50 gbs of data disappeared from Harddrive?!?

[aomiles]

Ok. So I'm trying to recover my files from an old powerbook harddrive. I have it hooked up to my macbook pro via a usb harddrive enclosure. Everything looks like it shows up, but I can't find my personal files. The drive was totally full, and when I click on info it reads that there is 55 gb used. But when I look at it in finder and use command-j and select "calculate all sizes" there is only 5 gb accounted for. Where the heck is the rest?

Heres what it shows:
Applications... 5.46 gb
Developer... 200k
Library...777 mb
System... 1.3 gb
Users... 642 mb

I can't find the desktop file either... Its not showing up under the user folder.
I checked the permissions using command I and it says I have read and write access...
what am I missing?

 

[macuserx86]

The drive could just be corrupted, which is what I assume since you said you were trying to recover files. A similar scenario happened with my old PB G4's drive; it would copy only half of any particular file I tried to recover.
If this is the case, you're in pretty bad shape. There are software tools that can recover some of the data, but if it's really FUBAR you'll need to take it to an expensive drive recovery place.

 

[aomiles]

The harddrive wasnt the prob with the powerbook - the logic board got toasted when something got spilled on it...
Is there anyway to just boot my current macbook pro unibody with the osx installed on the usb harddrive?
I tried doing it via bootcamp and by rebooting and holding down option - but it doesnt show the usb drive as a bootable option.

 

[macuserx86]

If I recall correctly, you can only boot off a firewire drive. I'm not sure it that's true for the new unibodies, since the MacBook doesn't have firewire.

 

[armoguy94]

I'm pretty positive that you can boot off, for an intel mac, both a USB or firewire external drive. For PPC, only firewire you can boot off of.

 

[macuserx86]

In that case, if you can't boot off it that means it's probably FUBAR.