Recovering data using "dd"

Hi,
I'm using this tip from MacOSXHints to try to recover data from an external drive attached by FireWire. It essential involves using "dd" in the terminal to perform a bit-by-bit transfer of data from a failing disk to a disk image on a healthy one. The command is as follows:
dd bs=512 if=/dev/rdisk1 of=~/Desktop/Recovery.dmg conv=noerror
Unfortunately, this command returns only a "device not configured" error. The following command
diskutil -mountDisk /dev/rdisk1
reports success, but *diskutil list* only reports disk1 as having 0 bytes and no partitions, even though it is 80GB in size and has two partitions.
The drive in question is reported as unreadable by the OS and I'm given the option to format. Is this drive truly unrecoverable now (without spending a great deal of cash on a professional service)?
By the way, I would have added this query to the foot of the MacOSXHints thread, but it hasn't received a response in a while, so Apple Discussions seemed a better choice.
Many thanks,
SiR G.

I'd guess that you're much more likely to have success with either GNU ddrescue or dd_rescue (different things), or with one of the commercial disk-recovery products, any of which is designed for the task, while dd is not. You can install ddrescue or dd_rescue free of charge using MacPorts, after first installing Xcode. Or you can search for a term such as "rescue" on one of the Mac software repositories such as macupdate. Those solutions will cost something, but a lot less than a recovery service. However, if the data on the drive is worth more to you than about $10,000, don't mess around with it. Send it straight to somebody like Drivesavers. Anything you do carries the risk of making things worse.
The real point is that you should never need to recover a drive. When a drive fails, the right approach is to destroy it and restore to a new one from one of your several backups.

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Recovering data using SQL transaction logs

Hi-If we have a backup of our HFM database (in SQL) as of 8am today, and we backup the transaction logs too, can we use them to restore the database in case of an issue. Example, the database gets corrupted or someone deletes the wrong data. Can we restore the backup and then use the transaction logs to recreate the activities since the backup? Would this work if some of those activities were data loads via FDQM?
just checking if it makes sense to do these transaction log backups in SQL as it relates to HFM 9.2.1
Thanks
Wags

If your company performs full backups at the close of business every Friday and differential backups every Monday through Thursday evening. You could include hourly backups of the transaction log during business hours. Assume a database failure at 11:05AM Wednesday. Under this strategy, you would use Friday's full backup and Tuesday's differential backup to restore the database to it's state at the close of business Tuesday. This resulted in a loss of two hours of data (9-11AM Wednesday). Using the transaction log backups, you could apply the 9AM and 10AM transaction log backups after the Tuesday differential backup to restore our database to it's state at 11AM Wednesday. Restoring all but five minutes of database activity.

Should I use a data retrieval service or software to recover data ?

Please pardon the length of this post.
Here's the setup for our office:
Computer 1:
10.4.8 OS X
1 GHZ PowerPC G4: silver grey tower, grey apple
1MB L3 Cache
256 MB DDR SDRAM
Computer 2:
10.4.8 OS X
Dual 450 MHZ PowerPC G4: blue grey tower, blue apple
256 MB SDRAM
Computer 3:
10.4.8 OS X
1 GHZ PowerPC G4 IMac Flat Screen:
256 MB DDR SDRAM
I have 2 LaCie Big Disk d2 Extremes daisy chained and connected to the IMac. We use the first to store all of our data to keep our local disks free. The second d2 is the backup to the first. The other 2 computers connect to the d2's via an ethernet hub. The d2's are each partitioned into 4 compartments.
A couple of days ago I started the system up when I got in in the morning, and the main d2 would not open. I ran disk utility, but it said that the drive was damaged beyond it's ability to repair. I ran DiskWarrior, and it gave me this message:
"The directory of disk 'G4' cannot be rebuilt. The disk was not modified. The original directory is too severely damaged. It appears another disk utility has erased critical directory information. (3004, 2176)."
I contacted Disk Warrior tech support and after a series of exchanges that had me send him dated extracted from the terminal function, he said this:
"It appears that the concatenated RAID inside your LaCie
drive has failed (your 500GB drive is actually 2 250GB
hard drives). That is why we only saw 2 partitions
on "disk3". A possible cause could be a failed bridge
in the case.
You may be looking at sending this drive to a data recovery service.
However, it is possible that we may be able to recover data
from the partitions that we CAN see. What we would be doing would cause no damage to your data
unless the hard drives were having a mechanical failure (ie, the
head crashed and was contacting the platters, similar to scratching
a record). But from what I've seen, I don't feel that is the case.
I believe the piece of hardware that 'bridges' the two drives to
make them act as one has failed. that's why we can only see data
about 1 of the 2 drives in the case.
We would only be attempting to gather data off the drive. Since
data recovery services sometimes charge for amount of data retrieved,
it's up to you how you want to proceed."
Most of the data from the past 5 years for our business stands at being lost. Only some of it had been properly backed up on the second drive, due to some back up software issues. I want to do whatever I can to retrieve all of, or at least some of the data. From what the Alsoft technician said, do you think that the data recovery software available to the consumer is going to be robust enough to retrieve at least the data from the one disk in the drive that is recognizable (there are 2 250gig disks in the d2X. Only one is responding at all). If so, do these Softwares further damage the disks? Or should I just send the drive to a data recovery service?
I'd like to try to extract some of it myself via over the counter retrieval software, but I don't know whether to trust these programs?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Peter McConnell
1 GHZ PowerPC G4 IMac Flat Screen Mac OS X (10.4.8) Posted

