HDD S.M.A.R.T Status / Crash Questions

[zynizen]

The worst thing just happened to my friend's macbook. He was checking mail, then loaded a website in safari, and did a few mins of surfing, when done, the system was shut down.

About a half hour went by, turned the system back on, and there was the folder with a question mark, it wouldn't boot. So I recommended booting from the osx installation dvd, repairing permissions etc, still no luck,

to make a longer story somewhat short, the Apple Store said the hard drive is pooched. (With all their family pictures on it)

doesn't the smart status of the hard drive detect errors, or possible failures like these? I thought that was the point of having them built with these kinds of techno features?

Is there anyway to recover the data, by either removing it from the macbook and plugging it into an external enclosure, or ?

What can I / we do to try and get those pictures off there?

Thanks a lot!

[Satcomer]

Buy and external firewire enclosure that fits that drive. Then get a repair program like DiskWarrior and see if you can repair that disk.

If something mechanical is wrong with disk you some time can get it temporary working by putting it in a freezer proof bag (to keep moisture out) and freezing the disk. Then as fast as possible putting it in the enclosure and see if you can quickly get data of it before it warms up.

Lastly there is always the Drive Savers service.

Well i think both you and your friend have learned a valuable lesson, always have a backup. The question is not if a drive will fail, it is most always when it will fail.

[MClever]

Most MacBook hard drive failures I've seen fail without warning. Actually, SATA drives seem to go all at once and no tricks seem to bring 'em back for the one last time like the IDE drives.

If the drive is chattering/clanking, then basically you are done. Maybe DriveSavers can retrieve, maybe not. Depends on the extent of internal damage.

If you can run disk utility on it, then put the MacBook into Target mode and connect via Firewire to another Mac. If it doesn't mount, follow Satcomer's advice. Data Rescue is also another utility to recover data.

In regards to S.M.A.R.T, I've seen failing drives not flagged by SMART and good drives flagged bad (poor firmware). I never totally rely on any diag as the final proof something is good or bad.

[zynizen]

ok thanks for all your advice! I finally got a chance to look at the drive, it was clanking like I had thought, so, i target disk mode from my laptop and nothing in diskwarrior or techtools.

He is going to bring it to a place to try and recover it professionally. Let this be a lesson learned right! always backup your data!

thanks guys!

[Kees Buijs]

Originally Posted by zynizen

ok thanks for all your advice! I finally got a chance to look at the drive, it was clanking like I had thought, so, i target disk mode from my laptop and nothing in diskwarrior or techtools.

He is going to bring it to a place to try and recover it professionally. Let this be a lesson learned right! always backup your data!

thanks guys!

Also if the data is very important, do not try to recover your self as you might actually make it impossible to make a recovery.


Of course make MULTIPLE backups (and not only to another harddrive or memory-stick, but also on tape or cd/dvd) to reduce data-loss to a minimum.


Good luck, Kees