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TICKET ARCHIVE -> fire wire Hard drive not showing files

Abobo kitty - Dec 17, 2007 - 1:53 pm

I have 2 WD Mybook 500 GB drives, one for work, one for backup.
both failed me this morning. they mounted & even showed their custom names that i gave them. The only problem & it's a BIG one is that they both show 0 files & 0 folders. All of my data is gone!
i've tried re-booting, zapping the p-ram, running "disk Utility" it says both drives are fine.
i have a dual 2.0Ghz G5, 5.5 GB ram
& i'm a composer & using Logic & Reason
so with out my drives im out of busines, (which is why one of them is a back up. i never imagined 2 would fail on the same day)

Serenak - Dec 17, 2007 - 5:19 pm

Hello Matt

thanks for using macosx.com and I will see if I can advise you...

Oh dear - very very bad! Is one of these disks copied from the other by any chance? My first gut wrenching fear is that somehow you unwittingly deleted all the files from the "live" disk and then when it backed up it simply matched the "Backup" to the live drive (thus emptying that one too...) I could be wrong of course - don't want to make any assumptions here, but I have in the past managed to do such a thing by accidentally copying an empty folder over a full one

At this point I can only offer a little advice and that is DiskWarrior (http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/) or DataRescueII (http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue_info.php)

There is no demo of DW unfortunately - but you can try DataRescue to see if it can see anything on the disks before you buy it. Both are very very good (not cheap, but cheap for what they can achieve...)

The only other route is professional data recovery... and that is very very expensive.

Sorry I can't be more helpful - come back and let me know any progress or any more information that comes to light in case it sparks a "bright idea"

Abobo kitty - Dec 19, 2007 - 11:16 am

i tried the demo version of "datarescue" & some of my files showed up, but the demo only lets you recover one file, & not one that the user chooses. So i purchased a copy of "Diskwarrior 4" i should get it in a day or two. I'll let you know how it goes.

Abobo kitty - Dec 19, 2007 - 11:16 am

thanks, by the way!

Serenak - Dec 19, 2007 - 11:47 am

Good luck... I hope it pans out OK!

Any idea how it happened?

BTW, I would advise that you disconnect the drives and leave them well alone until your DiskWarrior arrives, and I hope it does the business for you...

Abobo kitty - Dec 19, 2007 - 12:30 pm

i put in a new fire wire card. it seemed to work, & that's when the problem started, so i took out the card & files were still gone. live & learn i guess. I jad pulled the card from one of my PC's so think that the PCI card must have been PC only & corrupted my external HD's. from now on, only Mac specific PCI cards. Applecare told me that ANY PCI cards would work. shame on them. Oh well, now i'll have a copy of "diskwarrior 4" for future use as well.

Serenak - Dec 19, 2007 - 12:37 pm

Hmmm...

Well I have to say I would expect a PCI card to either work or not..., but even so I suppose it could be possible - but the guys at Apple usually know their stuff.

Once again I can only wish you the best of luck... I will leave the ticket open so you can tell me how it goes, sorry I couldn't really be more help.

Abobo kitty - Dec 20, 2007 - 5:50 pm

no problem. im still waiting for my copy of DW 4, i'll let you know how it all works out next week.
thanks, again

Abobo kitty - Dec 27, 2007 - 12:54 pm

i installed DW 4, & it won't recognized the drives! it states" Directory cannot be rebuilt, the file system is unsupported, • this disk is not a Macintosh disk, • this disk does appear on the desktop, • this disk is 465.75 GB in size"

i don't get it, i WAS using the disk, & had ALL of my work data on it!

Serenak - Dec 27, 2007 - 4:10 pm

Blast and damn,

What does Finder "Get Info" or Disk Utility say about the disk format..

Trouble is the Mac can use several formats other than the preferred Mac HFS+, and often external HDD are preformatted in common PC formats, most of which the Mac is quite capable of using out of the box - although personally I always reformat anything I use to HFS+ when possible.

I don't really know what to suggest next - have you tried mounting the external (or one of them) with a PC? Does that see anything different??

Abobo kitty - Dec 27, 2007 - 4:21 pm

i'll try it on a PC (uggh) tonight.
i tried the finder (command+i) it said both drives were formated "FAT 32" a windows format, so i just reformated the work drive & I'm going to attempt to repair the #2 aka the back-up drive (there was more data besides my work back-up on it) i'll report tomorrow.

Serenak - Dec 27, 2007 - 4:42 pm

Good Luck

If that doesn't help then probably only something like DataRescueII or the DataRescuePC will have any hope of retrieving anything. Though whether the Mac or PC version would be the best bet I couldn't say...

Hopefully the PC may see something the Mac can't (clutching at straws I know..)