last ditch help before letting dead hard drive go...

[entropygravity]

Hi there,

Help sought with respect to a stubbonly dying hard drive:

- Mid last year bought a 2.5" 500Gb seagate momentus (5400.6) at MSY to replace the aging hitachi HD in my MBP 2.16ghz.

-Worked like a charm until it crashed (cant remember how) a few months later. Resurrected it by swapping back and booting off the hitachi then fixing it with DiskUtility.

- a few months later crashed again. Tried to do the same technique but wouldn't work, so instead tried many of the safe mode attempts described here: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1417
alas no luck! probably made it worse with my meddling...


So current situation is I'm back using my hitachi, have lost approx 5 months of data (yes I know I should have backed up later) and:

The seagate HD mounts externally, but its directory has BIG problems - files disappear, many of folders you cant even access. You can't copy anything across (error -36), nor open files.

- won't unmount unless you do this:
http://forums.macosxhints.com/archive/index.php/t-4446.html

- Have tried disk utility, disk warrior, drive genius, no avail.
Disk warrior gives the (2153, 4903) error. Have tried to kill processes that may cause this issue, as outlined here:
http://forum.soft32.com/mac/Dard-Disk-ftopict106433.html
but to no avail

- can't to get files using Data Rescue

- have tried freezing the drive a couple of times (few hours, 1 day, 4 days...) Have been able to get to deeper into various folders post freezes but generally won't let me copy of open files. When I have been able to, the files are corrupted and unusable.


So I am thinking my only options are to:
- ditch the data and get a new drive (under warranty)
- paying for data recovery ($$$$!)

But as these arent great options, am thinking of erasing the directory using Disk Utility and then trying to recover data using data rescue.

My belated questions are:
- is this a good idea - will it make it harder to recover anything?
- is there anything else I can do? (besides the two options above)

Any advice great appreciated!

thanks
Michael.

 

[BlueRevolution]

I think you've just about covered it. Data Rescue is worth a shot, but no promises. It's unlikely that you'll be able to recover everything in any case.

 

[nebarik]

basically sounds like you have bad blocks on your harddrive.

in short; these arnt fixable. get a new drive

in more depth, a drive is made up of sectors or blocks. parts of files and directories are held on these as binary data. when that particular block goes bad, its unreadbale by the drive. corrupting files, or taking out files and folders entirely in its wake. the older it gets, and the more times you use it, the worse its gonna get.

what your doing with data rescue and disk utility are software fixes on what is actually a hardware problem.


my best recommendation is try and copy files off it 1 by 1. finder does this wierd thing where if just one file cant be read, the entire folder your trying to copy will freeze up and cancel. this way yourll find the bad files, and get a lot more off the drive.

 

[entropygravity]

thanks for the responses.
Copying files across all seem to all end up corrupted... (the drive lists zero files unless its just come out of the freezer...).

Yep its hardware issues. I'd just like to know whether anyone thought erasing the directory will give a better chance at data recovery (either my own attempts or professional) or whether its best to keep it?

(and anyone can recommend data recovery places in Melbourne/Sydney)