org/OSX/Recover.html
and I was afraid of such an answer :-).
Can you shortly explain, why it is not possible to recover a net drive?
I guess the cable connection via ethernet/Thunderboldt wouldn't change your advice?!
Many thanks anyway
And YES, factory reset was done
Message was edited by: luquaas

Data recovery from corrupt boot partition

The boot partition on my MacBook running 10.7.6 has a corrupt volume structure and will not mount, much less boot. The recovery partition boots but really doesn't let me do anything. Disk Utility can't repair nor even complete verification. I have lots of images which I need to recover, so am looking for a utility which might help.
Everything was apparently ok until the failure and the drive hardware checked out ok, so I'm hopeful my files are recoverable. A week or so ago I optimized the volume with TechTool Pro and the directory with DiskWarrior, and last night attempted to sync 1Password on my iPad with 1Password for Mac. This did no t work, probably because of my unfamiliarity with the procedure, but seemed to do no damage. When I ran TTPro last night from its eDrive partition it reported a volume structure problem on the partition which I started to fix with the program but then cancelled the analysis and decided to use disk utility instead. Disk utility also reported a problem but stopped the verification with the instruction to do a repair which it again could not complete. When I rebooted the system partition would again not boot but this time I got grey screen with a message that the debugger had loaded and <panic>. A message box said power down and restart, but that only repeats the process.
I'm thinking of attempting to install a system on an external boot drive and accessing the corrupt partition with a data recovery utility. Any insights, ideas or shared experiences appreciated. Thanks in advance for any desperately needed help.

The safest thing to do here is to install a new disk in the system and do a clean install of OS X. From there, you can put your corrupted volume in an external USB enclosure and mount the file system to try and recover as much data as you can.
It's likely obvious now, but it's REALLY worth investing in a large-capacity external storage or Time Capsure to use with Time Machine. Backups are essential. Hardware always eventually dies. We all need an effective strategy to deal with that.
A long time ago, I was backing my Linux system up to 4mm DAT. When the inevitable HDD crash came, I thought I was ready. Unfortunately, I hadn't tested recovery from tape and I ended up losing everything. Which is to say, until you know you can restore, you don't even have a backup. I lost thousands upon thousands of photos of my kids growing up.
BTW, if it is essential that you recover as much as possible, consider taking the disk to a data recovery service. Be warned: It's expensive.

Disk Warrior didn't work for data recovery. Any suggestions? After recovery, what's the best SSD for 13"MBPro?

My hard drive decided to quit after only 22 months! Some files were backed up but my current photo albums were not. That's all I really need, I don't care about all the other junk. I've tried booting from the Disk Warrior cd, which Apple Genuis Bar suggested since they don't do data recovery. Fortunately, I got the cd from my brother or I would've paid $99 and it didn't help at all.
So it there another way I can do this myself or should I just bring it to Fry's for $149?
Another question would be, after I recover the files, I'd like to upgrade my MacBook Pro 13 to a Solid State drive. I know I need a 2.5" SATA, but which brand/size is good for a $200-$300 budget?
Thanks for your time.

Thank you Sig for the information. Unfortunately, I ended up leaving my computer at Frys for Data Recovery. They have the best guarantee around since they can refund $115 of $149 if they couldn't retrieve any data. This was better than other services of $125/hr whether they could or could not get any data recovered. I didn't want to spend $99 and DataRescue couldn't even run.
I meant Disk Warrior was recommended by Apple Genius Bar to access my hard drive that crashed. They said it could "fix" it or at least power up so I can then retrieve my data. It couldn't find the hard drive. It just looped for 5-10minutes, which stated that if this was the case, the hard drive could not be "fixed" or accessed..replacement is needed.
Now I'm in the market for hard drive or solid state hd.

