Recommended Data Recovery software

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mushtac

157 posts

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#30626 15-Feb-2009 23:35

I have a PowerBook G4 with a failed hard drive, I removed the hard drive from the PowerBook and into a USB external caddy. I can see all the folders and all are accessible except the Users folder which has the Documents/Library/Music/Pictures folders that I would like to recover. Any advice on a program that can repair/recover the Users folder, is there a particular reason the Users folder is not accessible but the rest of the folders are?

josephhinvest

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#195991 16-Feb-2009 08:45

Hi mushtac,
I can't imagine why the /Users folder would be the only missing folder, if nothing else, might just be very bad luck.I've used Prosoft Data Rescue II with varying success over the years. The website allows you to download a very very limited trial version, but this is unlikely to help you much as it will only recover 1(!) file.
Cheers,Joseph.

gehenna

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#195992 16-Feb-2009 08:47

You probably don't have rights to access the Users folder on the computer that the hard drive is connected to. Can you see the Users folder at all or is it not showing up? If you can see it, try right clicking and select Get Info.

At the bottom of the window that pops up you'll see a section that shows what access levels the folder has. Usually says Read Only, but perhaps it will let you change it to read/write. You may need to authenticate as an administrator user to be able to change this, but it should work.

mushtac

157 posts

Master Geek

#196041 16-Feb-2009 13:38

I have tried that already gehenna but will check again tonight. I can see all folders including Users/mushtac but can't open or view any folders/files from there. Thanks for your time

gehenna

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#196044 16-Feb-2009 13:51

that definitely sounds like a permissions issue then. try creating a user on your mac that is the same name, etc as the user on the hard drive. log in as them and see if you can then access the stuff on the drive, perhaps if you can try changing the permissions from there and then log back in yourself.

josephhinvest

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#196134 16-Feb-2009 19:53

Also, if it is just a permissions issue, you may be able to get around the error.
Connect your hard drive enclosure.
Select the drive in Finder.
Right Click, select Get Info.
At bottom of Get Info window, you should see a check box "Ignore ownership on this volume".
Check that this is UN checked, this should avoid being prevented from accessing folders.

Cheers,Joseph.

gehenna

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#196144 16-Feb-2009 20:07

And yet another option would be to boot off the external drive - hold Option while your Mac starts up. You should get a prompt asking whether to boot off the internal drive or the external USB drive. Choose the USB drive and let the Mac start up from that drive.

Once you're in, copy the content you need to a folder on the internal drive, or onto another external drive.

You could even use this method to change the file permissions if you can't do so from within your regularly booted mac.

Plenty of options for this problem it seems :)

mushtac

157 posts

Master Geek

#196152 16-Feb-2009 21:00

Thanks for your help jofizz & gehenna, will tonight and post back.

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mushtac

157 posts

Master Geek

#196266 17-Feb-2009 13:08

No luck, can't help but think this is a file permissions issue. Can see all folders on hard drive except Users/mushtac, done some surfing on internet but can't seem to find a way of accessing data or removing permissions.

zactommo

40 posts

Geek

#200394 10-Mar-2009 13:29

A bit of a late reply.

I've used test disk with pretty good results. It a free, terminal based program, and you can get it to recover all the files on your drive, not just the "deleted" files. Its the most powerful data recovery program i've found, I use it for windows too.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download
The download comes with two programs, photorec, which is the one you are after, which will recover files for you, and test disk, which can repair munted partition tables etc.....haven't used that so much.

mushtac

157 posts

Master Geek

#200488 10-Mar-2009 22:02

Thanks zactommo, will try it next time I have to recover some data or repair partition.
I was able to recover most of the data off my PowerBook G4 using Prosoft Data Rescue II, it took a while but did a good job considering the hard drive was corrupt.
Makes me wonder if HFS is a more superior file system than NTFS, or is it OSX is more superior than Windows?

stevenz

2802 posts

Uber Geek

#200609 11-Mar-2009 13:45

If you boot with the OS X install/recovery CD and run Terminal from there you The whole install runs as true root afaik so should be able to see everything if it's actually there.

Failing that, if you know the other users password you should use the sudo command to perform operations as them from the shell and gain their permissions set? (Only works if the local password database matches the one on the drive with the particular folder).