iMac HD Failure- Retrieving Data

[jc27]

So I got my beautiful new iMac in August, and it worked fantastically up until two weeks ago, where it started to get slow and choppy. I kept on having to restart it and I was going to try using the Mac OS X disk utility, but it refused to start up. It started on the cd, but refused to start on the hard drive. It stayed overnight at our local Apple Store, and was pronounced dead. The guy said taht we might be able to get the data off off it using disk warrior. We have had it at home, running os x off of a lacie drive and running disk warrior. It never finishes. Help! Professional data recovery is too expensive. Any ideas?

 

[Flying Llama]

I don't think DiskWarrior is a file recovery app, it just attempts to repair (and it's very good at it IMO).

Data Rescue II 1.0 seems to work very well, and is pretty much the only file recovery tool available for Mac. I would purchase it ($99) and try to salvage what you can, your most important files. It might not recover everything, but it's basically your last hope.

Good luck,
llama

 

[aquajet]

If the drive is physically broken (I assume it is if the genius pronounced it "dead") then professional data recovery may be your only option. Should have backed up...

 

[FFTT]

Data Rescue II is THE easiest solution, but you'll
need an external backup drive to run it.

 

[jc27]

Thanks for your help, I'll try it out.