Peter
My 2 cents:
I have used FileSalvage
http://www.subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/index.php?mainpage=product_info&productsid=1
to recover files from damaged disks. It works as advertised, within limits. Some files may be too damaged to recover. More importantly yo get to scan the disk before actually recovering, and it will give you a list of what it thinks it can recover.
My experience was that it recovered approx 85% of the data.
YMMV but they do have a trial.
Regards
TD

ORA-01124: cannot recover data file 1 - file is in use or recovery

I am trying to recover standby database, but it is giving the below error.
ORA-00283: recovery session canceled due to errors
ORA-01124: cannot recover data file 1 - file is in use or recovery, recovery is already stated
ORA-01110: data file 1: 'I:\ORACLE\QAS\SAPDATA1\SYSTEM_1\SYSTEM.DATA1'
when i checked in the alert log the recovery is not started. and later i hae given "alter database recover cancel' and the command end up with the below line
"media recovery not started".
it seems that the recovery has stuck in between.
please advise me how to kill the recovery session that's stuck. because i dont want to bounce the standby database.
thanks in advance.

Without dataguard and MRP, you are running a scripted standby.
In a scripted standby, a RECOVER DATABASE session would have an UNTIL clause (most likely UNTIL SEQUENCE). At the end of the recovery to that point (SEQUENCE#), it exits and shuts down the database.
Also, the scripting is such that when one RECOVER session is active, another session is not allowed to start. It may loop in wait state or exit and retry at the next scheduled interval.
Apparently your standby scripting is not robust enough to prevent another RECOVER session from starting off even as the first is active (and/or it doesn't have a proper UNTIL clause and stop, exit, shutdown actions)
What you have is a custom implementation of a standby database. Without complete details of the script, the "locking" between sessions (to prevent a second RECOVER from starting when one is already running) etc .... we really cannot do much to help you.
Your scripts should be maintaing status information . It should be possible for you to discover the "other" sqlplus session that has issued a RECOVER DATABASE but not yet exited (e.g. ... how about a simple "ps -ef |grep sql" and "ps -ef | grep ora" combination ??)
Hemant K Chitale
Edited by: Hemant K Chitale on May 29, 2013 5:47 PM

Using UNIX DD to recover data on damaged drive

My internal drive failed. I attempted to recover the data using Prosoft's Data Rescue II, but the program repeatedly crashed while trying to scan the drive. No love from Techtools, either. I tried creating a disk image with Disk Utility, but got an I/O error. (My drive is almost certainly suffering from bad blocks in bad places,)
I've found references to a Unix program, DD, that is said to be a way of creating a disk image bit-by-bit and ignoring the bad data.
Trouble is, I don't do UNIX. So:
A. Is there some version of this, some GUI, or other wrapper that would allow a knucklehead with my limited skills to configure and run DD?
B. Can someone walk me thru it, in a better way than I have seen, say, on macoshints?
C. If I were to actually be able to create such an image, what are my chances of getting it to mount and being able to recover at least some files?
My data will be forever grateful for any help you can provide.
12" PB G4 1.33, 1 meg, 80gig Mac OS X (10.4.7)

The following links may help you:
http://www.crazytrain.com/dd.html
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20031225124417353
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/GNU-Linux-Tools-Summary/html/duplicating-disks.html
Mihalis.

