External drive from Mac

[EagleKeeper]

Hello all -

I have searched the net but keep coming up lost. I had a older Mac get destroyed in a car accident as it was being hauled. Was able to save the hard drive but cannot seem to pull any info from it. I am running High Sierra 10.13.5 on my current Mac. When I try to plug in the older hard drive I keep getting an error. When I look at the stats it says its uninitialized. I am plugging from an external hard drive shell to my computer via USB. When I click on finder it does not show under my devices.

Could I just be out of luck?

Any and all help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

V/r,
-Mike

 

[nambuccaheadsau]

Maybe the hard drive failed as a result of that crash. Dropping a hard drive is none of the easiest ways to kill it. Does the external drive appear under Disk Utility

 

[HDFan]

If the disk is seen by Disk Utility you can see if one of the disk repair utilities (Disk Warrior Techtool Pro, etc.) can restore it.

 

[bopajuice]

I would put it in an external enclosure and they to access it from another Apple computer. I use a program called disk drill. You have to pay for it, but it was able to pull some stuff off of a failing drive I had. Saved some photos and docs I thought were lost. It's a great program. I have also used it to retrieve stuff that was deleted.

 

[EagleKeeper]

I would put it in an external enclosure and they to access it from another Apple computer. I use a program called disk drill. You have to pay for it, but it was able to pull some stuff off of a failing drive I had. Saved some photos and docs I thought were lost. It's a great program. I have also used it to retrieve stuff that was deleted.

I unfortunately only have the one I'm typing on now. It is in an external enclosure and I know it (the enclosure) works. I have another HD from a PC in there and it works just fine.
[doublepost=1530829958][/doublepost]

Maybe the hard drive failed as a result of that crash. Dropping a hard drive is none of the easiest ways to kill it. Does the external drive appear under Disk Utility

This is what I see.

 

[BrianBaughn]

Not enough information to determine anything other than "there's something wrong". Odds are that you'll never get it to mount. However, I have had a drive behave like this over and over...then suddenly it mounts...but subsequently it goes back to broken.

A file recovery app may or may not pull up anything. A disk recovery service likely could get data off of it. Either way, the results can be ugly. Files can lose their names so you just end up with a whole lot of files with numbers as names and you have to open each one of them to figure out what it is.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

Take a deep breath, and ask yourself:
How important is the data that was on that drive?
If you lost it, would it really, really matter that much?
If you were to pay to recover it, how much would you consider spending?
$500 ?
$1,000?
$1,500?
Or even more?

I'm guessing that if it was important to you, you would have been maintaining a backup drive.

There are data recovery services that could probably get the data back, but they're expensive to begin with, and if they have to disassemble the platters, etc., it could get VERY expensive.
Again, how much is it really worth to you?

If the drive "spins up" and otherwise "sounds ok" when you attach it externally, there's another way to "get at" the data, BUT I OFFER NO PROMISES:
1. Erase the drive using Disk Utility (quick erase only, DO NOT "secure erase" it !!!!!)
2. Now the drive has drivers and an "empty directory", but the data on the platters is STILL THERE (it was a quick erase, right?)
3. If the drive will now "mount" on the desktop, it's time to "attack it" using data recovery software such as Data Rescue
4. DR can "look beyond" the empty directory, and "go right to the platters". It will scavenge around for file fragments, and re-assemble them into files and save them to the recovery drive.
5. YOU WILL NEED ANOTHER DRIVE to serve as the recovery drive.
6. You will almost certainly lose all file names and previous folder hierarchies. This is par for the course with data recovery.
7. There are no guarantees that this can work. However, I HAVE DONE THIS MYSELF, and saved files from a drive partition I thought was "un-reachable".

IF the drive suffered physical damage this probably won't work.
In that case, the only way to recover the data may be to have a data recovery outfit disassemble it, and rebuild it and then get the data from it.
But again, this will be VERY expensive.

Was there stuff on the old drive that you can't live without...?

 

[elf69]

WE rescued data from a mac that has same issue.

We used a linux machine and DD rescue to recover as much data as possible.
WE got 98% of customers data back but took a while to run as was a 1TB drive.

 

[EagleKeeper]

OP:

Take a deep breath, and ask yourself:
How important is the data that was on that drive?
If you lost it, would it really, really matter that much?
If you were to pay to recover it, how much would you consider spending?
$500 ?
$1,000?
$1,500?
Or even more?

I'm guessing that if it was important to you, you would have been maintaining a backup drive.

There are data recovery services that could probably get the data back, but they're expensive to begin with, and if they have to disassemble the platters, etc., it could get VERY expensive.
Again, how much is it really worth to you?

If the drive "spins up" and otherwise "sounds ok" when you attach it externally, there's another way to "get at" the data, BUT I OFFER NO PROMISES:
1. Erase the drive using Disk Utility (quick erase only, DO NOT "secure erase" it !!!!!)
2. Now the drive has drivers and an "empty directory", but the data on the platters is STILL THERE (it was a quick erase, right?)
3. If the drive will now "mount" on the desktop, it's time to "attack it" using data recovery software such as Data Rescue
4. DR can "look beyond" the empty directory, and "go right to the platters". It will scavenge around for file fragments, and re-assemble them into files and save them to the recovery drive.
5. YOU WILL NEED ANOTHER DRIVE to serve as the recovery drive.
6. You will almost certainly lose all file names and previous folder hierarchies. This is par for the course with data recovery.
7. There are no guarantees that this can work. However, I HAVE DONE THIS MYSELF, and saved files from a drive partition I thought was "un-reachable".

IF the drive suffered physical damage this probably won't work.
In that case, the only way to recover the data may be to have a data recovery outfit disassemble it, and rebuild it and then get the data from it.
But again, this will be VERY expensive.

Was there stuff on the old drive that you can't live without...?

Well it's actually my wife's drive, so I'll break the bad news to her. She just wanted her résumés off of there. Just thought it would be simple, but...

Thanks all for the input. I figure if it has not responded by now that it is now a paperweight.

V/r,
-Mike