Repair Mac Hard Drive

[OldDutch]

Hello,

So my neighbor dropped off her Mac Laptop to me a few days ago. She was complaining that it was very slow to boot, and she couldn't open her iPhoto app.

Sure enough it takes about 10 minutes on boot to become usable, and all programs take forever to load. So I ran "Disk Utility" which came back with errors and said I had to reboot using my install Disk and run disk utility from the boot disk.

So this is the issue, she doesn't have this disk. So I managed to hunt down a Snow Leopard Retail DVD (She is on 10.6.8), and used that on boot. Doesn't work, as on boot from the DVD it crashes and says I need to restart.

Online, I read that you need to use the exact DVD that came with your Mac, or this type of crash can occur.

All I am looking for is a way to boot into Disk Utility, run it, and reboot. Why is this so hard? I also read booting into safe mode will run Disk Utility and fix, however I held the shift key on boot, it loaded safe mode, but I am not sure if that actually ran disk utility?

Does anyone have experience in this, or know of a way I can fix the disk without the original DVD? It is a Mac from 2009 so there is no recovery drive.

[Milt Schmidt]

Any Snow Leopard disk will work fine. There are two disks that came with that Mac, one with the operating system and one with the extra apps that were factory installed. There is no difference between Snow Leopard retail disks and the ones that came with Macs. The only thing you have to be sure of is that you don't try to install an older version of OS X than the computer originally came with, ie: you can't install Tiger on a computer than came with Snow Leopard.

So it sounds like there could be a problem somewhere else, if you have a spare hard drive you can install you might find that disk utility is failing because of problems with the hard disk. That would be ideal, really, be cause it's a relatively easy fix that you can do at home in a few minutes.

Milt

[sclitheroe]

Overall slowness, as observed when booting, won't have anything to do with disk permissions or disk corruption, it's a failing hard drive. If you open the Console app and take a look at the All Messages section, you'll see errors on /dev/disk1 or a device named similarly to that, indicating bad sectors.

Since you don't have a bootable DVD that is working, you can prove this by booting in single user mode off the hard drive (hold down command-s when powering on), and running fsck -fy - this will fix any file system corruption without needing to be booted off DVD, and you'll see that its still not running properly when you subsequently reboot.

[OldDutch]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Overall slowness, as observed when booting, won't have anything to do with disk permissions or disk corruption, it's a failing hard drive. If you open the Console app and take a look at the All Messages section, you'll see errors on /dev/disk1 or a device named similarly to that, indicating bad sectors.

Since you don't have a bootable DVD that is working, you can prove this by booting in single user mode off the hard drive (hold down command-s when powering on), and running fsck -fy - this will fix any file system corruption without needing to be booted off DVD, and you'll see that its still not running properly when you subsequently reboot.

Thank you both, that is what I suspected. I read booting into safe mode basically runs fsck at startup, and after doing that, it still gave me problems.

Anyways, if I wanted to recommend to her a place to get her data backed up ASAP, where should she go? Apple store? memory express?

I tried running time machine, and even drag drop, but both come back with errors. I think the next step is to get a pro involved who can save her family photos before they are gone for good.

Any suggestions? Cheers!

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by OldDutch

Thank you both, that is what I suspected. I read booting into safe mode basically runs fsck at startup, and after doing that, it still gave me problems.

Anyways, if I wanted to recommend to her a place to get her data backed up ASAP, where should she go? Apple store? memory express?

I tried running time machine, and even drag drop, but both come back with errors. I think the next step is to get a pro involved who can save her family photos before they are gone for good.

Any suggestions? Cheers!

She wasn't using time machine previously?

Edit: I guess not since you're looking to pull data off the drive before it fails completely.

What I would try is using SuperDuper to clone the internal disk to an external one. I'm 98% certain that SuperDuper won't choke on bad blocks like Finder or Time Machine will - it will keep copying everything it can, which is what you want. SuperDuper is free to use for this kind of functionality - you only pay if you want the more advanced smart copy and scheduling features, which you don't need to get a brand new clone.

She should refrain at all costs from using the machine until you've got the clone - keep in mind that the physical damage to the drive could be worsening the longer you use it, particularly if there's contamination inside the drive, so there's no sense in endangering the data any more than neccessary.

Get a USB drive, get a SuperDuper clone of everything you can, and then evaluate if you've got the bulk of the data, and what your next steps are. Odds are you'll get most of the stuff off the drive and won't be looking at more expensive data recovery options.