Data recovery options if drive not accessible through Target Disk Mode

I have the classic data recovery question: my computer seems to have failed, and I'd like to save some data. Thanks in advance for any advice.
Details:
- Most recent backup was about a month ago to Time Machine (unfortunately, this laptop went off on a long trip and didn't have access to the destination disk, and then when it came home was running very slowly and my wife halted the TM backup thinking it was slowing the computer down). Some documents have been backed up more recently via Dropbox and/or Mozy, but not a couple important ones
- When booted in Target Disk Mode, no drive shows up on the computer to which I connect it
- When I boot from an OS X CD, a drive appears in Disk Utility with no volumes on it, and the options to 'repair disk' and 'verify disk' are greyed out.
- When I try to just start the computer up, it gets to the grey screen with the apple and just spins.
Questions:
- Should I attempt anything else myself? I've never learned about Lion's Recovery Mode; can it be used to copy some data off, in the unlikely case that this computer would boot into that Mode? Would any further attempts to boot, etc. potentially reduce the chances of a professional company recovering data?
- I'm planning to take this to an Apple Store today to confirm that this is indeed a hard drive problem and not a failed mother board or something; is there a way for me to do this myself? In the past I've used Hardware Test CDs from Apple and stuff; I don't know if those still work on modern computers.
Thanks again for any help!

I know I used to have a copy of Disk Warrior, but can't find it and it's probably out of date. I downloaded the Data Rescue demo, but it only got partway through scanning the disk and then failed. It told me to 'clone' the disk, but after about three days of trying still wasn't making much progress on it, so I gave up.
However, I was able to recover the few important files I needed simply by removing the drive, putting it in an enclosure, and connecting it via USB. After 10 or 20 minutes, Finder gave me a message that said something like, "this disk cannot be repaired, and is probably damaged. You can still access the disk, but copy everything off ASAP because it will probably fail soon." Some files indeed couldn't be copied, but I could copy the things I needed.
I assume that this is a hardware problem. To confirm, I assume that I can check it without having DiskWarrior simply by trying to reformat it? If it can't be reformatted, I assume there's no chance that it is a functioning drive. Is that right?

Hard drive troubles- data rescue 3, disk warrior

hello everyone. my internal hard drive stopped mounting and disk utility sees it but all the buttons are dimmed. a friend loaned me data rescue 3 and disk warrior. i have an external hard drive onto which i installed the OS and im booting from that.
i heard that using disk warrior, if it doesnt work right away, might make data recovery more difficult. so i thought i would run DR3 first. i first did the quick mode, which, after a while, gave me a warning and asked to try deep scan. so ive been running deep scan for about an hour now, and at this rate, i estimate it will take data rescue about 8 years to complete scanning my hard drive. =) now that ive been observing it, it seems stuck at a particular block.
anyway, are there any recommendations? should i try the disk warrior boot DVD prematurely if data rescue is still stuck when i wake up tomorrow? apparently, my hard drive has no hardware issues (says data rescue)...
any response will be appreciated...there is a previous post of mine about the earlier stages of this problem if you wanna take a look.
thanks in advance,

I personally would use Disk Warrior before attempting to recover any data for that exact reason.

Data recovery from semi-partioned external drive - Disk Utility

In a hurry to erase a DVD-RW over the weekend I stupidly started to erase an external HD!
In DU's disk list I selected my main external USB HD and clicked erase... I noticed when the progress bar said 'Partitioning' and realised that this wasn't an optical disk. I quit DU as quickly as I could (about 2 seconds into the erase) but fear now that my data is not recoverable.
Can anyone explain the erase process when this command is executed?
I have Disk Warrior and Tech Tool to help recover data but I'd like to know a bit more about what I'm doing. Opening a Finder window and the HD is empty. Showing hidden files through Onyx only shows hidden OS files. Does DU start by erasing the directory file? If so is my data likely to be intact and recoverable?
It is a Barracuda 500gb disk, which contains around 210gb of movies, music, photos, letters, website masters, and other important stuff. I was planning to get a 2nd HD to start backing up but thought it was pretty safe for now as it's a new disk and I wouldn't do anything as stupid as to accidentally erase it...
Any help or tips you can give would be greatly appreciated.

Follow-up and further headaches...
I used Data Rescue 2 to thoroughly scan the hard disk and identify the vast majority of files on the disk, despite the absence of the directory (I didn't use Disk Warrior until after the scan/salvage, DW couldn't successfully replace the directory to reflect the data on the disk). I have salvaged everything I could to other external HDs.
DR2 identified 2 groups of data: CBR content, with files organised by type, and the folder hierarchy as it was originally.
I salvaged the original hierarchy, only to find out later that the files were in fact 'ghosts' (filename intact, file icon present, and file size as it should be) which can't be opened by any associated app.
So, I have gone back to salvage the data by CBR content, which is all intact and openable, but virtually unusable: Generic file types like JPEG, MP3, AVI etc are fine to an extent, but I have no idea where to find my website master (domain.sites2) for example! Plus all of these files by type have been given sequential file-type names which makes sorting through a near-impossible task.
Is there any way I can merge the two lots of data to have my original hierarchy with the data of CBR?