R3trans finished 0012 / cannot recover data file 1 file is in use or recove

Hi
After a system Cloning from PRD to SandBox, SAP doesn't start any more :
/usr/sap/SID/SYS/exe/run/startdb: Terminating with error code 12
DB startup failed
On the other hand, I can start the database manually, but SAP still doesn't connect to the DB.
The R3trans -d returns the following :
2EETW169 no connect possible: "maybe someone set invalid values for DIR_LIBRARY ('/usr/sap/SID/SYS/exe/run') or dbms_type ('ORA')"
R3trans finished (0012).
DIR_LIBRARY is correctly set.
I tought may be the databse is inconsistent, so I tried to recover the it.
The recover command doesn't work too :
ORA-00283: recovery session canceled due to errors
ORA-01124: cannot recover data file 1 - file is in use or recovery
ORA-01110: data file 1: '/oracle/SID/sapdata1/system_1/system.data1'
I shall be very grateful to you for any help !
Regards

Hi,
DB was started with "startup"
trans.log
4 ETW000 R3trans version 6.14 (release 701 - 23.07.10 - 09:23:00).
4 ETW000 ===============================================
4 ETW000
4 ETW000 date&time   : 24.08.2011 - 14:15:28
4 ETW000 control file: <no ctrlfile>
4 ETW000 R3trans was called as follows: R3trans -d
4 ETW000 trace at level 2 opened for a given file pointer
4 ETW000 [dev trc     ,00000] wed aug 24 14:15:28 2011                                                 106 0.000106
4 ETW000 [dev trc     ,00000] db_con_init called                                                        11 0.000117
4 ETW000 [dev trc     ,00000] create_con (con_name=R/3)                                                 30 0.000147
4 ETW000 [dev trc     ,00000] Loading DB library '/usr/sap/SID/SYS/exe/run/dboraslib.o' ...             37 0.000184
4 ETW000 [dlux.c      ,00000] *** ERROR => DlLoadLib()==DLENOACCESS - dlopen("/usr/sap/SID/SYS/exe/run/dboraslib.o") FAILED
4 ETW000                          "     0509-022 Cannot load module /usr/sap/SID/SYS/exe/run/dboraslib.o.
4 ETW000                                0509-150   Dependent module libclntsh.a(shr.o) could not be loaded.
4 ETW000                                0509-022 Cannot load module libclntsh.a(shr.o).                        1360 0.001544
4 ETW000                                0509-026 Syste" (errno=2,No such file or directory)
4 ETW000 [dbcon.c     ,00000] *** ERROR => Couldn't load library '/usr/sap/SID/SYS/exe/run/dboraslib.o'
4 ETW000                                                                                69 0.001613
2EETW169 no connect possible: "maybe someone set invalid values for DIR_LIBRARY ('/usr/sap/SID/SYS/exe/run') or dbms_type ('ORA')"
Thanks

Recovering essbase data using .pag files

Hi
We have a critical issue where the entire Hyperion Home directory is lost.But we could able to recover the essbase directory.
We have created the same application in a different server and i could able to restore calc scripts,report scripts and rule files
by restoring the .rul,.csc and .rpt files.
In the same way can we recover the data lost using .pag and ind files?

Yes you can recover data also by restoring the .pag and .ind files.
But to make it happen you need to restore the dbname.ind, dbname.esm, dbname.tct files as well.
If you are having a copy of full database backup, better to use it for the restore.

How do i repair or recover data from a corrupt USB external hard drive that does not show up on my Mac desktop or disk utility

How do i repair or recover data from a corrupt USB external hard drive that does not show up on my Mac desktop or disk utility?
Last night i was using my external hard drive, for some reason the folder just closed and i couldn't find it on my desktop.
After googling solutions, i found it in the disk utilities, i clicked on the 'repair' button many times, but it said the 'error...' message.
So i ejected it to try again, now when i connect the USB external hard drive it doesn't show up on my desktop or disk utilities.
I really just want to either repair or recover the data on it because it literally has everything (documents, work files, photos etc) on it,
I downloaded an application to recover my files but it needs the USB to at least show up.recognise it which mine doesn't.
I know i should've backed it up on another USB, this definitely teaches me for next time to back up all my files.
Are the files lost forever or can i recover them by going to a shop or using a software?