[OldDutch]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

She wasn't using time machine previously?

Edit: I guess not since you're looking to pull data off the drive before it fails completely.

What I would try is using SuperDuper to clone the internal disk to an external one. I'm 98% certain that SuperDuper won't choke on bad blocks like Finder or Time Machine will - it will keep copying everything it can, which is what you want. SuperDuper is free to use for this kind of functionality - you only pay if you want the more advanced smart copy and scheduling features, which you don't need to get a brand new clone.

She should refrain at all costs from using the machine until you've got the clone - keep in mind that the physical damage to the drive could be worsening the longer you use it, particularly if there's contamination inside the drive, so there's no sense in endangering the data any more than neccessary.

Get a USB drive, get a SuperDuper clone of everything you can, and then evaluate if you've got the bulk of the data, and what your next steps are. Odds are you'll get most of the stuff off the drive and won't be looking at more expensive data recovery options.

So I tried both a full and user file only backup. Both failed, and the log says it was an output error.

Looks like I will be giving her laptop back, with advice on a 3rd party that can help recover her data. Unless there is something else I can try?

If not, is there a company I can at least give her the option of using, that you would recommend?

[maverickstruth]

Originally Posted by OldDutch

If not, is there a company I can at least give her the option of using, that you would recommend?

Can't recommend one to use, but can absolutely recommend not using MacMechanic, after the nightmare experience we had with the fellow running that outfit. Horrible customer service with absolute lack of communication, culminating in a "repair" in which they replaced the part with a substandard replacement piece (like, replacing a 512 MB video card with a 128 MB vid card) without notifying or asking us. He also claimed to be a certified tech, but that doesn't mean anything.

The most important thing if you're going to go to a company is to make sure that they're an Apple Authorized Service Provider. If they are, they're obligated to follow Apple's "rules" about how to provide proper service. If they're not... all bets are off.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by OldDutch

So I tried both a full and user file only backup. Both failed, and the log says it was an output error.

Looks like I will be giving her laptop back, with advice on a 3rd party that can help recover her data. Unless there is something else I can try?

If not, is there a company I can at least give her the option of using, that you would recommend?

Hmm..try Carbon Copy Cloner if SuperDuper is bombing. The goal at this point is to salvage what can be salvaged before handing off to any third party, because once the machine leaves your sight, who knows what could/will happen to the data.

[Milt Schmidt]

What sclitheroe said!

SuperDuper and CarbonCopyCloner are probably what any third party is going to try any way, so you might as well try everything you can yourself.

Milt

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Milt Schmidt

What sclitheroe said!

SuperDuper and CarbonCopyCloner are probably what any third party is going to try any way, so you might as well try everything you can yourself.

Milt

My understanding is that Carbon Copy Cloner uses the ditto command under the hood, and ditto should simply skip unreadable files, rather than abort the whole copy. I thought SuperDuper worked this way as well, but I might have been mistaken.

Hopefully this allows the majority of the data to be copied off the drive.

[OldDutch]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

My understanding is that Carbon Copy Cloner uses the ditto command under the hood, and ditto should simply skip unreadable files, rather than abort the whole copy. I thought SuperDuper worked this way as well, but I might have been mistaken.

Hopefully this allows the majority of the data to be copied off the drive.

Great, it mostly worked! I got about 95% off before it crashed. Better than the other attempts, that is for sure.

So I am going to install a new hard drive, and restore what I can. I will also try an plug the drive in via usb enclosure and try again.

Thanks again!

[Milt Schmidt]

Good to see CCC worked pretty well. Now you've just got to convince your friend to use Time Machine so you don't have to do this again

Milt

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by OldDutch

Great, it mostly worked! I got about 95% off before it crashed. Better than the other attempts, that is for sure.

So I am going to install a new hard drive, and restore what I can. I will also try an plug the drive in via usb enclosure and try again.

Thanks again!

Cool. Did you lose a lot of user data like photos and stuff, or was most of the corruption elsewhere?

Good job keeping at this.

[OldDutch]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Cool. Did you lose a lot of user data like photos and stuff, or was most of the corruption elsewhere?

Good job keeping at this.

Some photos were lost but she ended up having another copy on an old cd. So it worked out quite well.

In the end she learned a lesson by near miss. Thanks to you guys. Cheers again we owe you both one.