Help! Trying to recover data from external HD on G5!

(Okay, so this isn't really so much about my G5, it's true, but this is the best place I could think of for this topic. Anyway…)

For the past few years, i've been using an iMac PPC G5, and augmenting the built-in HD with four external hard drives. (I have a LOT of video files.) My first external was a 1 TB iOmega, which I've supplemented with 3 WD drives (a 2 TB and a pair of 3 TBs).

Recently, my iOmega basically blinked out of existence, as far as my computer was concerned. All of a sudden, I'm getting "the disk you attempted to insert cannot be read" error messages and the like, and the iOmega's icon is gone from the desktop.

A quick Google brought up some semi-related help threads, and I followed their advice and gave the iOmega a hard boot, which did get the icon to mount, but none of the folders will show. It just says "0 items, 62 GB available." So the computer does, presumably, know that there is ~900 GB of data on that drive, it's just not showing it to me.

DiskWarrior was no help, it only listed the drive as "Unknown device". (Somewhat worrisomely, it did the same for one of the 3TB drives, despite tht one working fine.) Disk Utility was more of the same.

At this point, I'd settle for just being able to transfer my data to the other drives (they have about 1.5 TB of free space between them, so they can handle the missing 900 GB), and then I could try to erase/rebuild the iOmega, but how can I do it if I can't see the data to begin with?

The data recovery programs that I've downloaded don't seem to work with my OS version (10.5.8), and I really don't want to spend $$ TechTools when it might not solve the problem, as I'm disabled and on a limited budget.

One good thing is that the power light is on in the iOmega and I can hear the drive spinning; it just can't be read by the computer, apparently. I've moved the Firewire connector to every possible configuration, but it doesn't seem to help.

Ideas? Hints? Helpful prayers? I'm open to anything right now, to be honest.

Thanks in advance.

Six Weeks Later…

First of all, thanks to all who had suggestions before. After thinking about this for most of August (I had a lot of other issues going on, too), I decided to simply purchase a new 4TB drive from Staples and let their techs perform the recovery/transfer. (They had a sale going on, and I needed the extra storage space.)

Problem: they're not trained on Macs (didn't even have a functional Mac in the store to test the drive with) and ended up just running SeaTools, getting a "No serial number found, test failed" error, throwing their hands up and giving me my service fee $ back. Gee, thanks, guys.

I got it home, plugged in the new HD, waited a couple of days (I'm kind of avoidant sometimes) and then plugged the troublesome Iomega HDD in. Voila, the image mounted and the whole folder tree was there. (I'd only once gotten a glimpse of the tree since the problem started.) Deciding not to push my luck, I immediately moved to copy the contents to the new drive…

…only to fail because I got a message saying that "DS" was missing/broken (I didn't note the details as well as I should have, unfortunately.) I then tried DiskUtility, but "verify" failed and "repair" said the disk wouldn't unmount.

So, probably foolishly, I used the "unmountDisk force" Terminal command to unmount it, and then it wouldn't re-mount, of course. (I haven't tried a "mountDisk force" command, if such exists, because I realized I was probably rushing things at this point.) Now the disk is just sitting nice and greyed-out in the DiskUtility listing, and only using its location (disk5s3) instead of its name (IomegaHDD).

So I did the "ls -la" command suggested above, and this is what I got in response:

brw-r----- 1 [my name] operator 14, 17 Sep 14 21:42 /dev/disk5s3

Click to expand...

Do I need to remount the disk and get "IomegaHDD" recognized as the volume name again or is that response from the Terminal sufficient?

(Also, I've never run Repair Disk from the CD on this drive. Should I try that? Or is that only for when one is having trouble with the internal HD?)

Thanks in advance.

Well, let's hope I don't have to go to the freezer just yet.

Some good news and some bad news:

Good news, I obtained a copy of Data Rescue 3.2, and wow is it a champ! Buzzed through reading my other drives and analyzing them at great speed, I was very impressed.

Bad news, at this point I still couldn't get the Iomega to mount. Indeed, Terminal and Disk Utility were no longer even seeing the enclosure at this point, I was no longer getting the message about "The device you attempted to install is not recognized by this computer" (or whatever) when I would restart my boot drive, and all the System Profiler would show me was an "unknown device" at the location.

