Macbook Pro hard drive failing, how to recover data?

My 2 year old MBP refused to boot up this morning. I was told at the Genius Bar that the hard drive is on its way out.
It is still able to mount when hooked up to another machine but apparently the geniuses don't do data recovery. I was refferred to a data recovery service or another option was to "hook the drive up to another machine" via some sort of docking station to lift the data off myself.
I have no idea where to start with this, does anyone know how I could accomplish this myself? Thanks in advance for any tips.

I hope that will work out for you, but I have very little confidence that all will go well that way.
Your situation is one in which it makes very good sense to ignore the warranty on your hard drive, replace it yourself at your own expense, and thus be able to keep the old drive — which Apple will keep, if Apple replaces it. Once you have a new drive in your MBP and an OS up and running on it, then you can connect the old drive to it and see what can be recovered. If you hand the machine over to Apple for the replacement and lose the old drive, and then you discover that some of your files in Mac-only formats have been corrupted by being written to a Windows file system on your HP computer, you'll have no chance of recovering them.
The way to avoid all this, of course, was to keep up-to-date backups on one or more external hard drives so it wouldn't be necessary to recover anything from the failed drive. Once you get your new drive, do that.

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Macbook Pro Hard drive, removed, how to recover data with PC

My MacBook was damaged. 2011 Late Model. I removed the hard drive and placed it in a sabrent enclosure. Plugged in to a PC and learned that i cannot get the data from it. Any help? Thank you.

If you have a friend with Mac, you could copy the data to another USB disk formatted as FAT32. You can then read it on your PC. The problem with this is that FAT32 requires all files to be smaller than 4GB and there are restrictions on the file names. This might be OK depending on whether you have any big files.
Another possibility would be to plug the Mac disk into a friend's Mac and then FTP (e.g. using "sftp") to the Mac from your PC. This way you can retrieve the files without the need for another disk.

Mac Pro hard drive failure how to recover data

I have a 2007 Mac Pro with four hard drives in it. One of my drives had a message the other day indicating I/0 error, it came back several times, and now I don't see the hard drive on my desktop.
Is there a way I can recover the data from this drive?

ALSOFT DISK WARRIOR - their techs have helped even where a drive was unable to mount.
a disk to disk sector copy can be of use $500 range
"Disk drive recovery" is always a hot topic on http://www.macintouch.com
At leas DR3 is demo to see if it can find files.
SoftRAID http://www.softriad.com can often take over and provide the ability - email their support, the have a demo, program is about $140

Macbook Pro Hard Drives Failing

Hi all,
I've been having massing problems with my Macbook Pro 15" 2.53 Ghz laptop. I got one brand new with apple care in December of 2008. The hard drive was the standard 320 Gb @ 5400 RPM.
Within approximately two weeks of operation the computer failed (froze and after a hard shutdown wouldn't boot). It turned out the hard drive failed. Two weeks! So I took it back to Apple and they replaced the hard drive (took them one week so I lost a week of productivity).
One week after receiving the laptop back, the hard drive failed again! This time I believe the OS got corrupted somehow as the symptom was that it would not boot.
So back to Apple and they straight out replaced it with a new one. One week later, guess what? Failure. So back again and they replaced it.
I'm now on my 3rd laptop from Apple and this hard drive is failing. Luckily I was able to back everything up. I downloaded a utility called SMART Utility and it tells me 60 some sectors are bad on this disk.
Is anyone else having issues like this? Its absolutely ridiculous. Currently the computer is working despite the failed sectors and horrible sounds coming from the hard drive but I expect failure soon. I'll be taking this back to Apple and showing them the results of the SMART Utility, but I'm at the end of the rope here.
I've owned multiple Macbook Pros before and absolutely loved them. But now I am so disillusioned by this... To Apple's credit they have had great customer service, but now I'm at the point where I need to be able to rely on my machine.
Has anyone heard anything?

I would second Michael's comment. While hard drives do fail, the rate at which yours are failing would appear to be well beyond the statistical average. I would generally think the next level would be a problem with the MacBook itself causing the failures, but from what I can tell from your comment is that they have replaced your MacBook twice (and you're on your third?). So that would seem to rule out a problem with the MacBook itself. You mentioned that you've had other MacBooks before and it doesn't sound like you've had problems with them... so I wouldn't expect that you're doing anything unusual that would cause the problem.
You're either had a remarkable run of bad luck, or there's something going on that's out of the ordinary causing these drives to fail. I would imagine that when stores get machines, they're likely shipped from batches that are manufactured at similar times. If they had a batch of faulty drives from the manufacturer, it's possible a single store could have gotten several of them. That would still not really explain why your initially replaced drive failed as it would likely have come from a totally different batch than what would have been used in manufacturing at the time your notebook was put together. I guess it's always possible that they might put in a drive that that wasn't new.

