Replicating Standard User's FS.

[CMXIV]

Hello.

SO, I'm new here, and am probably posting in the wrong forum, but I would like to as you all a question.

I am a repair technician at a local computer shop. We mainly work on PC's, and not Macs, due to another Apple store being too close to us. (We're competition, apperently)

The few macs we do get in to work on are usually data recovery. I have seen many times a mac would come in and need data taken off of it.

If we had a mac instore for utility, not much of a problem, right? Well it starts here.

All of our machines are Windows, ntfs, and macs are hfs or hfs+.

Windows does not support reading hfs+. There are several programs in windows that advertise being able to read hfs, but i have never had very good luck with them. Either they are extremely slow, or take inaccurate data.

I think i can find an develop a way of retrieving data, (currently I am exploring linux alternatives. the 'dd' command is current. (i use linux primarily, personally))

My data recovery/transfer methods do post results, however many times it seems directories are copied as 0 byte files, thus not capturing any of the data within.

What I need from the community is a way of creating the mac files as if I had a mac system. Either that, or an image of a mac drive, in a non-dmg format.

I will use this to test various ideas for copying.

I realize y'all may not be able to provide a whole lot of support here, but any is welcome..

Thanks.
Willmac

 

[GGJstudios]

FAT32 (File Allocation Table)

• Read/Write FAT32 from both native Windows and native Mac OS X.
• Maximum file size: 4GB.
• Maximum volume size: 2TB

NTFS (Windows NT File System)

• Read/Write NTFS from native Windows.
• Read only NTFS from native Mac OS X
  [*]To Read/Write/Format NTFS from Mac OS X: Install NTFS-3G for Mac OS X (free)
  
• Some have reported problems using Tuxera (approx 33USD).
• Native NTFS support can be enabled in Snow Leopard, but is not advisable, due to instability.
• AirPort Extreme (802.11n) and Time Capsule do not support NTFS
• Maximum file size: 16 TB
• Maximum volume size: 256TB

HFS+ (Hierarchical File System, a.k.a. Mac OS Extended)

• Read/Write HFS+ from native Mac OS X
• Required for Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner backups of Mac internal hard drive.
  [*]To Read/Write HFS+ from Windows, Install MacDrive
  [*]To Read HFS+ (but not Write) from Windows, Install HFSExplorer
• Maximum file size: 8EiB
• Maximum volume size: 8EiB

 

[blevins321]

Try giving the program PartImage a try. HFS is still in beta for them, but I've good luck with it up till now. Linux, open-source free.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

You could also thinking about investing in some used Mac, be it Intel (2006 and following) or an older PPC Mac (2005 and earlier) to properly read HFS+ formatted HDDs and use the appropriate data recovery software (Data Rescue or File Salvage).

Or you could use Mac Drive, as advertised by GGJstudios. I often used it and had no problem with it and HFS+ formatted volumes, but maybe Windows or Linux compatible data recovery software might still have problems with it, thus a dedicated, and used, Mac should not be that hard to get (for 200 to 300 € for an Intel Mac, less for a PPC Mac),

 

[CMXIV]

I do understand the three filesystems at play here. I always change my flash drives to format with fat32 instead of ntfs, as for some reason they come that way...

I believe i have tried MacDrive, and had similar issues to that of my linux experiment. also that it was incredibly slow on a machine that isnt. Some directories have trouble opening their contents. I know files exist in them, but (from another machine) the directories appear as a 0byte file. (obviously wrong)

I have never seen the program PartImage before, and will give it a shot after i run into a dead end with dd.