Yosemite Crash Wiped Hard Drives

I just had a strange thing happen. I recently got a used 2009 Mac Pro and installed Yosemite on it. It's been working fine for the past two days. Then, suddenly, about 2 hours ago, out of the blue, the screen went black and it crashed. I boot it back up, and it asked me enter a pin to unlock it. After googling this, I read that several people have had luck entering "123456" in when their computer was inexplicably locked. This caused it to go into recovery mode, and I pulled up disk utility here to try to figure out what happened. It showed that my two internal hard drives were completely empty. I've now reinstalled yosemite and can confirm that yes, indeed, they are completely wiped. My secondary drive, which had a bootcamp partition and my documents on it, still has both its partitions, but both are empty and formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). One of those partitions used to be NTFS. I'm not so concerned about recovering data (there wasn't much of actual importance on them, I kept almost everything on an external which is fine), but I'm wondering, what on earth would cause both of my drives and their individual partitions to be wiped out?

I thought about that too. The thing is, I swapped hard drives from my old computer, meaning it should have been completely tied to my icloud account and not the previous owner's, since I basically just transplanted the OS from another computer (which might have something to do with why it crashed). After some more searching on the internet, it seems other people have had icloud lock them out of their computers after a crash erroneously. If you don't have a PIN, it wipes it anyways, even if you didn't give the command to do it from icloud (that option is disabled on my account). That's my best guess right now. For now, I've disconnected my computer from any icloud account.

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OS X Yosemite crashed my hard drive, free replacement?

So after OS X Yosemite came out, I was thrilled to be up to date, then my Macbook froze on startup and wouldn't boot up for absolutely no reason,
it's a 2012 Macbook Pro, by the way. I sign on to Facebook later that day after spending hours at the Mac Store saving my files onto my external and still losing many memories I already had there, and I notice an old high school friend posted "Do not download Yosemite, it crashed my hard drive". Needless to say she too had a 2012 Macbook Pro she bought specifically for college as well. Just wondering if anyone is going to own up to this, or if everyone is just going to have to use up that free warranty at the expense of an apple os bug.

Yosemite will not crash your hard drive. But a bad installation could cause that to happen as could many other things. There is no warranty connected because the drive would not require replacing. Hard drives do fail. Don't believe everything you hear or read about crashing drives, bad operating systems, etc. because they usually come from someone who doesn't know what's going on. And, you can't "use up" a warranty. They are always good until they expire.

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Start with Snow Leopard.
Snow Leopard Purchase
Check that your computer is compatible with Mountain Lion/Mavericks/Yosemite.
To check the model number hold down the option/alt key, go to the Apple menu and select System Information.
iMac (Mid 2007 or newer) model number 7,1 or higher
MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer) model number 5,1 or higher
MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer) model number 3,1 or higher
MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer) model number 2,1 or higher
Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer) model number 3,1 or higher
Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer) model number 3,1 or higher
Xserve (Early 2009) model number 3,1 or higher
Your Mac needs:
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I have a macbook pro. I had iphoto on it prior to my hard drive crashing. Hard drive was replaced but iphoto is no longer on. How do I get it back without paying for it?

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Have you tried
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Recover data from wiped hard drive?

Hi everyone.
I’ve searched through the discussions unable to make any concrete conclusions to resolve my dilemma so I hope someone here can help me out if possible.
My Macbook Pro 13 inch (late-2011) running Mavericks had its hard drive recently wiped by an Apple technician after I took it in following problems.
I stupidly didn’t back up any files onto an external hard drive or in TimeMachine when my hard drive was working before. However, from reading these discussions it appears other people with wiped hard drives have been able to recover data with some success. I’d like to know if this is at all possible in my situation?
To put my dilemma into some context, only days ago my Macbook began to freeze up. Eventually I had to force shut down with the power button as the computer became unresponsive.
Afterwards, when I turned on the computer the OS would not load past the grey screen with the apple logo. I attempted to perform a boot in Safe Mode but encountered the same problem. Then the computer would only shut down at this point each time I tried to turn the computer on again. Naturally I took it to my local Apple store and had a ‘Genius’ check it out.
After attempting to load the OS, I stupidly agreed with the Apple technician that the hard drive should be wiped (being less educated then about hard drives than I am now). I’ve been kicking myself ever since then thinking at the time a broken/corrupted hard drive meant that the data was already lost and that it was safe to wipe the hard drive in order to perform an ‘Internet Recovery’.
The Internet Recovery for Mavericks however failed and the Apple technician offered to replace the Hard Drive for a small ransom.
I’ve since tried to turn the Mac on at home and the grey screen still appears this time with a flashing folder with a question mark.
I know I have to go and buy a new hard drive and replace the existing one. But I still would like to know, is the data on the old hard drive able to be recovered or are my files lost forever since the Apple technician ‘wiped’ my hard drive?
I’m willing to download the software and get the hard drive in order to retrieve any data if it is at all possible.
Thank you for any help.
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y at earp wrote:
I borrowed a sata enclosure and I was able to get everything from the orignial drive (which wasn't really broken) onto my external harddrive.
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Ciao.