Data recovery from a disk that is unmounted

Here is my problem:
disk utility had indicated that I had a couple of bad blocks in my start up disk and recommended that it be replaced. Since I already had a second internal hard drive with plenty of room on it, I simply installed OS 10.4 on the second hard drive and designated it as the startup drive.
Then I ran maintenance on the problem drive. After spending an hour or more grinding through every sector it appeared that the drive would pass master. However for some reason it hung up, stopped making progress and disabled my computer, i.e., I could move the cursor but could not click anything or select anything. Finally my only choice was to manually shut down and restart. Restart seemed to work fine except the disk on which I was performing maintenance did not show up on the desktop.
Finally I was able to locate it using disk utility and discovered that the mount point was missing and it was not mounted. Of course this is what I should have expected since techtool pro unmounts a drive while it performs maintenance and when I had to interrupt, it did not remount.
I spent three days trying to find a way to remount it, including downloading MountMe. Strangely when I ran MountMe it recognized the drive and gave me a successful remount message, but the drive was not actually remounted according to disk utility.
I have moved the drive to a different G-4 with no more success.
my greatest problem -- I had used Backup from .Mac but apparently was not careful enough about where the backup file was located. Generally I download to my desktop and then if I want to save a download I move it to an appropriate location. Unwisely I had done the same with backup which means of course that when the old startup drive crashed it took my desktop files with it.
Included among those backups were all of my financial records (Quicken) for the year. Three checking accounts, all of my credit card accounts, all of my business accounts, etc. I am talking about days of contacting credit card companies and banks for replacement of records for the year and, worse yet, they don't have the details in their files regarding the accounts to be charged nor do they have any info about inter account transfer, etc., etc., etc.
So, I am looking for a reasonably priced service provider to copy my defective hard drive for me. I don't think there is any problem with the data on the drive, I just can't get it remounted.
Maybe someone knows how to work around the mount point problem????
My main desktop computer is a G-4 quicksilver with dual 800, OS 10.4.3 and 1.4 GB of memory.
thanks,
John Cleek

Whenever someone reports issues with their drive my first question is always, "Do you hear any unusual noises coming from the computer?"
What I'm listening for is anything like grinding, scraping, what we always call 'ping-ponging' or other unusual clicking noises that would indicate a mechanical problem inside the drive. If you don't hear anything unusual then the problem is more likely to be corrupt volume information or a broken hard drive controller board.
If you hear noises then my recommendation is to stop trying to get anything off the drive because any more attempts would do yet more damage.
The only data recovery company I've used is www.drivesavers.com. I've called them multiple times to get quotes and their reps always seems to actualy have an idea what they're talking about. It is very expensive to use a service such as theirs but sometimes it is the only option available.

Data Recovery from crashed Hard Disk

Hi,
My HP Pavilion Laptop's internal Hard Disk (Seagate) has crashed Suddenly and it is not getting detected by system.
This hard disk contains some of my important documents which I want to recover. When I contacted a service center, I was told that it can be recovered by some expert professionals but that is a bit costly affair.
Can anyone suggest, how the data can be recovered from the hard disk.?
Thanks in advance for help.
Regards,
Rajeev

If your hard drive is spinning then using an effective data recovery software you can do recover your data yourself. I would advice you to try Kernel for Windows Data Recovery Software to recover your data from Windows file system.

Data recovery after crash disk

Hello again,
Last week I posted a question concerning the error message folowing the Hardware test.
It was bad sign and I had to take my computer to the Apple service.
The intern disk had to be replaced and they told me that they can't recover the date ( not in theyr shop)
How works the data recovery once the disk is out of the computer ? Is there necessarily a "white room" process wich is very expensive ?
Sorry for this, certainly, stupid question, but I'm not very good in computers ...
Thank you again for your answers !
Cheers
Carmen

Thank's for your answer.
I know it is more than recomended to backup constantly.
I did so until last february so all my data isn't lost, but for 4 month my external drive was turn off ( can't remember why I did this ) and just before the crash I started a backup wich didn't work ( or rather turned for at least 12 hours but , aparantly didn't save anything, if this is possible...)
The question was , is there any way to rescue something without going bankrupt

Data recovery software that help recover lost partition due to using Disk Recovery Assistant on a 2TB HDD?