Hard drive failing, need to recover data before it fully crashes

Tried these things:
--disk utility from startup disk (said disk could not be repaired and invalid node structure)
--disk warrior three times, which of course took like a week total (all times it said could not be repaired; got error codes 2160 and 2304, which after researching led me to the next step)
--firewire the HD on the macbook in target mode to a working mac and ran disk warrior from there (said couldn't be repaired again and to backup files. yes, great, that is what I want to do, but how?)
--tried to mount disk through disk util while it was connected via FW (could not mount disk, said to verify/repair disk first)
--tried disk util's repair disk function (got 'unused node is not erased'; upon research, found advice to use disk warrior. great, now I run around in circles?)
I can easily replace the hard drive, and will do so... as soon as I get this woman's data off her corrupt drive. Is it possible to do that at this point? I don't get how I can see the drive but can't get to the files on it!!!

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.
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.

Macbook Pro hard drive failed, data recovery possible?

Hi everyone,
I have a 13 inch MBP i purchased in 2010. Late last year I experienced some issues with the computer generally slowing down and one day it would not start up, getting to the gray screen with the apple logo and loading wheel. Contacting apple support I was talked through the process of copying my hard drive contents onto an external harddrive, re installing the operating system, and then copying the contents from the external hard drive back to my internal hard drive. Then after up dating the operating system (I think to snow leopard :S) I took it to a genius bar appointment and the guy did a few tests and said my hard drives looks ok and suggested upgrading the RAM from 4gb to 8gb, which I did with no noticable improvement. But seemed to work ok for another 8 months or so.
So last week after using my MBP alot during end of semester, it suddenly turned off while using google sketch up. I tried restarting a few times which did not help. Then I searched through apple support to find an answer. I managed to get into disk utility, which told me the disk was OK. I then tried to re install my operating system which took a very long time and failed twice before getting no response at all I booked another genius bar appointment.
The guy did some tests a very quickly came to the conclusion that it was my hard drive that had failed. He gave me the option to replace the harddrive for $200, which I think I will do, however as STUPIDLY did not have any of my data backed up, I am desperate to try and recover a few important documents and my iphoto library, so have put off replacing the hard drive until I try to recover my data.
So the apple guy gave me two programs to try and recover my data. He said its a confusing an tedious process especially with no experience but I am willing to give it a go. The two programs are DISC WARRIOR and EASEUS. I know disc warrior costs money and easeus is free. He should me how to boot my MBP into target disc mode, and sold me the appropriate cable (initially a firewire cable, but then told me a thunderbolt cable would be more efficient and was cheaper.. Im sure they are right but can anyone confirm that a thunderbolt cable can be used for what I am trying to do) to connect my MBP in target disc mode, to another macbook pro, and it should connect as an external hard drive. Then with one of these programs try to recover some of my files
He said what I can recover just depends on the extent of the damage to the hard drive and what sections have failed. I am waiting for a friend to use their MBP in a few days to download one of these programs and connect my MBP.
Does anyone have any experience or advise with using either of these programs recommended by the apple guy or anyother programs that I could use? Or any advice at all in how I should go about trying to recover my files by using another Macbook pro and target disc mode? or anything else that might be helpful?
ANY help would be much appreciated guys!

If you think you can handle your own repair. your welcome to check out my User Tips on the subject
Create a data recovery/undelete external boot drive
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..Step by Step to fix your Mac
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Erase, formatting, OS X installs on Mac's
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https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro?view=documents#/?p er_page=50

Macbook Pro Hard Drive Failed

Hi Everyone, this is going to be a tough one, but please help me.
Two days ago, my computer slowed. So I decided to do a system update, but during the update it got stuck, so i hit the reset button.
Then the laptop did not want to boot, and would get stuck with the apple logo and the circling thing underneath.
So then I entered recovery mode, but the disk utility repair always ended in an error, and installing the OS online wasn't working as well. I inserted my original LION os cds and hit the C button during start up but it wouldn't boot from CD, instead it would end up in recovery.
I bought a firewire-firewire cable, and couldn't access my laptop through target disk mode.
Finally I used disk utility to erase Macintosh HD, restarted and nothing happened. I reentered target disk mode and now I can see my hard disk. This time I erased the GIUD partition table as well, which wiped out my recovery partition.
Now when I restart, its showing a flashing question mark. The command R key does not work. The ALT or C keys also dont do anything anymore, I just end up with a white screen. I can still reset NVRAM, and the good news is I can see the hard drive through the target disk mode from another macbook pro, but thats about it. I ran disk utility's repair disk from my working macbook pro on the non working one, and it comes up okay with no problems. But when ever I restart my computer, I just get a flashing question mark.
Please help me, I just want to have a wokring laptop.