BUT…good news! When I tried it tonight (after leaving the external HD unconnected and turned off for a few days) the "not recognized" message came back, which I rightly interpreted as good news, and I ran the System Profiler, and it had the entire profile of the Iomega, like so:

External HD:

Manufacturer: Iomega
Model: 0x1
GUID: 0xD0B80E0132E588
Maximum Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
Connection Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
Sub-units:
External HD Unit:
Unit Software Version: 0x10483
Unit Spec ID: 0x609E
Firmware Revision: 0x12804
Product Revision Level:
Sub-units:
External HD SBP-LUN:
Capacity: 931.51 GB
Removable Media: Yes
BSD Name: disk6
Mac OS 9 Drivers: No
Partition Map Type: APM (Apple Partition Map)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported

Click to expand...

So I said, let's not waste time, let's break out the Data Rescue. I opened it, clicked on "Start New Scan", watched at the blue completion bar sped towards the end, reading all my other disks, and then was delighted to see the window say "Reading Iomega" as the completion bar reached 100% and then…

and then…

Nothing. The above took less than two minutes, it's two hours later and it's still there. Still showing "100%", still "reading Iomega". Not moving on.

Well, after about 10 minutes of waiting on this, I decided to check Disk Utility. Good news, it's showing both the enclosure AND the drive (greyed out with only its location [disk6s3] rather than the "IomegaHDD" name, but it's still showing). After some thought, I decided to at least try "repair disk" (maybe it would work while Data Rescue was spinning its wheels) and, good news, instead of the program immediately telling me the disk can't be unmounted and refusing to try to repair the disk, it went to work.

Bad news, it's still at work. No evidence that anything has actually happened. Just a spinning blue-and-white "barber pole". For almost two hours.

Lastly, I checked the Terminal. This did not start off well, as using the "df -h" hidden directory check (mentioned above) did not even show the enclosure. Nor did the "ls -la" command work then, either. But…by using the command "diskutil list" I did get a list of devices that showed the enclosure and (although it took about 15 minutes) also showed the drive itself, eventually.

Here is the relevant part:

dev/disk6
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: Apple_partition_scheme *931.5 Gi disk6
1: Apple_partition_map 31.5 Ki disk6s1
2: Apple_HFS 931.4 Gi disk6s3

Click to expand...

But, as you can see, there's still no name showing (guess I shouldn't have used that "unmountDisk force" command, huh? Although it is what's allowing the "repair disk" attempt to proceed, I suppose), and so I can't use the "ls -la /volumes/[name of disk]" command.

So, while I've made progress, I'm still spinning my wheels, I suppose.

To recap:
• disk now shows in DataRescue (apparently), System Profiler, Disk Utility, and Terminal's "diskutil list" device indicators, in the proper location and size
• however, disk only shows as an unnamed device, so name-based Terminal commands don't work (apparently)
• both Data Rescue's "Scan Drives" and Disk Utility's "Repair Disk" commands appear to go to work on the drive, however neither reaches completion.

So how do I get the disk renamed and ready to be read/rescued? Any thoughts?

(And again, thanks for all the help…even the freezer suggestion.)

Eight Days Later…

Hello? Ideas, feedback, anything?

Would sincerely appreciate any possible help, especially with the "naming the device so that Data Rescue can properly read it" issue. Again, thanks in advance.

Thanks for the suggestion, but…

I'd really just rather get the data off the drive rather than trying to find a new enclosure for it. When I opened it the last time, I found that one of the Phillips-head screws holding it in place had had its Phillips-head messed up (instead of interlocking slots it's just a rather mushy hole) and I don't know if I can even unscrew it. I might have to saw through the screw in order to physically remove the drive from where it's attached.

So I'm quite prepared to through the [expletive-deleted] drive in the trash if need be. I would just like to be able to retrieve the data BEFORE that.

Again, it seems the key screwup was my using that "unmountDisk force" Terminal command as described above. Now, even when I'm able to locate the drive, the lack of a name for the device keeps me from using DataRescue to access the data.

Do you (or does anyone) know a way to reverse this error, to have the device once again appear as a NAMED device in the diskutil list, or on the system profiler or in Disk Utility or somewhere? I have a feeling that there's a very simple solution…but until I find it, I'm in the dark.

(And it's 3.5 months without this data already. I'm getting frustrated, tbh.)