Mac Pro Internal HD failure.

ilegal31 said:

Hello,


I have an internal Seagate 500GB HD that has a failure, the disk is recognized by the computer, I can access the files but it takes a long time to open a folder, the HD makes a light catching and clicking sound, is there a possibility to recover the data or to repair the drive?. I have 350GB worth of memories from my mother that past away recently, any advise is greatly appreciated.


Thanks.

Click to expand...

I assume that asking about backups isn't relevant.

If you don't have backups, make a plan. If the disk is failing, any activity on the disk can accelerate the failure.

Therefore

• First, copy the 350 GB of memories elsewhere. Don't do anything else - save those files.
• Second, copy other useful/important files elsewhere

Don't do any other activity on the disk until you've saved whatever you can.

"Long time to open a folder" could be due to disk errors on the folder, and the disk is retrying the reads of the folder until one succeeds.

If the problem is limited to bad blocks in a few folders, disk repair utilities might see the folder problems and move the files to the "missing" folder, where you could recover them.

And, for the future, remember that drive failure isn't an "if", but a "when" - even for SSDs.

For my photos, financial and other important stuff, I keep six copies on hand.

1. The data on the home file server
2. The volume on the file server is RAID-5, so there is effectively another copy
3. The RAID-5 volume on the file server is backed up
4. The backup is on a RAID-5 volume, so that's another copy
5. The data is cloned (about once a month) to an off-site disaster recovery volume (an encrypted USD hard drive that I keep at work)
6. There are two off-site USB volumes that cloned in alternation

Hello, and welcome to Learning About Backups the Hard Way.

If you can remove the drive, you can delay the inevitable since it won't be constantly spinning. But you're only delaying it.

Buy a second hard drive and plug it in your Mac. Then either manually copy everything over through Finder, or use Disk Utility to do a restore to the new blank drive. Both would accomplish the same thing. (Ignore Time Machine, it's useless for actual backups.)

If it dies in the middle of a transfer, well, there wasn't much you could do about that anyways.

Turn your Mac off and remove the drive.

Call a data recovery company, they'll be able to take the drive apart and should be able to use the platters to recover some/most of your data, depending on what's wrong with the drive, though it almost certainly won't be cheap.

Next time, always back up important data.

ilegal31 said:

...I can access the files but it takes a long time to open a folder, the HD makes a light catching and clicking sound, is there a possibility to recover the data or to repair the drive?

Click to expand...

Forget about this drive after your hear "clicking" sounds. Plug in a new drive, format and restore from Time Machine is easiest rather than trying to repair with Disk Utility etc.