Linux does the job disk warrior couldn't

[BinfordsTool]

So I'm both elated and pissy at the same time.

Something happened to my mac when I was traveling, be it a latent hardware flaw, damage, or some other random act, and my mac OSX partition just, well, died. Unbootable, disk utility spends over a day trying to fix the boot record. The Bootcamp windows partition is fritzy, but it at least mounts and periodically can be booted from.

I bought an external usb hard drive, loaded SL onto that, and have my mac back up and running again, but no data to speak of. So based on numerous recommendations, I paid good money to purchase Disk Warrior 4. Nothing, just told me the Macintosh HD partition on the hard drive was damaged, but that bootcamp could still be read.

For the last 2 weeks I've felt utterly hopeless, thinking a lot of good data was lost. On a whim tonight, I popped in an old Linux Mint 5 live CD and booted from it.

What do you know, I could mount the Macintosh HD partition, something Mac, DiskWarrior, or Windows (naturally) could not do. Even better, I was able to run the file manager as root and copy my very important files onto a flash drive with only one or two files having permission errors. I recovered 99% of all the data all these expensive utilities simply could not grab. Even though I haven't been able to repair the disk so I can boot from the old drive, this free method simply worked.

I encourage anyone with a problem like mine (unmountable Macintosh HD partition) to try a linux live cd before shelling out a lot of money, learn from my mistake, and good luck to your data. (Oh yeah, and make a lot of backups..)

 

[Makosuke]

Just for reference, I believe that DiskWarrior focuses on file structure corruption; I don't know what (if anything) it can do to repair partition map corruption, which is presumably what you were suffering from (based on the Disk Utility complaint).

That said, I always turn to Data Rescue when I'm desperate; the last time I tried DW on a badly corrupt partition it didn't work right, either--seems to do better at maintenance than repair.

 

[daxomni]

This is the second time I've seen Mint Linux recommended for damaged drives today. I think one drive I have is completely cooked, but I'd don't see what I'd lose from giving it a shot. It's just been sitting there while I mull over the multi-thousand-dollar repair fee.

 

[BinfordsTool]

Just for reference, I believe that DiskWarrior focuses on file structure corruption; I don't know what (if anything) it can do to repair partition map corruption, which is presumably what you were suffering from (based on the Disk Utility complaint).

That said, I always turn to Data Rescue when I'm desperate; the last time I tried DW on a badly corrupt partition it didn't work right, either--seems to do better at maintenance than repair.

Luckily I only downloaded the data rescue demo version, however it was unable to scan the drive either. Mint has been the only thing that worked