External drive dying need to back it up ASAP!

[bahamallama]

I have an external 1TB drive with my iTunes library and timemachine backups.
It is no longer showing up in finder but under disk utility it shows up.
Verifying and repairing fails and tells me to backup and reformat it.
I took the drive out of it's enclosure and tried a different enclosure with the same issue. I then used spinrite on it with a computer I have setup just for this sort of thing. I plugged it back into my mac and same issue.
What's the best way to try and get my data off, what I can that is?
Any help is appreciated!

Snow leopard is the os and is a MacBook pro.

Thanks!

Don

 

[Fishrrman]

"What's the best way to try and get my data off, what I can that is?"

Get one of these:
http://www.amazon.com/Syba-Connecla...?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1253062702&sr=1-22

And get another 1tb drive - I'd recommend a Seagate.

Hook both the problem drive and the new dock/drive up.

I'd try something like CarbonCopyCloner first - attempt to clone the bad drive to the good one.

If CCC fails, the next thing I'd try is a "manual copy" -- pretty much one "top level" folder at a time. It will take time, but if your problems are due to bad blocks, chances are they affect relatively few files. The problem is discovering _which_ files and folders are affected.

I'd also suggest paper and pencil beside you as you copy. Keep track of what is copied, what's giving problems, etc.

I'll bet that SATA dock comes in handy for other things, too. You can even boot from them.

 

[bahamallama]

Thanks for the reply.
I do have a similar adapter and many extra drives I can use.
The main problem I have is that the old drive doesn't show up in finder any more. Only in disk utility.

I will look into the program you mentioned.
I found something else that may work but it $100 so I'm gonna keep looking.

D