Data recovery help please

[sailr]

Hi!

I have an iMac G4 with an 60GB HD and an external 250GB Maxtor Onetouch II HD (5 months old). The external drive is partitioned - one section for backing up my internal and the other for various files (photos, itunes, etc.) and storing backup VOB files I am writing to DVD. Recently, the second partition stopped showing up on the Finder screen. When I run Disk Utilities, it shows the drive as a white piece of paper with a curled corner and says there are no problems. That said, it can't be accessed and the scan doesn't reveal any of the files I have stored there.

Initially, I thought this might be related to my Tiger upgrade. Then I remembered that it initially worked fine after the upgrade. I remember this because I had to upgrade Popcorn after installing Tiger to continue my DVD backup project. So, I no longer think that it is Tiger related. I was messing around with the file permissions in the Get Info area though, which was about the time that this all started. I am pretty sure I did not inadvertantly delete the drive image though.

I have read that both DiskWarrior and Data Rescue are considered good products for data recovery, but I'm not sure if this is either the right application for them or which I should try first if it is. Also, I have very little storage left on my internal hardrive. How does the restoration program work? Do I need a third hard drive to write the restored files to?

Thanks for any assistance that can be offered.

Regards,

AS

[black_rabbit]

It is probably a bad directory, DiskWarrior should be just fine but you will want to be sure that it is using the latest version from their web site. DiskWarrior runs from it's CD and the CD can boot up most Macs. It requires very littel space to rebuild directories, it is good medicine.