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There is a Linux tool called "safecopy" that can often recover data from failing hard drives. If you can boot a live Linux CD you should be able to download saf

There is a Linux tool called "safecopy" that can often recover data from failing hard drives. If you can boot a live Linux CD you should be able to download safecopy and run it against your hard drive. Be VERY careful about the command line options, if you get the source and destination parameters backwards you'll destroy any hope of getting data back from your HD. I think I've got an older Mac mini here in the shop that we use occasionally for jobs that require Mac-specific things. If you can get a working internet connection and want to try, I'll get it hooked up and see if I can give you remote access to it. If you want to do that, send me an email (link is in my username profile).

speeder 11y ago
I liked that idea. Now I am wondering how to boot Linux on a Mac... I found a wonderful tool named "Mac Linux USB Loader" to create a Linux bootable with USB, but that tool is OSX only (since my OSX don't boot at all... it does not help). Oh, and the Mac don't have a CD reader.
- thaumaturgy 11y ago
  Booting Linux on your Mac won't help. Safecopy doesn't repair the data on your drive, it just copies data from one drive to another drive -- but it does so very carefully, going back and re-reading bad sectors and narrowing down the amount of unreadable data. You'd need a second computer with extra drive space greater than or equal to the entire size of the hard drive in your Mac. I think you've gotta find some local help with this. It's tough to do much about it from here with less than a day before your work is due.
  - speeder 11y ago
    My idea is boot the mac, copy the code, and then edit it using the cloud mac thing suggested in another reply here in the thread... I am not sure if it will work, but so far is the best idea.
    - thaumaturgy 11y ago
      Post #5 in http://www.linux.org/threads/mac-linux-usb-loader.3579/ http://www.linux.org/threads/mac-linux-usb-loader.3579/ looks like it has instructions that might work for setting up the USB drive without a booting Mac.
NamTaf 11y ago
ddrescue is the tool I've used to do this sort of work. I don't know how it compares to safecopy, but it's quite good. It'll do dd of varying speeds/block sizes to recover what it can and will approach bad blocks from both 'sides' to eck out every bit (literally) of data that it can. It'll also remember where it's scanned, where it's failed and can resume if you stop it (so long as you set a logfile - ALWAYS set a logfile!) Again, not sure if this will help but it's another option there.

speeder 11y ago

I liked that idea. Now I am wondering how to boot Linux on a Mac... I found a wonderful tool named "Mac Linux USB Loader" to create a Linux bootable with USB, but that tool is OSX only (since my OSX don't boot at all... it does not help). Oh, and the Mac don't have a CD reader.

thaumaturgy 11y ago
Booting Linux on your Mac won't help. Safecopy doesn't repair the data on your drive, it just copies data from one drive to another drive -- but it does so very carefully, going back and re-reading bad sectors and narrowing down the amount of unreadable data. You'd need a second computer with extra drive space greater than or equal to the entire size of the hard drive in your Mac. I think you've gotta find some local help with this. It's tough to do much about it from here with less than a day before your work is due.
- speeder 11y ago
  My idea is boot the mac, copy the code, and then edit it using the cloud mac thing suggested in another reply here in the thread... I am not sure if it will work, but so far is the best idea.
  - thaumaturgy 11y ago
    Post #5 in http://www.linux.org/threads/mac-linux-usb-loader.3579/ http://www.linux.org/threads/mac-linux-usb-loader.3579/ looks like it has instructions that might work for setting up the USB drive without a booting Mac.

NamTaf 11y ago

ddrescue is the tool I've used to do this sort of work. I don't know how it compares to safecopy, but it's quite good. It'll do dd of varying speeds/block sizes to recover what it can and will approach bad blocks from both 'sides' to eck out every bit (literally) of data that it can. It'll also remember where it's scanned, where it's failed and can resume if you stop it (so long as you set a logfile - ALWAYS set a logfile!) Again, not sure if this will help but it's another option there.