Start the MBP with the original Leopard OSX install disk holding the C key.
Proceed with the instructions until you see a menu bar on top of the display.
Select UTILITIES and from the drop down menu select Disk Utility.
Click on Disk Utility>First Aid and run verify and Repair.
What are the results?
Ciao.

My MacBook Pro hard drive is almost full and I wish to store my Aperture Library on an external drive, how do I do this and is the use of USB2 suitable or do I need to use a Firewire external hard drive?

My MacBook Pro hard drive is almost full and I wish to store my Aperture Library on an external drive, how do I do this and is the use of USB2 suitable or do I need to use a Firewire external hard drive?

You'll get better performance if you use a Firewire hard drive (especially if you buy a 7200 RPM drive). Firewire's IO speed is significantly faster than USB 2. USB 2 has a theoretical max speed of 480 Mbps except that it has extremely high over-head. The fastest speeds you can typically get are about 300 Mbps. Firewire, on the other hand, has very little overhead. The fastest speeds you can get are very nearly 800 Mbps. You will typically be constrained by the maximum read/write speed of the drive, not the speed of the I/O on the Firewire bus. Now if you had one of those nice shiny new Macs with the Thunderbolt I/O and a Thunderbolt drive (Light Peak) ... I think they alter space and time so that your data arrives before you know you want it.
Also... unless you want to buy a solid state drive (very expensive), try to keep your hard drives from becoming much more than about 60% full if you want great performance. A nearly "full" hard drive is, on average, only about half as fast as the same hard drive when nearly empty.
USB 2 will work perfectly fine... just not as fast.
Also... it's much safer to move the entire Aperture library than to "relocate masters". Your images must be managed. You can Aperture manage them, or you can manage them. But someone has to manage them. If you "relocate" them so that they are no longer stored inside the Aperture library then you'll need to work out a system of how you decide to organize things and it's critically important that you don't start moving files around or deleting things without Aperture's knowledge. If you do, you'll break the links to your masters and start having problems with missing masters. If you have Aperture manage the library then you don't need to worry about any of that stuff.... it's safer.
Do make backups (use the Aperture Vault or use some other backup program, but make sure you back up your work if you care about it.) There are only two kinds of hard drives in the world: (1) those that have failed and (2) those that are going to fail. There are no exceptions to this rule. Hard drives are cheap. Backup software is built into Aperture and into your Mac.

My very expensive 2010 MacBook Pro hard drive died over a year ago (never bothered to fix it as the dvd drive had also failed so not worth it). Nevertheless, I finally decided to sync my iPhone to the replacement laptop pc and it wiped out all the music

My very expensive 2010 MacBook Pro hard drive died over a year ago. I finally synced my iPhone to the replacement laptop pc and it wiped out all the music on the phone including most of the purchases. Can I get the music back (restore didn't help)?

Okay, I finally got the couple of songs left on the phone to play by uninstalling and reinstalling itunes on the pc and re syncing. The last version I installed (just prior to my original post) failed to start due to some unspecified error?!?. Great!. But I still couldn't sync the itunes purchases from the PC to the iPhone. Then, after about an hour of googling and reading assorted posts mostly about using google to resolve the issue, I finally figured out that I have to actually download ALL the purchased albums from iCloud back onto the iPhone! There are hundreds of them, and some are not even available anymore.
Why do I have to do that when I originally purchased and downloaded all the music to the phone? Why are they all on the PC to begin with and why won't they go to the phone via the USB cable? Why didn't all the music get wiped out on the phone when I synced with the dodgy itunes I had to uninstall. never mind.
I accept that all my original music from cds and shared collections is gone on the failed mbp hard drive, but how come this once okay experience has become a trauma? Hundreds of songs to download all over again, sheesh, this has not exactlybeen a "That Was Easy" experience guys.

I can not store all my Music on my internal Macbook pro hard drive so I am storing it on a large external drive connected to my airport extrem. How do I get Itunes to search for the music here with out trying to copy it to my laptops hard drive??

I can not store all my Music on my internal Macbook pro hard drive so I am storing it on a large external drive connected to my airport extreme (2 TB drive plugged into the USB port). I see the drive on my laptop and I can add and delete files no problem. How do I get Itunes to search for the music here with out trying to copy it to my laptop's hard drive? I don't have enough space to do that.

How did you move the music to the external drive? What exactly is on the drive? The entire iTunes folder or only music? If it is the entire iTunes folder you can do the option+start suggestion earlier. If you copied only music and did so by dragging it there then you need to delete it again and consolidate/organize it there instead so iTunes tracks the move. iTunes 12 for Mac: Change where your iTunes files are stored - http://support.apple.com/kb/PH19507

My macbook pro hard drive went bad and i bought a new one and installed it. Now i have the old corrupted hard drive in my hand and i am looking to recover my files from it, any suggestions please? too bad i never backed them up.

