Help! Hard Drive Directory Data is bad!

[GovornorPhatt]

Yesterday I bought a copy of Micromat TechTool Pro 4.0.2. I repaired the directory data and started defragmenting my Maxtor 80 GB firewire drive. Then, TechTool crashed while defragmenting my drive.

I restarted my computer and the drive didn't mount. MacOS X said that it couldn't find a volume that it could read. The drive and the data show up in Apple System Profiler. It appears that the directory data is dammaged and the computer can't find the files. I checked with DriveSavers, who said that it would cost me between $ 500-2000 to fix my drive.

The only things on the drive are some music, Flash and FCP projects, and some backups. I would like to have this data back without spending a fortune. Does anyone have some tips on how to remedy this?

 

[Duff-Man]

Duff-man says....start in single user mode and run fsck....or try Diskwarrior - a great util for everyones toolbox....oh yeah!

 

[GovornorPhatt]

Update: The drive shows 60 GB free and only 6 files. The drive shows up, just the files are missing, except for a few select files and empty folders.

Do you know how to browse an external drive from the terminal?

 

[yellow]

Do you know how to browse an external drive from the terminal?

All logical volumes can be found in /Volumes. So,

cd /Volumes/

 

[GovornorPhatt]

I'm depressed. I browsed the drive in Terminal and didn't find any of my data. Any ideas on how to scavenge data from a reformatted drive? I will hire someone as a last resort.

 

[18thTomorrow]

My Sympathies go out to you...

Hi, I really don't know how to help you but just wanted to extend my sympathies...I had the same thing happen to my G3 B&W's hard disk about a month ago. (Mac OS X couldn't find a bootable drive) I took it to my favorite expert at the college help-desk and he worked on it for a loooong time--he tried *everything* possible, but the drive was just too scrambled. I lost 6 months of digital photos, 8 gigs of music, and 2 years of homework assignments. Not cool.

Anyway, I know how it feels to lose your data...not cool. My sympathies.

 

[slughead]

Uh you guys must not use PCs much, here's a list of reliable brands (and I have this on really, really good authority):

1. Seagate (moderate capacity, good all around)
2. Western Digital (Higher capacity, low speed)
3. IBM/hitachi (Low capacity, high speed)

Here are some bad brands:
1. Maxtor (high capacity, moderate speed, very high failure rate)
2. Quantum (Do they even make hard drives anymore?)

If you see any other brand out there, it was probably made by one of the above companies. Find out before you buy it.

 

[yellow]

2. Quantum (Do they even make hard drives anymore?)

No, they do not. They were sold to Maxtor.
And I don't care for Western Digital. I can't even tell you how many I've been forced to replace.

 

[oldfart]

Yesterday I bought a copy of Micromat TechTool Pro 4.0.2. I repaired the directory data and started defragmenting my Maxtor 80 GB firewire drive. Then, TechTool crashed while defragmenting my drive.

I restarted my computer and the drive didn't mount. MacOS X said that it couldn't find a volume that it could read. The drive and the data show up in Apple System Profiler. It appears that the directory data is dammaged and the computer can't find the files. I checked with DriveSavers, who said that it would cost me between $ 500-2000 to fix my drive.

The only things on the drive are some music, Flash and FCP projects, and some backups. I would like to have this data back without spending a fortune. Does anyone have some tips on how to remedy this?

...uuuhhmmm...not that it really matters, but can you give up some "specs" on what you have like model, OS stuff like that.

Tech Tools works fine for me, but I've had situations where things look pretty bad and it got me out of it. What I do if I have a problem and have to use Tech Tools, I let it run one test and restart. The reason is that you can revert to "something" because it saves the info after it finishes a test. (It does do that for you, doesn't it?)

As far as Defragging goes that's useless (probably my opinion alone) and a carry-over from Windo-itis syndrome as the OS runs well with a little bit of fragmented files. The real problem is in the file structure and directories getting corrupted (and there are many reasons for that like forced shut downs).

If you could run TT and see if you can recover the saved TT file; start from there.

Maybe someone else sees something here that I don't Jump in I'm not that smart