Recovering Data From My MBP Hitachi Drive

[Shaqbook]

I recently had my first mac hard drive failure. The my MBP began hanging, the startups took over an hour. I ran Disk Utility from the SNow Leopard boot disk and repaired the drive (inc. permissions) but it still didnt work. Finally i tried to reinstall snow leopard but the install froze half way through.

I bought a new HD and my MBP is up and running but I have a 1.25GB file (a set of flash cards from med school) I've been trying to get off the original Hitachi Drive. I bought a USB -> SATA connector and have been able to copy some files off but the drive ultimately locks up after a while of copying. It seems like the 1.25GB file locks up at various times and Im looking for a way to salvage the file.

Any ideas?

 

[Shaqbook]

Any Ideas?

Also is there another site I should look for answers to mac HW questions (i signed up for MacRumors b/c whenever i google a question about my mac this is the site that comes up)

 

[brdnboy]

My recommendation would be to use Data Rescue 3. It sounds like your drive may be functioning enough for the software to recover most, if not all of your data.

 

[Fishrrman]

"I bought a USB -> SATA connector and have been able to copy some files off but the drive ultimately locks up after a while of copying. It seems like the 1.25GB file locks up at various times and Im looking for a way to salvage the file."

The USB/SATA connector was a good solution. You'll find it to come in handy for other tasks, too.

I think that you should give some "data recovery" software a go at it.

There are "pay for" apps like DataRescue3 and Stellar Phoenix Data Recovery that have very good reputations for this.

However, there is a "new kid on the block" you might consider trying called "Disk Drill". It's currently in late-beta stage, but for the time being is _free_:
http://www.cleverfiles.com/
I'd give this a try first.

Another thought:
I believe the way DR3 works (perhaps SPDR as well) is that the freely-downloadable copy lets you examine the [corrupted] drive in question, and then lets you recover ONE file only. The purpose is to give the user the opportunity to see if the program has a shot at recovering the data _before_ the shareware fee is paid.

However, if it's only a single file you're looking to get, the free versions of these apps might actually be all you need!

 

[Shaqbook]

Downloaded Disk Drill, looks like a helpful tool but requires a "Deep Scan" to recover data off the mac HFS. Right now it says the ETA for the scan is 30 hours.

The DR3 demo was a good idea but has a 10mb cap on the 1 file. Im currently looking for alternatives since the cheapest price I fund online was $90. Im thinking of just mailing the drive to the DR3 company with the assumption that the recovery of one file might be cheaper then the actual software.

 

[Aatos.1]

This will do it for sure.

http://is.gd/SP84WH