OS X Complete Crash - File recovery?

[porcus-belle]

A few days ago everything froze on my MacBook Pro (OS X 10.8). As I could not get anything to happen I manually shut it down and then it would not reboot. Tried a few things in Disk Utility mode but nothing worked, so in to the Apple service place it went.

The technician called me a day later and said that while everything checked out, no hard drive problems BUT that the Operating System had failed and that he could recover nothing of my files - my last back-up (I plead guilty) had been a couple of weeks before and so there was a lot of quite valuable more recent files and work lost. The technician suggested just wiping the drive clean and reinstalling the latest OS X, but before doing that I would like to see if there is some not prohibitively expensive way to get some of the files recovered.

A few years ago I managed to drop an earlier MacBook pro on a hard floor and it scuttled the hard drive. This happened about 100 yards from an Apple Store and they replaced the hard drive and gave me the old damaged one in a bag. I asked about any possibility of recovering some data (there was a lot of music, unbacked up on that one) and they suggested I buy this rather simple device which could be hooked to the bad drive and then via USB into the computer. It worked pretty well and so I am trying to remember what that device would have been called - I gave it away thinking (wrongly) I never would need it again and that person is long gone. Now I can't really recall what the connecting device was called - I only remember it was about the size of an external hard drive.

So - two questions:

a) does any more technologically able person than me know what that device might have been?

b) any other suggestions for a hard drive that is itself undamaged but loaded with files per a defunct OS X?

 

[porcus-belle]

Answering my own question

On the assumption that others may sometime wonder what the device I was trying to recall the name for, is - it's a universal drive adapter.
http://www.newertech.com/products/usb3_universaldriveadap.php

I shall try and find one around my little city and if successful, see if it can help.

 

[leman]

The technician called me a day later and said that while everything checked out, no hard drive problems BUT that the Operating System had failed and that he could recover nothing of my files

I find this bit confusing. If the drive itself is fine, then all of your data should still be there, unless there was a massive filesystem corruption, in which case you should get a new drive! Weird OS failures happen, but can usually be easily solved by installing the new OS over it — no data is lost.

At any rate, the technicians should have the necessary equipment (universal drive adapter or however you call it ) to read your HDD. If they can't do it for some reason, then either they simply did not try, or the drive has suffered a catastrophic failure and you won't be able to access your data either.

For the future: backup, back, backup! Using at least two or more backup drives at the same time.

 

[poiihy]

I asked about any possibility of recovering some data (there was a lot of music, unbacked up on that one) and they suggested I buy this rather simple device which could be hooked to the bad drive and then via USB into the computer. It worked pretty well and so I am trying to remember what that device would have been called - I gave it away thinking (wrongly) I never would need it again and that person is long gone. Now I can't really recall what the connecting device was called - I only remember it was about the size of an external hard drive.

You mean something like this?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Durable-USB...US_Drive_Enclosures_Docks&hash=item27c1942bfc
That's a hard drive enclosure. You should try and get one again, and then put your drive in it and see if you can get anything from it. If the operating system failed then all your files definitely should be there. I think he just said that because he tried to get them by booting into it.

If the Recovery partition works, then go ahead and reinstall Mac OS X. This will fix your OS but leave all your files and data alone. It works the same way as upgrading the OS.