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General discussion

Trying to revive macbook hard drive data

Apr 19, 2007 12:00PM PDT

My macbook 1.83 Ghz took a fall and died. I now need to recover the data from the hard drive (Seagate "Momentus 5400.2") preferably without going to the expense of data recovery. So I bought an external USB enclosure. The hard drive spins up, but does not register on my new Macbook (white) 2Ghz. Can you suggest what I could do next, please? Many thanks.

Discussion is locked

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The usuals and the unusual.
Apr 19, 2007 12:09PM PDT
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(NT) He doesn't have a Mac G3
Apr 19, 2007 9:53PM PDT
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Missed the point?
Apr 19, 2007 10:03PM PDT

Spinrite will work on the drive from other models. It's an offbeat method to get cranky drives back.

It's a little rare so I shared it.

Bob

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Ahh, I see.
Apr 20, 2007 1:00AM PDT

Interesting.

I have put drives from Windows machines into a Mac and scanned for virus's before and, with a good drive, removed data from it successfully.
That Spinrite got some good reviews

P

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Cables
Apr 19, 2007 5:21PM PDT

I was doing the same thing but my cables were a bit loose and I didnt know. There was a message which said that the drive could not be started (on XP) and it told me to check the connections. I ignored this but after an hour I got frustrated and checked anyways as it would not hurt. I found the cable to be a bit loose and when I put it in place in 1 sec and the drive was up and running.

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External Drive
Apr 19, 2007 9:59PM PDT

When you say it does not register on your Macbook, are you saying that it does not mount on the desktop or that you cannot see it in the DIsk Utility program?

As already mentioned, DiskWarrior is very adept at bringing drives back to life, if the problem is directory related. It is certainly worth a try.
I'm not sure if the MacBook series has the "negative G" function for the drive. It parks the heads when it detects that the Macbook is falling.
If it does, then the platters may be fine, which would make data recovery easier. If not for you, then for a company like DriveSavers.

Disk Warrior first though

P

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Thanks - but no luck yet.
Apr 21, 2007 1:10PM PDT

I tried both MacWarrior and SpinRite. Not sure If Im doing Mac Warrior right - when you start it up it searches for available drives before it works its magic. But my drive wasn't mounting on the desktop to start with - so that didn't work.

Spinrite at least could see the drive, but reported a fatal error, and could do nothing for me. Could this possibly be because it was trying to recover a SATA drive when SpinRite is geared toward IDE drives?

Anyway before I surrender to expensive data recovery, do you think there's anything else I could do?

(BTW How would putting the hard drive in the freezer overnight help with SpinRite data recovery? - see http://www.grc.com/sr/testimonials.htm - about iMac G3)

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That's bad.
Apr 21, 2007 1:13PM PDT

At this point I'd be satisfied with anything to get the files you didn't backup back long enough to copy them out. The drive is not one I'd consider for anything other than to try to get the files out. It's dead Jim.

Bob