external hard drive 911

prof_rockwell

OK, soooo, it seems I've lost 2 years worth of garageband sessions on my external hard drive, which to say the least is a very bad look. I'm using a 1.5gHZ G4 15" powerbook, OSX 10.4.8, and using a Lacie Triple Interface 160gb external with a homemade 250gb external daisy-chained to the Lacie. I ran Disk Utility on both drives to verify, and they both had errors. Is there any extraction program I can use to try and find my data before I attempt a repair?I'm kinda expecting that I'm S.O.L., but any advice would me most appreciative. thanks.

Controller_7

if you can actually still see the drives in disk utility than you aren't that bad off. It could be worse. I don't think repairing them will erase your files. Sometimes things just get out of order and it get's confused. You might want to try and save some files first, but just be patient and don't do anything immediately. if you can still access the drives you are in good shape.

You might even take it to the mac store or if you have any computer nerd friends and just have them run through the process for you. My one experince at the mac store with a "genius" was somewhat helpful. If you tell them it's mac related (garage band) files you need to save they'll probably be happy to help you. It's free too.

ariel_calmer

Diskwarrior 'em...

prof_rockwell

Thanks C7 - that's definitely encouraging. I'm just hoping that I didn't make a bonehead mistake and overwrite these files by mistake when I was re-arranging my drives a few months back.

BTW - is this the same Controller 7 that put out Left Handed Selections?

I'll also look into Diskwarrior - thanks for the info!

Controller_7

yeah, just be patient. Don't rush to do anything, otherwise you might regret it. Waiting a day or two is much better than never getting anything back.

yes, that's me.

prof_rockwell

yeah, i'm surprising myself at how calm I am about this. And yeah, the disks are mounting fine, and seem to be working ok otherwise. set up an appt. with the genius bar for tonight so we'll see how that goes.

Thanks again.


coolbeans - I got your record!

DJ_Zest

OK, soooo, it seems I've lost 2 years worth of garageband sessions on my external hard drive, which to say the least is a very bad look. I'm using a 1.5gHZ G4 15" powerbook, OSX 10.4.8, and using a Lacie Triple Interface 160gb external with a homemade 250gb external daisy-chained to the Lacie. I ran Disk Utility on both drives to verify, and they both had errors. Is there any extraction program I can use to try and find my data before I attempt a repair?

I'm kinda expecting that I'm S.O.L., but any advice would me most appreciative.

thanks.

We sell a lot of Rocstor external hard drives, we almost never have any problems, Lacie has a very bad track record...
Peace
DJ Zest

TrueStu

I'm an IT professional - I worked at Apple for five years and continue to work with Apples- so I say this with confidence: just because disk utility verified there were directory errors on the drive does not mean it cannot repair them. There is virtually no risk to repairing the directory with disk utility. Go ahead and hit repair and see what happens.

If there are errors that disk utility cannot repair, backup the drives and get Disk Warrior and rebuild the directories using it.

Side note: LaCie drives come formatted in a way that is not Mac OS Extended out of the box. If your drives aren't Mac OS extended format right now, I'd recommend eventually backing up the data, reformatting them, and copying the data back to the drives.

DJ_Zest

The new Disk Warrior is pretty sweet, also Drive Genius has worked pretty well, and Tech Tool Pro is the bomb...
Peace
DJ Zest

prof_rockwell

I'm an IT professional - I worked at Apple for five years and continue to work with Apples- so I say this with confidence: just because disk utility verified there were directory errors on the drive does not mean it cannot repair them. There is virtually no risk to repairing the directory with disk utility. Go ahead and hit repair and see what happens.

If there are errors that disk utility cannot repair, backup the drives and get Disk Warrior and rebuild the directories using it.

Side note: LaCie drives come formatted in a way that is not Mac OS Extended out of the box. If your drives aren't Mac OS extended format right now, I'd recommend eventually backing up the data, reformatting them, and copying the data back to the drives.

yeah, I went ahead and repaired the volume, and took it into the Genius bar, but unfortunately there wasn't much they could do in the way of data recovery. He did check the hidden files and tested it with Console, but basically had to refer me to other spots in the city. Thanks again!

AlGarth

I have had a few hard drive issues.
Once they stopped showing up on my imac desktop so I tried plugging them into my laptop and they showed up fine. Then I took them back to my imac and they appeared fine again.