Thank you for responding.
This might sound stupid since i'm not really knowledgeable with Macs,
but since all my files were moved from my mac computer to the external hard drive,
is it possible to recover those files through my Mac - like recovering deleted files?

MacBook Pro HD issues; won't boot to any drive; need to recover data

*Apologies in advance for the lengthy post. I just want to be sure I include as much detail as possible. Thanks in advance for reading all of this and offering any thoughts and suggestions.
I have a 13-inch late 2011 MacBook Pro running OS 10.7.
The computer recently began booting slower and slower until finally one day it did nothing but show the gray boot screen with the apple and a spinning circle and/or progress bar at the bottom. It won't do anything else. I assume it's the HD; no surprise there. What's killing me is that no matter what I do, I can't boot to any disk, internal or external, can't mount it in target disk mode, and can't repair it or recover data, which is a first for me with any HD. However, the computer still clearly sees the drive, and the drive sounds and runs normally (meaning no clicks; appropriate amount of whirs and such).
What I've done so far:
Reset PRAM — no help
Reset SMC — no help
Boot in Safe Mode — same result as regular boot: gray logo screen with spinning wheel
Disk Utility message:
Verify Disk — "Error: This disk nees to be repaired. Click Repair Disk."
Repair Disk — gets as far as "Checking catalog file" then shows "Keys out of order". Next is "Rebuilding catalog B-tree." Then "The volume Macintosh HD could not be repaired."
fsck — same as Disk Utility: "Keys out of order (4, 22016)", "Rebuilding catalog B-tree", then "The volume Macintosh HD could not be repaired." FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED." ...over and over again
If I hold Option while starting the computer, it gives me only two drives to boot from, regardless of any other external HDs or flash drives I have attached: Macintosh HD (internal), and Recovery HD (internal partition). If I choose Macintosh HD, it's hit or miss whether it prompts the Disk Utility screen or just gray-screens forever. If I choose Recovery HD, it successfully runs Disk Utility every time. Here's the thing, though — if I attach an external HD, it doesn't see it during the initial Option-startup. However, from Disk Utility I'm able to select a startup disk from the menu to restart into. It sees the externals in there every time and lets me select them as startup disks, but upon restart it returns to the gray Apple logo screen with spinning wheel and/or progress bar at bottom. Sometimes it also sees the internal Macintosh HD here, but selecting that is useless. I can't actually boot from any disk, internal or external, running full OS or even just recovery software.
I've tried using TechTool Pro 8's edisk and ProToGo bootable drives, but again, the MacBook only sees them from Disk Utility only (not on Option-start), and I can select them, but it doesn't actually boot to them; it reverts back to gray screen.
I've installed a full version of OS 10.10.2 on an external hard drive, complete with DiskWarrior 4 on it, but same problem as above — it sees it in the "Select Startup Disk" menu, but not in the initial Option-start or successful reboot.
I've tried booting from a DiskWarrior 4 DVD using C-startup. It recognizes and spins the DVD from the get-go. Eventually it boots to it (after about 20 minutes or so of reading the DVD). I'm able to launch DiskWarrior 4 and start a rebuild. However, it goes all the way through "Step 6: Constructing optimized replacement directory... Overlapped files detected: 7 ...Step 7: Finishing construction ...Step 8: Reading from disc, one moment please..." and then the computer kernel panicked. This happened several times. I reset the PRAM again, then retried DiskWarrior DVD boot, this avoided a kernel panic and it got as far as "Comparing directories... Step 9: Recording any file or folder differences; 3,449,089,956 tests..." and then DiskWarrior and the computer both freeze and I have to force shutdown.
The drive will not mount to another laptop in Target Disk Mode.
Disk Arbitrator immediately sees the the faulty laptop HD, but won't let me mount or unmount it. It's just there, grayed out.
Data Rescue 4 is able to see the faulty laptop HD through Target Disk Mode, even though the drive itself will not mount to my desktop. I am able to scan the drive using DR4, and start a data recovery process. However, DR4 is dumping all recovered data into "User Defined" ai (Adobe Illustrator) files, which makes absolutely no sense at all. What's more, the files aren't able to be opened by any program. Even files that it hasn't recovered into ai files, like txt and mpegs, cannot be opened. I've tried recovering from both the drive itself and from a clone of the drive (made through DR4), with the same result each time.
So, all of that said, I guess my first question is what the **** is going on? The drive mechanically is functioning fine, but there seems to be an issue with its readability (and the directory/files?).
What's more, why won't this laptop mount ANY drive? I should be able to Option-boot into any drive, especially if the USB ports, drives, and OS's are all fully functional, right? Is there any workaround I'm missing? Even if the internal drive and data are just screwed, what's causing a total lack of mounting or booting of any drive, internal or external?