I Just use the Disk Recovery Assistant on my 2TB HDD and it wipe it clean. What are the best data recovery tool out there that allow me to recover the lost partition and see the file in folders view not files view like in some data recovery like Disk Drill?
using ML 10.8 something I tried appleXsoft but no luck.

My best suggestion is
Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery
http://www.macintosh-data-recovery.com/
Download the free trial version of the software and use the option "Search Lost/Deleted Volumes", It will scan the drive and show you all lost partitions list on preview. Once you click on the selected partition it will show you again 3 options ,
Quick Recovery- This option is very effective on case of volume corruption
Advanced Recovery- This option recovers data from formatted volume and scans each and every block of volume for lost data.
Deleted File Recovery.- It scans unused blocks of volume to recover deleted data.
On successful recovery the software will show the files in folders view with the folder structure..In case you are unable to see the desired results you would need to go for Raw Recovery which will show results on file basis.This option is only required incase the previous option does not give you the desired results.
Cheers !!

Hard-disk Data Recovery

Anybody have any personal experience or recommendation about data recovery specialists for a hard-disk that has hardware failure ?
Would appreciate if you would share your experience or rating for any companies that you may have used for this service, in the past.
I've heard of names "Drive Savers Inc", and "Total Recall".

[DriveSavers|DriveSavers.com], [Ontrack Data Recovery|www.ontrack.com] and [Lazarus|www.lazarus.com] all have excellent reputations for data recovery. They are not cheap, however, but they do not charge if they don't recover anything.
Best of luck.

Crashed Hard Disk! What is the Hard Drive Data Recovery Service, & why wasn't it offered?

I thought I had purchased the best extended warranty available. Apparently the 3-year warranty I bought didn't include the Hard Drive Recovery Service. I can't help but wonder why it wasn't mentioned when I bought the extended warranty. Now I have a trashed HD, and am looking at where I go from here. I was told I should send the drive back to Toshiba... the manufacturer... for the most secure data recovery. WHAT NOW? who can steer me toward the best solution. Of course, I don't have unlimited funds... and someone said it would probably cost $500 to $1000 to recover the info on my HD. Arrgggh. Help.
This is a TouchSmart Tx2 laptop... not even a year old. Under original warranty and has the 3-year extended warranty.

I will check out your link...http://lowcostrecovery.com/pricing.html
Do you know anything about carbonite? Perhaps had I gotten that service, I wouldn't be in this position. I do back up a lot, when I'm at home. However, we have been traveling for a coupe of months... and I'm a photographer. Poof. photos. Important ones! The tech who looked at my drive after putting it in an enclosure said he didn't "see" any files on it. He said he HOPED I could get them recovered. Gave me a sick feeling, as he didn't seem very hopeful that even data recovery would work.
Thanks for your replies.

Time Machine Recovery (after data recovery)

Several months ago, Disk2 and Disk3 in my 2007 MacPro 1,1 (OSX 10.7.5) became unreadable by the computer. To make matters worse, the Time Machine external backup became equally as unreadable. All at the same time! Drive 1, with the operating system, seems to be unaffected. The two unreadable drives showed up as "media" in disk utility, but didn't show up in Disk Warrior or any other similar programs (partition repairing) using the "terminal." I sent the Time Machine drive (WD Mybook Essential 3Tb) to DataRecovery.com and they found no phyical issues with the drive. There was, however,"Data Corruption in the file tables and data area" (according to the evaluation report). This was corrected and the TM drive was supposedly completely recovered.
Upon receiving the external drive (now replaced by a newer 3Tb Mybook), I replaced disk2 and disk3 with new 1TB drives (formatted with a single partition) and tried to perform a restore for these two drives. No such luck.....The drive was readable by the computer but would not actually enter into "Time Machine." I examined the actual drive and found an inordinate amount of Unix executable files, especially when going into the individual backups. The drive does show that they recovered 870Gb of information, but nothing seems to be readable much less recoverable.
I'm wondering if there is a workaround for any of this or whether I should contact the data recovery people to resolve this. I appreciate any help on this as it's become expensive and a bit deflating.......I still hold out some hope, though. Thanks. The drives were most likely corrupted by a generator that kicks on once a week (automatic maintenance) and temporarily cuts power long enough to turn the computer off...I've since gotten a UPS.

A general look at backup files......

Disk Warrior vs Data Recovery 3

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