MacbookPro - recovering files from hard drive before formatting ?

I have recently had a problem where my MBP won't start up. It gets as far as the Apple sign and has a loading circle but doesn't get any further. I have inserted my OS disc, gone into utilities. My disc is verified and has no errors, but still doesn't start up, the next thing i wanted to do was archive and install but it requires 1 gig more than i have to do this !! I am now wondering whether I can get my music and photos off there and then reformat ? or what i should do next ?

Do you have access to another Apple machine? If so, get a firewire cable and try mounting your damaged HD machine in firewire target mode on the other machine (ie. connect the damaged machine to a good one via the firewire cable, boot the good machine, and then boot the damaged machine while holding the "T" key down). You may be able to see the target drive and drag your music and pictures folder to another drive.

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Satellite L40: How do I recover files from Hard Drive

Hi
Can anyone help me please. About one week ago I started experiencing a clicking sound coming from my Satellite L40 laptop. My laptop froze and when I restarted it, I was directed to the system setup with a message at the bottom saying
"Pri Master Hard Drive Disk SMART status bad, Backup and replace.
Press F2 to presume."
I have pressed F2 but I haven't a clue what to do?
Can anyone tell me how to backup my files before my hard drive has completly gone or if it has gone can I use another device to get them off.
I have tried to use the recovery disk but the disk is not responding??
Please help
Pete

Hi
This messages looks like an warning notification from the S.M.A.R.T.
It does mean that your HDD will eventually fail.
It could happen next days or it may not happen for a few months but the SMART capability has detected that the drive is going bad so it should be replaced as soon as possible.
It looks like your notebook is not very old so the warranty should cover all replacements.
I see only one way to access and backup the data. Possibly you could buy an external USB SATA HDD enclosure and could connect the HDD to another computer.
Im not sure if you will be able to access the HDD due to the malfunction but if you want you could try this.
Good luck

Photo booth: recovering photos from hard drive

I have recently decided to try to recover some "very" old photos from photobooth that I had placed in the trash, AND emptied from the bin. I have no clue how to use time machine and I never have. So, how do I recover these photos from beyond the grave? Or are these files doomed to wander amongst the stars?

BlindArtists wrote:
I have no clue how to use time machine and I never have.
Assuming you made a TimeMachine drive before your accidental deletion and it backed up/updated, then there should be no problem restoring.
But something tells me you didn't .
If you didn't then your looking at data recovery using a external boot drive and $100 Data Rescue software if your internal boot drive is a hard drive. Don't think the deleted data can be as easily recovered off a SSD if you replaced yours in your 2010 model (came with hard drives)
If the boot hard drive isn't Filevaulted, you didn't use Secure Empty Trash, Disk Utility > Erase Free Space or wrote a lot of items to the drive or used the machine very little since the accidental deletion occurred, then there is a very good chance the files may be recoverable provided Data Rescue can recognize the iPhoto file format and reconstruct them again off the 1's and 0's off the drive.
The software has to be installed on a external boot drive while the computer is booted from it to minimize the chance of overwriting the deleted data. Another Mac with FireWire Target Disk Mode can also be used with Data Rescue on it.
.Create a data recovery/undelete external boot drive
If I'm talking geek speak and not making any sense, then stop using the computer and take it to a local PC/Mac tech which for a fee will image your entire boot drive (deleted files and all) to a external drive which you then can use Data Rescue yourself (for better privacy) or they will do the entire attempted recovery themselves.

How do you delete transparent file from hard drive?

Hi. I lent my hard drive to my friend and came back with this weird file named "\". I want to delete this file, but when ever I put this in the trash and empty it, my computer starts lagging. (So I have to relaunch my Finder) This file doesn't allow me to rename it. If anyone knows the way to delete this, please tell me. Thanks

Hi rebellium.rebel,
Thank you for your reply.
Another option to consider would be formatting (erasing) the hard drive, after moving your files off of it.
You can find a step-by-step guide for this in the below article, which are good general steps although the article references Aperture:
Format external drives to Mac OS Extended before using with Aperture - Apple Support
If the files reappear in the future, some of the steps in this guide may be helpful, such as checking with the manufacturer regarding this situation and whether the drive requires additional software:
USB and FireWire Quick Assist - Apple Support
Best Regards,
Jeremy

