what is the next level of disk repair?

You've covered the bases as far as DIY repair is concerned....Your only last port of call is expensive third party data recovery companies....Not cheap. Have you tried WD's utilities? I know they are not great, and I have a 2TB WD but do not use the turbo drives or any of the software they provide.


You MIGHT get an error log by running the smartware app in the SS I have provided.

DiskWarrior, HFS+ only though. (And expensive)

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Macman45 said:

You've covered the bases as far as DIY repair is concerned....Your only last port of call is expensive third party data recovery companies....Not cheap. Have you tried WD's utilities? I know they are not great, and I have a 2TB WD but do not use the turbo drives or any of the software they provide.


You MIGHT get an error log by running the smartware app in the SS I have provided.

Click to expand...

WD software and some of their Hardware is crap.
For what reason do I need software for a hard drive while everything is build into OS X!

ebobster said:

i've got a disk that isn't taking to repairs and have attempted them in Drive Genius 3, techtool pro 6 and Disk utility. The disk has 4 partitions (BTW don't get the Flavours app it's crashing all my programs right now) and 3 of them are mountable/navigable. As you'd expect the 4th partition is the one with the most coveted data and so I need some suggestions/directions on what I should attempt as the next step. I know the last resort step is to take it to a recovery specialist--not that keen to do so given the rate's hover in the thousands.

Thanks for your help. Oh and the drive is the worst external on the the market--the WD mybook 3TB.

Am very competent with most things computing (programmer/engineer) so don't hold back with insane ideas or difficult steps etc.

Click to expand...

Buy Disk Warrior, run it from a healthy drive targeting the non-bootup ailing drive. If that still doesn't work, call DWs (Alsoft Co.) support team, they are capable of doing wonders. If that doesn't work, then you are on the road to a recovery specialist company.

"what is the next level of disk repair?"

Well, I would think that after all the "failed repairs" you have encountered, the "next level" will be to:
1. Get a NEW hard drive
2. Partition it as necessary, and
3. Copy what you can off the _old_ WD drive, and
4. Retire the old drive.

More thoughts:
At some point, "repair" may become useless. At that stage, your option changes from "repair" to "recovery", using an app like Data Rescue III, etc.

Final thoughts:
I, too, once had an external drive on which _one_ of the partitions (the one I valued most, with many mp3's) had become corrupted. It wouldn't mount, and couldn't be repaired.

Even DR3 (see above) couldn't "touch" the damaged partition, because it wouldn't mount.

My solution:
1. Re-initialize the entire drive into ONE partition (yes, you read that correctly)
2. The drive was now "mountable" but "empty". (however, all reinitialization did was wipe the directory, NOT "the data" on the drive)
3. Use DR3 to mount and "attack" the drive (DR3 was able to scavenge the "file pieces", reconstruct and then save them onto a backup "scratch drive")
4. This WORKED -- and got the data back when nothing else seemed to be working. (Advisory -- if you use this approach, all folders and many (all?) filenames will be lost -- but you still get the _files_ back)