I have paid and downloaded LION and want to update my IMAC, can i just run install and it keep photos settings etc from Snow Leopard or is a full reinstall with wiped hard drive, anyone have any experience of this and do i need to run a backup beforehand?

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Always backup your important data before upgrading to a new Mac OS X.
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My Mavericks upgrade crashed my hard drive and I had to reinstall Mountain Lion. Now I cannot get any of the apps that I purchased to download. The icons on the launchpad just say "waiting" no matter what I try.

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Spinning beach ball while wiping hard drive.

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Crash it out, and do a quick reformat without erasing any data. That should only take a few minutes. And since your eMac has been overwriting for three days, your data is all safely gone now anyway.

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One application that's able to accomplish what you want is called Senuti.
http://senuti.en.softonic.com/mac.
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How do i reinstall yosemite on new hard drive without a disk?

I bought a used imac late 2009 as mine died and needed far to much to be repaired. It came with yosemite installed. I used carbon copy cloner were I had an external hard drive with a recent backup image. I connected a usb external device and boot from my external backup. I copied the image I had back to the new iMac internal HD. I thought it would have been as simple as that. NOOOOOOO! that failed and now I am completely messed up. Purchased software says my serials are no longer good. I can't do any work. Office 2011 and outlook won't even read my email. Adobe software hangs and won't allow the OnOne software I purchased work. I bought the latest version of OnOne 9 Suite and it fails to install stating to contact the vendor. (of course no one is there to help). I have several photo sessions I need to edit. I am under pressure. I tried for hours to work around and try to resolve my issue. I safe booted and used time machine. It was chugging all night for 9 hours and in the end it said an error occurred and failed to restore my computer. I have now had 1.5 hours of sleep and truly frustrated and had enough. I dug out my PC laptop and posting to this forum. I gather at this point just say **** it and format and start over. Documents are saved and photos are on a raid device. SO I am not concerned about my work. I am concerned about getting the reinstalled software reinstalled because many of them when I tried to launch stated it was not compatible with Yosemite and to download a compatible version. Of course the vendors want money to get the latest greatest. I don't need the latest greatest because the version I had did exactly what I needed and I do not need anything more. My email in outlook is a concern. My livelihood, meaning how I make a living, is primarily based on email communications. My business purchases are in email. My billing and receipts and sales are in email. The last time I had a catastrophic failure with outlook and hours and hours of trying to recover from backups, I ended up asking my clients to forward me their copies and just started over with Outlook. iMail can't handle the 10,000 emails I deal with weekly and the deluge of email accounts I manage. I could not find any other email client that offers what I need... Calendar, appointment collaboration, organization etc etc. All this does not change the fact I am still stuck. I was told in a pop up this iMac is not registered on my Apple ID account. I can't even find where my broken one is registered, remove it and add in this used one. From what I can read, the solution is to bite the ******* bullet, again, and format and start over. Well, with the downloads of MAC OS X I don't have a hard copy on disc to boot from and just do that. With all the issues with Yosemite, I am not even 100% positive I want to go there and just be happy with Maverick and ignore the lies from Apple just how much better Yosemite is as it is not and just a license to print money with all the cash I need to spend to get my purchased software up to speed. Ok, I have ranted enough. I still believe that MAC is better than WINDOWS. Considering to buy a WINDOWS PC had crossed my mind and when it crossed I pushed it in from of the MAC truck and lost that consideration. I am a Microsoft engineer and know all the reasons why not to buy Windows. I need help from the community. I can't afford to pay a Apple support guy that says just reboot and hold down this key and when it fails to help he says he will have someone call be back that is smarter than he is. I am out the cash and never get that call. Your suggestions, recommendations and "How To's" are very much appreciated. Thank you for reading my query and my rant. -Brian
<Edited by Host>