Recovering files external hard drive

Wasn't sure where to post this. I haven't been on here for awhile, and I'm not used to the "new" structure.
My 1TB LaCie external hard drive - which had my Time Machine backups on it (multiple ones unfortunately) no longer mounts. I downloaded some file recovery software which can manage to find files, but not any file sorting information or names.
The first time I ran the software (it runs through Terminal), I let it go about 5.5 hours, and it had recovered approximately 1,100 folders worth of files, each folder holding 500 files (all named generically), and estimated that it had 66+ hours left to go. Most of the files (around 30,000) were txt files which were useless garbage. There were also many of the files I wanted (old photos & files from college), however, there is no chance I will ever have time to go through all the files it had at that point, let alone another 66+ hours worth.
I started recovery over, this time setting limitations on file types (no more txt files), as well as other files I know I don't need. Once again after the same amount of time, I'm in a similar situation. Less files, but lots of random pngs and crap from websites I don't even remember.
As far as I can tell, a LOT of these files have many many versions. I'm going to assume maybe from the multiple Time Machines? There are photos from when I went to college that were classmates pictures, that I don't remember ever having saved to my computer. There's what I can only imagine are cut up mangled files from the inner workings of Adobe CS3, and tons of crap from what I imagine must be old internet caching.
Anyway, I'm not sure what my question is, but I'm mostly wondering if anyone else has had a hard drive with their "Time Machine" backups on it fail. And if so, any advice for sorting out the mess of many duplicated files? Perhaps I would be better served to use different software...but this was free, and I already spent $92 on a new external hard drive to recover files to. However, if someone knows of a decent recovery program that might save me a bit of time, I suppose it would be worth it. It just seems most of them have no guarantees, and I don't want to shell out $100, just to be sitting in the same puddle of files.
Thanks!

Kappy wrote:
In any case if you connect the drive to your computer, then open Disk Utility, does the drive appear on your Desktop? If not, does it appear in DU's device list in the sidebar?
The new external hard drive appears in disc utility, but not the old external hard drive with which I'm having problems.
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.
So, I guess you're saying that any of those you mention are better than Disc Warrior for my problem. Is that right?
The longer the hard drive remains in use and data are written to it, the greater the risk your deleted files will be overwritten.
Okay, I have now disconnected the external hard drive. I hadn't realized that there was the possibility of overwriting files on the EXTERNAL hard drive.
Also visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Data Recovery.
Okay, I'll do that, but what about just repairing the external hard drive? Isn't that possible? I mean, couldn't it be something like a loose connection? However, I have certainly noticed that hard drive repair is not mentioned nearly as much as data recovery. There must be a reason for that.

HOW TO GET OLD FILES FROM HARD DRIVE? HELP!!!!

hello. so i changed my 320gb HD to a 1.5tb! its running good. the reason why i changed it was because it went white with a folder that had a question mark blinking! so i inserted the disk that came with it and it wouldnt come up on "select a destination" and when i would go to disk utility, it would only show "Media" (which i believe was suppose to be my hard drive), Pioneer CD-RW, and the Installation Disk. so i decided to buy a new and bigger HD and did a partition (dont what that means but it worked) and installed Leopard. now its working good. i just need help on how to get my old files from this old HD i have in hand (the 320gb). like what do i use? can i put it in a PC? PLEASE HELP!!!!!

If the old drive is not accessible then, no, you will not be able to access all your files on it. In this case you may need to look at the following:
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 with 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.

Loading a .wav file from hard drive

Is there an easy way to load a .wav from your hard drive? Everything I see requires applets and a URL. I don't want to use any extra packages either..I just want to use the standard ones.
Thank you!

The only audio decoder supported in Java1.3 is the '.au' format, im not sure about 1.4, but I doubt this has changed, as Sun has pretty much abandoned Applets.
java.applet.AudioClip ac = java.applet.Applet.getAudioClip(new java.net.URL("file://soundFile.au"));
ac.play();
rob,

Can't attach files from Hard drive to my web based email clients!!

Hey there People!!
I seriously need help with this. For the past month or so I have been having problems uploading files from my hard drive to Yahoo, Gmail and even Blogger. Each time I try uploading a file, Safari either shuts down on me completely or I get some error message that says it can't find the page or that there is a disagreement of some sort.
I have since downloaded Mozilla and I dun seem to have a problem with Mozilla like I do with Safari. I really like and prefer Safari to Mozilla and would really appreciate it if anyone can tell me how to fix this problem or perhaps what is possibly causing it???
Seriously much appreciated everyone!
Daryl E

Hi there!
So sorry for not doing this earlier. Realise it would be hard to analise the situation without a proper report about it. Anyways, here's what was given to me by Safari when I can't upload anything:
Safari can’t open the page “http://photos.blogger.com/upload-image.do”. The error was: “POSIX error: Invalid argument” (NSPOSIXErrorDomain:22) Please choose Report Bug to Apple from the Safari menu, note the error number, and describe what you did before you saw this message.
Hope this helps. I will try and post the crash report as well. Thanking you in advance!!
Daryl E

Iphone and computer died, need to get the files from hard drive

Iphone and computer died at the same time, my hard drive on the computer is ok, i did a external connection of my hard drive to my laptop, my iphone was backed up on itunes on the computer which are on the hard drive, how do i extract contacts and other files from the hard drive thanks

If the old drive is not accessible then, no, you will not be able to access all your files on it. In this case you may need to look at the following:
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 with 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.

