Free fix for Hard drive error?

[Nuks]

I'm using a Quantegy 80 gig firewire external, and it won't mount. Repairing disks comes up as an "invalid b-tree node". I was looking around for some fixes and all I could find was DiskWarrior (90 bucks). As it is my brother's drive and I was just hoping to use the left over space, is there any way to remedy the problem without spending money? If I restore the disk do I lose all data?


Thanks.

 

[Nuks]

Alright, talked to him last night and he said he doesn't want to spend 90 bucks for diskwarrior, so it's either a restore or somehow fix the hard drive. Anyone know anything?

Thanks.

 

[Angrist]

It's either DiskWarrior or a wipe and replace.

Keep in mind that these thing don't usually happen in a vacuum, sometimes the drive is dying, the HD controller is flakey, or your RAM is bad and making mis-writes. If the problem persists even after a "fix", then you'll need to look for other solutions.

That being said ... Diskwarrior has saved my butt often enough that I can tell you it's worth getting. If you don't have Intel machines, then scrounge around for a used copy of the older version (3.0.3 IIRC), I got one from some dude on another forum for $20.

 

[Nuks]

Alright, he said I could restore it, but I'm not completely sure how/what to do and I don't want to potentially mess anything up if I can help it. How do I go about using Disk Utility to restore the drive?

Thanks.

 

[jeremy.king]

What do you mean by restore? What do you plan to restore? An OS? Files from a different backup? The restore tab in Disk Utility is for images that you made in Disk Utility. So if you don't have a backup, you can't restore anything.

You basically have two options like Angrist said. Pay $$ to try to repair and save your files, or format the drive and lose everything.

 

[Nuks]

EDIT: Nevermind, I got it working.

Thanks for the help everyone.