Holy crap, I got it to work.
Essentially, I just waited until DiskWarrior reached Step 9 and told it to skip the step before it had a chance to freeze. It skipped successfully, moved on, rebuilt and replaced the faulty directory files.
So far the computer is booting like normal, I can log in, and I'm currently copying all of the data to an external as I type this.
I still have no idea why the computer wouldn't mount or boot to any drive, but I guess I'll deal with that later.

Recovering data from Time Capsule after conversion from Snow Leopard to Lion

Had a problem with my iMac, which was running Snow Leopard O/S. Data was backed up on Time Capsule using Time Machine, although recent back-ups had failed (but earlier back-ups had been OK). Apple support determined that I needed to re-install the O/S and they walked me through it. After blowing away all data (believing that once O/S reinstalled, could recover from Time Capsule), the reinstall failed. Took to Apple store, where they installed Lion at my request. Then tried to recover from Time Capsule, but couldn't do so. Sparse file doesn't work (it shows 10GB, which is wrong as it had several hundred GB's before due to lots of photos). Apple Support couldn't solve issue, believes it was corrupted with the last backup. Ultimately recommended that I have professional data recovery service recover data from the iMac hard-drive (as opposed to Time Capsule). Spoke to recovery service recommended by Apple, and it is very expensive (also, given the O/S reinstall, anything they recover will have new file names and no directory structure). They also said getting data off the Time Capsule is even more difficult and expensive to recover. I'm not a happy camper.
I would welcome any thoughts on what to do. FWIW, I live in South Florida and there appear to be lots of data recovery companies locally, but Apple support had said that they have only a few authorized vendors that can do it without voiding warranty, so I'm reluctant to even call them. Thanks. Steve

Your backups may be corrupted.
Try to repair them, via Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder).
Mount the sparse bundle by opening the TC in the Finder and double-clicking on the sparse bundle. Drag the sparse bundle into Disk Utility's sidebar, and do a +*Repair Disk*+ (not permissions) on it. If it finds errors it can't fix, run it again (and again), until it either fixes them all, or can't fix any more.

Possible to recover data from dead HD?

in July of this year, my HD stopped working for whatever reason. i got the folder icon when i started my Mac mini that day and did lots of troubleshooting with no luck. i ended up putting a new one in and all is fine now. EXCEPT all my pics and whatnot is on my old HD. the nearest apple store is 3hrs away and dont plan on making a trip any time soon. is there any way possible to recover the data? what are the possibilities of getting the data over since the old HD stopped working? it didnt spin, it was dead quiet. ive seen alot of those HD to USB data recovery connections to transfer info but dont know if it will work? thanks for the help!!

Yanki01 wrote:
in July of this year, my HD stopped working for whatever reason. i got the folder icon when i started my Mac mini that day and did lots of troubleshooting with no luck. i ended up putting a new one in and all is fine now. EXCEPT all my pics and whatnot is on my old HD. the nearest apple store is 3hrs away and dont plan on making a trip any time soon. is there any way possible to recover the data? what are the possibilities of getting the data over since the old HD stopped working? it didnt spin, it was dead quiet. ive seen alot of those HD to USB data recovery connections to transfer info but dont know if it will work? thanks for the help!!
If it is completely dead in that it is not making any noise indicating it is not spinning etc. then you cannot use any software to try and recover data, these software programs generally only help if the hard disk is physically ok but the data is damaged.
In your case it would appear to be a hardware problem and the only option would be to send it to a specialist data recovery firm. If you went to Apple they would only be able to replace it with a new one (if under warranty) and would not do any data recovery.
The specialist recovery firms would completely dismantle the hard disk and replace faulty parts to enable them to get it working and to copy the data off. Your profile does not indicate your location, but an example firm (I have no personal experience of them) is Datatrak Labs see http://www.datatrack-labs.co.uk/company_profile.asp
By the way, why have you not been making backups? Time Machine makes this so easy it is no longer excusable to not do this. I had a hard disk fail in one of my Macs earlier this year (hardware failure), but because I had a full Time Machine backup I lost nothing.