P2 Files From Hard Drive

Hello, I'm doing a project from P2 files which will be given to me on a Hard Drive by the Director's Assisstant. I will not have access to the camera, just a regular 500 GB hard drive. The DOP swears this will work, could anyone point me towards a solid import workflow for P2 in this situation. I am using Final Cut Studio 2, and the media is 720p, 23.98 frame rate. Also, will the video and audio in each clip come together in the import process? Sorry, never worked with P2 before, first time for everything. Thank you!

Tutorial time:
P2 Workflow with FCP 6
Shane

Playing a .CDR file from Hard Drive

Hi, I have copied a DVD to my hard drive using Disk Utility. I did this as a back up should the DVD become damaged or lost. I can make a DVD out of it so all is well. I however wish to be able to watch the DVD directly from the Hard Drive ie from the .CDR file.
Is this possible? Advice welcomed. Alternative approaches welcomed if the above is not feasible.
Thanks in advance.
Phil

Use to be able to mount .ISO images. If you copied it to a DVD image in Disk Utility, not just a file, mount it and see. It needs to be read-only image.
I think you need to use a program. I would see what "play DVD images" turns up on Google.

Deleting photo file from hard drive

Hello,
I would like to be able to delete items (photos) from both the iPhoto library and my hard drive, but I don't seem to be able to. After I delete items from the iPhoto library, the files are still on the hard drive... (I did empty the trash and I did delete the items from the Library folder)
Note: I just started using iPhoto. I already had a large (?) (9000+ items) library of photos that I keep on an external firewire hard drive. I did not use the "Copy files to iPhoto Library folder when adding to library" function, because a) I didn't want to wait for the system to copy all 9000 images, b) my internal hard drive isn't really big enough to store all these images and c) I'd like to keep using other software (Photoshop, stich software, etc.) to view, open and edit my images.
I like using iPhoto, it seems faster than what I've been using and I like the clean interface, but if I can't use iPhoto to both view and delete images it might not be the software I'm looking for...
My apologies if this question has been answered prior - I just searched and couldn't find an answer.
Thanks for all help!
PowerBook G4 12" Mac OS X (10.4.9) iPhoto 6.06

Theo
Unfortunately the "Show File" or "Show Original File" command doesn't seem to work when more than one file is selected... (the program just points to one of the selected files). Is there a workaround?
No, I think you'll need to do it one at a time.
How would I specify more than one external application (e.g. Photoshop and a panorama stitching app)
No, you won't be able to set up more than one app at a time. The obvious one being to set up Photoshop. What I would do is export the pics for stitching and then import the resulting image as a new image - but that's just me.
Saving an additional file is as simple either duplicating in iPhoto or using Save As in Photoshop and the importing the new file.
You can download with Image Capture (in your Applications folder) and rename files with a batch renamer such as File List. iPhoto has no facility to rename files except on export as filenames are quite irrelevant within iPhoto. You can, of course, apply titles in iPhoto.
As you say, perhaps the app is not for you - it's not right for everybody in every situation.
Regards
TD

Was advised to delete system configuration file from hard drive and now computer will not start - any help would be appreciated.

Downloaded Yosemite and since then cannot connect to internet or bluetooth mouse - was advised to delete system configuration file from the hard drive and since then cannot start up computer. Any help would be appreciated - cheers.

Boot the MBP with the OPTION+COMMAND+R keys down. The result should be a display showing a revolving globe. By following the instructions, you will be able to reinstall the original OSX. Then you may reinstall Yosemite.
A solid Internet connection will be required.
Ciao.

Recover file from hard disk

I tried to download files to an application-garage band specifically-and I got the msg. 'Installer in trash'. It must have been done by accident, but is there a way to recover it? I'm guessing it might still be on the hard drive...

Double-click the Trash icon and drag the needed file out of it.

11.1.3 crashes when importing an mp3 file from hard drive

When I try to 'add file' from my hard drive to iTunes 11.1.3 the program crashes. The file is not added. Until updating to 11.1.3 I could add one or more files with no problem. Windows 7.
Is this a glitch in the update or specific to my machine and how could I tell?

Hi Tawney Mazek!
In order to troubleshoot this issue and find the cause of it, you may need to use the following article:
iTunes for Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8: Fix unexpected quits or launch issues
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1717
Thanks for being a part of the Apple Support Communities!
Regards,
Braden

MacbookPro - recovering files from hard drive before formatting ?

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