My macbook pro hard drive went bad and i bought a new one and installed it. Now i have the old corrupted hard drive in my hand and i am looking to recover my files from it, any suggestions please? too bad i never backed them up.

After you have installed the OSX on the new HDD in your MBP, install the old HDD in an enclosure and connect it to your MBP via USB. Then try to drag and drop your data to the new HDD.
If this proves unsuccessful, you may look for data recovery software on the Internet. There will be free trails to see if it will work or not. If the trial suggests that it will work, then you will have to purchase the software.
The last resort is a professional data recovery service that will offer NO guarantees and charge a lot of money.
As you now can appreciate, backups eliminate such predicaments.
Ciao.

My macbook pro hard drive died. I only have a windows hard drive and an old powerbook G4 which of course you can't use to create a boot disk for my macbook. How can I solve this?

I can't get app store on my old power book to download OS X, My macbook pro hard drive died and all I have is a windows hard drive, still has windows os on it, a 500 Gb USB drive and this power book. How can I get my macbook back up without spending money? Thanks

And what happens if the OPs Mac is of a newer version that came with a version of Snow Leopard above the 10.6.3 version that is on that Retail, meant for Upgrade, disc? Like if it came with 10.6.4/.5/.6/.7? That disc you linked to would not work.
He needs to contact Apple and get a replacement set of Original System Reinstall Discs. That is the only way he can be assured it will work and he would also get the iLife apps which he wouldn't buying that DVD disc you linked to.
dwb wrote:
The Snow Leopard DVD is $20 from Apple. You'll just have to wait a few days. BTW this is a full installer that works with any model computer that can run SL. Apple used to ship recovery/installation disks that were tied to specific computer models so that a 15" MBP installer disk coudn't be used on a 13" MBP computer. So you need either full installer or the recovery disks for your specific model.
And BTW, I have a 2009 13" MBP w/8GB RAM that is running Mavericks. With a 5400 RPM drive I used to experience a bit of beach balling (think hour glassing) but an SSD has given it new life. It feels now slower than the newest MBPs - it obviously benchmarks considerably slower but in everyday use it doesn't feel like a 4 1/2 year old computer at all.

My Macbook Pro hard drive got locked. How can I unlock it?

My Macbook Pro hard drive got locked. I have replaced the drive with a new drive. I put the old drive in an external case. How can I unlock the old drive to get my pictures off and put on the new drive. I can see the drive but I cannot get to the iPhoto files because it is locked. Is there an easy fix?

How did the drive get locked? That doesn't JUST happen for no reason. The only way to unlock it is to put it back in to the Mac it came out of and UN-LOCK it.

Early 2008 MacBook Pro hard drive was killed; how to sync stuff

My early 2008 MacBook Pro hard drive was reimaged (not by me) and they lost everything on there, and have now put in a new hard drive, saying nothing was salvageable on the original HD. I have an iPhone, iPod, iPad. When i get the MBP back, how will I be able to get those devices synced so that everything I've bought/have goes back onto the HD?
The original HD was being reimaged because my work requires use of Windows, and I was using Windows via Boot Camp. Windows got a terrible rogue virus (from my clicking on a link), which shut everything down on that side. Work tech folks said they needed to reimage the Windows part of the drive, but said in the process, the reimaging took everything, Mac stuff included. That's why I'm in this situation. They are going to put in a new hard drive, but it is a blank slate.
Long story short: last time I backed up was 2 years ago, and it wasn't using Time Machine, but an external hard drive. That was also before I got my current iPhone, the iPad and made some additions to iTunes. (For those who say shame on me, for not doing a backup sooner, you're right: But we have gone through 3 moves in 18 months, so it has been kinda nuts.)
I expect the MBP to get sent back to me in the next day. I have no idea how to put these pieces back together. I'm not even sure about data recovery, but am most concerned about iTunes/iPhone/iPod/iPad.
Thanks for your help!

suzannemacuser wrote:
Long story short: last time I backed up was 2 years ago, and it wasn't using Time Machine, but an external hard drive. That was also before I got my current iPhone, the iPad and made some additions to iTunes.
Two years ago??? Shame on you!!!
I found this the other day. It's old but still applies. This should be more than enough to help you get back on track. See the comments by Zevoneer
https://discussions.apple.com/message/7217190#7217190
You will have to check on each of these. Some of the links are outdated but there is more than enough to get you started. See this article about transferring purchases. The link is in the other thread as well.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1848?viewlocale=en_US
Backup! Backup! Backup!
Message was edited by: Demo

How do I transfer "backups" from my macbook pro hard-drive to an external hard-drive

how do I transfer "backups" from my macbook pro hard-drive to an external hard-drive

Are these the 'backups' you see in the storage display?
If, so ignore them. Please read this:
http://pondini.org/OSX/LionStorage.html
If not, please provide more information.
Ciao.

Macbook Pro hard drive failing, how to recover data?

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