Thank you to all that helped. I did get the CD from Apple Care and managed to rebuild from scratch. In conclusion, there should be a better way to help recover from a complete disaster. I lost the original computer and hard drive. I had a Clone Copy of the hard drive I regularly updated. I used Time Machine. I thought I had all my bases covered in the event of a disaster. Even the cloned hard drive is stored is a fire safe guaranteed not to exceed room temperature even if the safe was in a fire 2700 degrees for over 25 minutes. (Enough time to have a fire department put water on the fire) The safe cost me a lot of money. The time Machine external hard drive is a RAID striped system with 5 HDD with a failover of 3 complete HDD failures simultaneously. Because of piracy, software installs will go to extraordinary lengths from having a license copy of the software cloned from one computer to another. I get it. People steal. Software companies deserve a pay cheque just as much as I do. I did what I did because of all the money and time I spend in setting up, installing and configuring my licensed software I wanted a fast resolution to recovery. As I learned from this experience it is simply not possible. If your HD changes, there are several disc sectors that are used for licensing that is not recovered in a carbon copy. Carbon Copy to me I thought was old school Bit Copy if you remember. Not so. Changing a motherboard or whole computer even if it is to a same make and model has issues too. It's called an ESN. Electronic Serial Number. This number that is specific to every motherboard made is used in licensing software. I searched the net looking for a way to PAY to have a fail safe system for recovery. I only found systems that are available or for very high sensitive information servers and is priced way out of reach for an average consumer. Meaning, that a complete disaster in your city will not loose billable or liable information about you. You can rest assure that after the zombie apocalypse you will still get your cell bill, hydro bill, mortgage payment schedules and your criminal record will remain intact. We can thank Hitler for teaching us that error when he destroyed the records of the cities he overthrew. It leaves me with an argument about accountability. Why is it when I buy software, I own nothing. It is a licensed agreement to use the software but I never own it. The developer sides with the fact they own the intellectual property and can not just sell it once and loose it. Agreed! It's the legal departments of the companies that want a piece of that pie too. So they remove any accountability of that licensed agreement that would hold them accountable the end user does in fact own nothing. When the software or product breaks down, their system they use that writes information to parts of your HDD that you can not back up and to be used against you because they don't trust you, there is plenty of small print that states they can not be held liable for their decisions. No matter what happens, their fault or not, with or without prejudice, they are not accountable, whatsoever. Being that I had no choice but beg and plead the people I paid money to for permission to use their software, on ways to help myself in a disaster, get copies back, to put me in the same state I was in before the disaster happened without getting further ahead of the game, I was simply told its not my problem or responsibility. When I asked about accountability? I am told read the fine print and when you are done, pay me to get the old copies back, to get the bootable medium you need and all along they way, let me ram a few more policies down your throat and say, your working software you had is no longer supported and you need to buy the updated version.
Can someone explain to me how I am a better person for all this. How about at least explain why I should not cave in like most other people I know and seek out pirated copies instead of paying for them. It's certainly not for support. I go none and what I was offered I had to pay for on top of paying for the license agreement.
My personal argument came to this head. I asked why do companies and people want to rip off each other. Was it greed? Was it economy? Was it the state of technology is changing so fast everyone is eventing on how to deal with this by the seat of their pants? Here is my conclusion: People generally are followers and not leaders. People that are leaders, thinkers and risk takers are generally outcasts, different and unusual people. Einstein said there is a very thin line between genius and insanity. He never said if they crossed that line or not or what happens. I think, the ones that do cross the line are more than we would like to consider acceptable. We coerced by their insane thinking, there leadership and their ideas. We elect them and let them form governments. We allow them to invent things and then tell us we can't live without it. I know most of you agree and some of you will say it has been going on for a long time. It's true. But like I said we are mostly followers. Thus it has been accepted as a way of life. Right? Wrong! The masses are getting fed up. They are being tired of being ripped off. Need to test this??? Just go a mall and on it's busiest night stand in the middle and shout at the top of your lungs "FREE 10" TABLETS, RIGHT OVER THERE" and point at some poor unsuspecting store. Watch what happens People love the word free. Because they are tired of not getting value for that they pay for. Free Software, Free Games, Free this and that. People download by the millions. Why, they no longer see the value of one person making money and getting value for that hard earned money. They are tired of paying for it and getting nothing. The know this intimately. Themselves are ripped off every day by government, insurance companies, banks, energy resources and yes even software companies. We have learned from the best, well at least the most insane. Here is a thought to leave you with as I seek to ponder about this experience and how I thought I had done the right thing for myself... get my value for my dollar: Have we been here before? YES, many times. The most recent one like this were the fat bubble burst was WWII. What happened in that war was not so much about the atrocities of the murdered and killed, the real story was the living, the survivors. The playing field was leveled. It no longer mattered just how rich you were, how new of a car your drove or what job you had made you different from everyone else. There was one objective. Survive. Live to see another day. After the war the survivors were not liberated. We had a great depression. Overcoming the loss of that war and the rebuilding that needed to be done when no one was willing to pay to have it done. We had to put our differences aside. Our culture, our creed, our resolve had no bearing. We were all in the same leveled playing field of life. My pondering is leaving me one tough question... What happened to us. How did we become so greedy and so racist with each other that we threw out accountability. Not only did we through it out, we all said ion way way or another that it was acceptable. Our problems may very well be different from each other but what has not changed we all feel we deserve respect and should hold each other accountable for our decisions. What happened to that very resolve that government bodies, religious leaders and factions, manufacturing and developing companies all feel this resolve does not apply to them. What happened?
LOL: Funny how a 12 cent CD could have been offered in the first place with a little knowledge being shared could have misdirected what I just said to the focus of this group. Wow.
Thank you people for helping me with my issues. I truly appreciate it. Thank you to those of you that put up with my rant. More thanks to those who read it. My sincerest apologies to those I reminded just how life *****. To the rest of you... click the home button on the browser. I hope it lands you on Google, Wiki or God forbid, Bing, were you can start a new quest in life.
-B

