My sister's Macbook HDD is failing. Unfortunately, she has no redundancy whatsoever. I haven't been able to run any S.M.A.R.T tests or other diagnostics just yet. I have only been able to remote into it breifly. In the short time I was in, I did see several I/O errors in the console among sporatic problems. She has had this Macbook for about 3.5 years and tots this thing around everywhere. I'd say there is a 90% chance that she's having a mechanical problem in her HDD. I've told her to turn it off until I can get to it. Some how the computer still boots up, but accessing certain (often large) files will give you I/O errors.
So I guess my question is, what do you guys think the best approach to recovery? There are a few high priority files like documents, photos, and an iPhone backup image. (Her iPhone also died the same week. When she tried to restore her phone from the iPhone backup file, she got I/O errors and couldn't restore her iPhone data. But that's another issue.) Everything is else not a big loss.
Because her hard drive is still bootable, I assume it will be mountable in a Linux environment. Macs use the HFS filesystem, which shouldnt be a problem to handle.
I'm thinking I should probably mount the drive in my linux box, and try to copy the data to a good drive. Then when certain data cannot be read, possibliy use a data recovery software to retry the read until it gets a good read?
Any recommendations for data recovery software? Or pointers on good practice and methodology for mechanical hard drive failures?
Thanks.
So I guess my question is, what do you guys think the best approach to recovery? There are a few high priority files like documents, photos, and an iPhone backup image. (Her iPhone also died the same week. When she tried to restore her phone from the iPhone backup file, she got I/O errors and couldn't restore her iPhone data. But that's another issue.) Everything is else not a big loss.
Because her hard drive is still bootable, I assume it will be mountable in a Linux environment. Macs use the HFS filesystem, which shouldnt be a problem to handle.
I'm thinking I should probably mount the drive in my linux box, and try to copy the data to a good drive. Then when certain data cannot be read, possibliy use a data recovery software to retry the read until it gets a good read?
Any recommendations for data recovery software? Or pointers on good practice and methodology for mechanical hard drive failures?
Thanks.