Recovering data from HD ????????

Hi
My HD died on my G5 a few months back
I am wondering if it would be possible to recover data from it
The situation is this
I had the idea that maybe if i start up my G5 whilst pressing T & connecting it up to my Macbook Pro via firewire 800 I might see the drives & be able to get files off there
I didnt see the drives on the desktop but if i opened Disk Uility both drives on the G5 Are there
They are both displayed as firewire drives each is named with another name underneath which is greyed out
I can click on each drive but in repair all options "Repair Permisions, Repair disc ETC are greyed out
I then tried to boot my Macbook pro with the installation disc & using disc utility from the installation CD with the same resut
Now if i can get this far I should be able to take it one step further & be able to get data from the HD or am i just grasping at straws
Any Ideas please ??

A. I would suggest never use CD or DVD.
B. Setup a disk drive just for repairs.
C. Get in the habit of using backup like SuperDuper
If you are running Leoaprd, use TimeMachine in addition to SuperDuper. SD makes an update that is bootable. And you want to insure it works.
Data Rescue II from Prosoft sounds like a good idea.
I would pick up a couple drives. A new boot drive, and one for backups, and to recover to. OWC has WD 640GB for $69.
Only use idential drives when creating a RAID, whether stripped or mirror. And yes, some tests treat the volumes rather than the physical mechanism.
SMART is not that helpful. When you tested in DW, it wrote to system log and shows how many spare blocks are left, used, which can be helpful.
TechTool Pro is 4.6.2 (5.0 is out also) and can scan a drive for weak/bad sectors.
You may need multiple backups. An original system and another of your data. When you used RAIDs you need to be doubly sure. And the best way to use maintenance utility is regularly, preventative medicine.

Recovering Data from a deleted Mac partition

Through no fault of my own, (an IT department at a well know digital data storage company that will remain nameless) I had all the partitions deleted from my hard drive. No data was damaged, but the Mac partition and the FAT 32 I had windows 7 running on with bootcamp were both deleted. My hard drive is now 250 gigs of unallocated space.
Is there any easy and inexpensive way to recover that data? I'm pretty sure I can't just "undelete" the deleted partitions but it would be nice to get my data off so I don't have to go from the DVD back ups from christmas time.
Anyway I found Disk Warrior and Drive Genius that claim to recover data but they are both about $100.
Any ideas?
Here's the irony of the situation, I was using the utility given me by the IT department while trying to setup a NAS device so I can create regular time machine backups in case anything happened to my lappy. So by trying to get a system working that would help me protect my data, it deleted my data. I would have been fine without it. GRRRR...

Hi, Take the HDD out and connect it to another system then run R-Studio against it. It can recover FAT partitions and I have used it many times with great sucess.

How do i recover data from an external hard drive that was accidentally deleted? After I verified the drive, a message appeared that said my drive needed to be repaired. When I tried to access the drive again, the 700 Gigs of music is gone!

How do i recover data from an external hard drive that was accidentally deleted? After I verified the drive, a message appeared that said my drive needed to be repaired. When I tried to access the drive again, the 700 Gigs of music is gone!

Stop using the drive immediately, un plug it.
Buy a copy of ProSoft DataRescue 4 and use it to search for deleted files.

Recover data from External Hard Drive

Hi, I was copying some .avi files from my laptop (latest Snow Leopard version) to a Iomega ScreenPlay Pro HD 1Tb and suddenly my electric power shutted down.
There was a copying error message and then inside the hard drive there was only some of the data I was copying. The prevoius one was gone.
Do you know what is happening? Are the files hidden somewhere? Can I retrieve/recover them somehow?
Please help me. It would be very thankful.
PS: I have never used Time Machine.

Before doing anything else, boot from your SL install disc and use Disk Utility to repair the HD on the laptop. If repairs are shown, run repair disc again until DU reports no problems. Next, do the same for the external drive.
From there, restart from the laptop and check that all the files you were copying are OK.
How you proceed from there depends on what you find, but don't create new files or folders until you know all is well on the laptop; if you need to recover data it will be easier if nothing is overwritten.

Recovering data using "dd"

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