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Problem With Disk Warrior/Backup Please Help!!

F

Fenix16

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 22, 2008
10
0
Im a Graphic Design student that has just graduated after a 3 year course. I save all my files on an external HD to conserve space, its a LaCie drive that I've used for the duration and it has just recently crashed severely.

It was a USB 320GB LaCie Prosche design, been regularly storing not only my school files but also backing up my Mac Pro via Time Machine. For the last month or so I've been getting errors that Time Machine has been unable to backup due to my HD being filled. I ignore them as the work I've been doing recently hasn't been important. But today I've installed new software and completed important work so I wanted to make sure it backed up. I get the Error "Disk cannot be Read" with an explanation mark on a red triangle with 3 options, Initialize, Ignore, Eject. Initialize brings up Disk Utlity which fails instantly on Verify Disk and Repair Disk with the error "Filesystem verify repair failed".

Since the External Enclosure eventually made the drive unreadable resulting it in me not even receiving the error message anymore I thought it was the problem. So I take apart the enclosure and install the HD into my Mac Pro directly. The error once again appears so I know the drive is being read, and that same errors occur when it was being read from the enclosure. I run Disk Warrior Rebuild and it runs, and runs, and runs for about 2-3 hours usually. Getting to the same spot everytime, just at the end of Step 6, it sometimes happens right away, but sometimes happens when the bar is complete and looks like it is transitioning to the next Step. The error then comes up saying "Lack of Memory" saying it cant rebuild the drive. My computer is a 2.8GHZ Dual Quad Xeon with 6GB of Ram, does disk warrior require even more power to rebuild the drive? Whats happening here? I run the utility when there is literally nothing else running to consume RAM, so it is using at least 4GB and asking for more.

What do I do? I've tried everything, even hooking up my MBP via firewire and trying to run rebuild. It gets past step 6 but the same error happens halfway through step 7. The Disc won't let me boot from it as it appears to have a scratch on the bottom, and fails on a CD Target Disk Restart. Any ideas or suggestions would help, I need the data off this drive as it is my last 3 years of schooling, and half of the data is impossible to get again!

Please Help!!
 
Well, I hope you now know that storing a single copy of important data on a backup drive is providing you with zero protection. You treated your important files with less respect that files you don't care about on the main system drive.

Anyway.....

It would seem your only real choice here is to send the drive off to a data recovery service that understands Macintosh file systems. I have no specific suggestions as to what service to use. This will be expensive.

S-
 
Fenix16 said:
any ideas here will help im really stuck!
Click to expand...

Unfortunately I would guess that you have not gotten much response to the thread because there are no good solutions. I will say that your recovery efforts are not being hampered by the host computer that is being used- I would guess that Disk Warrior is mistakenly using the word "memory" in an error message regarding not having enough "storage" or "free space" in order to store some temp/work files generated in the process of what it does- to totally rebuild a replacement directory structure for the disk. Since you said the disk has already been telling you it was out of space before this, I would bet that is the case but cannot prove it. I have run DW on everything from an old G3 to my Mac Pro and have never seen an error regarding a problem with "memory" on any of them no matter how much they did or did not have but I was not running it on maxed out hard drives. The fact that your drive is even being recognized as being 'alive' by your Mac is good news, but the fact that the directory info is so screwed up is not such good news.

One thing to try is to download a trial copy of Data Rescue II by ProSoft Engineering which will allow you to see what it might recover in the demo mode and if it shows promise you can then pay for a license and go ahead with the recovery.

As was suggested in sidewinder's post above, after all is said and done you may well be to the point of using a data recovery company to see what if anything they can recover. I recently discussed a 320Gb drive that somehow wound up being the only drive in a client businesses' installation that was not being backed up and the quote from one of the well known names in recovery, OnTrack Data Recovery, and they quoted $100 to look at it and a range of $500 - $2200 depending on what they could recover just to give you an idea. Drive Savers is another major recovery firm.
 
thanks for both of your suggestions ill try the software trial option first and hope for some good results.

I realize the data I stored on a single drive was silly, but previously what I was doing was having it backup to my idisk for a secondary copy, I recently got the Mac Pro and havent set up the backup to the idisk yet, just dragged it all to my external with the intention of setting the automatic idisk backup later. Guess I'm learning the hard way to be lazy.

This is also my first time getting the "Lack of Memory" error, its code is 2145 and I've gotten it on both computers that have tried to access this drive (My Mac Pro and MBP).

Is there a way of burning a new Disk Warrior CD? Say from a .dmg (which I have). As this is the only option that I have been unable to try.
 
Trial Software worked, bought the license and got my data back!

Thanks!
 
Awesome for you! I am surprised that Data Rescue II worked while Disk Warrior did not. It looks like I will need to buy a copy of Data Rescue II to have in my library.

S-
 
as am i, disk warrior couldnt even make it through a full scan without crashing. Data Rescue did it in 1 shot.
 
Since DW and Data Rescue work for two totally different purposes and in two different ways, I am still of the opinion that DW failed because the disk was too full for it to write its temp files and the replacement directory it was trying to create. Since Data Rescue only reads from the disk it order to retrieve information it would of course not be subject to the disk's problems.
 
Yes, both are good tools to have around if you expect to need to do data recovery. I have generally found DiskWarrior to be the better tool when it works, it is more likely to bring back the full directory structure of the drive. However, Data Rescue will recover drives that DiskWarrior will not even see, or fails to repair, such as this one. I usually begin with DiskWarrior then proceed to Data Rescue if it fails (actually, I start with Disk Utility, but I think that's a given).

jW
 
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