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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Recovering data from ailing hard drive

prop_in_Ottawa - Mar 9, 2008 - 5:36 pm

Yesterday (Saturday) afternoon, my iBook G4 froze solid in Firefox as it was loading a page. I attempted a force-quit to no avail; the whole machine was paralysed (a first). I had to turn the machine off (pressing the power button for more than 5 seconds) in the hopes that restarting it would resolve the issue.

Upon restart it went through the usual gray apple with spinning indicator step, then showed the desktop image, then… froze. Stopped there and didn't progrees. I restarted it several times to the same result. I then started the machine from my System 10.5 CD, and ran Disk Utility: I got a single error message: "Invalid Key Length". Tried a few more times, got the same results.

Bought DiskWarrior, installed it on my other machine (Intel iMac); plugged the iBook as an external FireWire drive into the iMac. Ran DiskWarrior on the borked hard drive; DW stops at the 'rebuilding directory structure' and freezes. Tried a few times, got the same results.

Attempted to use Data Rescue; DR freezes as well.

Restarted the iBook in Single User Mode. Poked around the directory structure; many, many files seem to be accessible, including (most importantly) my Home folder. If I could somehow salvage that, I would gladly reformat the hard drive and start with a clean slate. However, I refuse to do that until those files I can see still exist. Poking around the internet I came upon a few solutions which are premised on using the iMac in Target mode, and this is not something that seems to work very well right now as it invariably freezes a few seconds after the "master" iMac attempts to do something on the drive.

iBook is currently 'running' in SingleUser mode, displaying various directories. The data still seems to be there. The question is this:

How can I recover the content of my Home folder?

DeltaMac - Mar 9, 2008 - 6:54 pm

Can you see any of the data on that hard drive, mounted as a FireWire drive on your other Mac? Do that by holding the T key as you start the iBook, with the FireWire connecting both Macs..
If your iBook only started this yesterday, you should let DiskWarrior run, to see if it will do anything. I have had DiskWarrior run for 48 hrs or more (that's 2 days). You do need to be patient. Disk Warrior can take many hours, and is worth the try.
Keep in mind that as you make more attempts with different recovery methods, the less likely you are to succeed. My theory is to concentrate on one, until you are fairly sure that you can't succeed.

prop_in_Ottawa - Mar 9, 2008 - 7:39 pm

My iMac's Finder cannot see the iBook's mounted-as-a-target FireWire drive at all. DiskWarrior can see the drive, but if I start processing, it doesn't just stop — it freezes: it's entry goes red in the activity monitor.

However I can see all the data just fine if I log on in Single User Mode on the iBook. I was thinking: would it be possible to copy files, from within Single User Mode, to an external hard drive? That's what I'm trying to do now.

DeltaMac - Mar 9, 2008 - 10:13 pm

You really do need to wait for DiskWarrior. Give it a few hours, even if it shows 'red'. It may show unresponsive, but likely not stopped...
Just depends on how desperate you are for the data on that drive....
I would give it an overnight trial. If you can see that there is no change, and no progress overnight, then it's unlikely to be helping you with that drive.
If you can get the files you need through S-U mode, then that's great! Good Luck!
- Dale

prop_in_Ottawa - Mar 9, 2008 - 10:25 pm

Well I have attempted something different: I started the iBook from a system kept on an external hard drive. That worked fine. Ran DiskWarrior again – got much further than last night, but… still can't get to the data. Now DW tells me that there are several things wrong with my drive, that it created a new directory for it, but that it can't replace the old, corrupted directory with the new one because there are physical problems with the drive. It then tells me I should back up my data immediately.

Great! I want to do just that! So it gives me access to the 'preview' mode, so that I can check the data and copy it somewhere else. Problem is, the data is in my Home folder, and when I try to do something to it, I (of course) get the "you don't have the right access privileges" message. What next? Any ideas?

DeltaMac - Mar 10, 2008 - 6:28 am

Try going to Get Info on the preview volume, and checking the box to 'Ignore Permissions on this volume' - might help.
Or, boot to your DiskWarrior CD, and try again. It's one disadvantage to using DiskWarrior from another hard drive. You do have to be concerned about file ownership.