How do I restore lost iTunes from a crashed external hard drive?

My external hard drive that I used to store my downloaded cds has crashed and I was using iTunes to play my songs. Is it possible to recover my them? No backup was ever done.

This is a tricky one.
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System Crashes repeatedly - hard drive issue?

I've been using my G4 933MHz with 2 internal hard drives for quite some time. I started having issues with the system crashing, while the system drive made a binding or poer up/down sound repeatedly. The drives were stacked on top of one another, so I bought a new cable and separated the 2 drives so they are now side by side. I thought maybe it was happening because they were getting too hot or something. The system worked for a few weeks, but is now back to having the same problem.
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Tech Tool Pro used to see both drives and all tests ran successfully. Now, I pretty much get a hardware nor supprted message each time I run it. At first I thought my system drive was the problem, but now I'm not sure. The fact that neither drive shows up in the disk utility makes me wonder if there is not some bigger problem. Both drives work perfectly fine sometimes. If I boot up a few times, they eventually show up and everything works fine for about 10-15 minutes, but eventually it crashes again.
Has anyone encountered this problem before? Or have insight into what might be wrong and how I could fix it? Or are there any other tests I can run, besides the normal hard drive tests? I'd just hate to go spend the money on a new hard drive to find out that my drives are fine and it's the system itself that is the problem. Any help is greatly appreciated.
By the way, the second drive is almost identical to the drive that came with the computer. I bought it from a mac dealer and it is the same brand.
Thanks,
Wil

They're both on the same ide cable. It's been setup this way for quite some time. One drive is setup as a master, the other as a slave. Never had any problems for the past couple of years. Issue just started about a month ago. Don't recall anything that may have triggered it. Just one night when I was sitting there, the whole thing froze. Ever since then, it has been freezing sporatically. Now it's doing it about every 2 minutes from when I get it booted up...if I can even get it to boot. Most of the time it just sits on a grey screen, then goes to the blinking folder with the system face and question mark, then after about 20 seconds of that, it eventually boots into the system drive and freezes or boots to the cd. It's completely random from what I can tell, as to which happens.

Yosemite Crash Wiped Hard Drives

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