[ale] SOLVED (probably) (NOT!) Re: Rescuing an OS X HD from Linux - partition table hosed

[Michael H. Warfield]

On Thu, 2010-01-14 at 22:19 -0700, JK wrote: 
> On 1/14/2010 6:10 PM, JK wrote:
> > Yes, I am a sinner with the self-followups; sorry.
> >
> > Turns out GNU parted has a much better understanding of OSX disks.
> > I have located the HFS filesystem and am happily fsck.hfsplus'ing
> > it now.


> "Happily" may have been an overstatement.  I am seeing a great
> many "{DRDY ERR}" status messages during the fsck process.
> It does seem to making progress, but  s l o w l y.

This is sounding very much like the hard drive has failed.  I would
recommend you look at dd-rescue (there are two of them, one is GNU
dd-rescue plus the other plain dd-rescue).  Make an image of that drive
before you do any further damage!  Then you can use some data recovery
tools to actually extract the data.

I did a talk on "Extreme Practical Data Recovery" at an ALE meeting
almost 2-1/2 years ago.  The presentation slides are here:

http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/2007/DataRecovery-ALE-2007/DataRecovery-ALE-2007.odp
http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/2007/DataRecovery-ALE-2007/DataRecovery-ALE-2007.ppt
http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/2007/DataRecovery-ALE-2007/DataRecovery-ALE-2007.pdf

> (Later) fsck.hfsplus says: "Unable to repair filesystem after
> 3 attempts."  However, I *was* able to mount the partition and
> see some files.  Attempts to copy led to the same behavior as
> the fsck: {DRDY ERR} messages all over the place.

> Time to seek professional help?  Or is there something else I
> should try first?  (Other than telling the ex to make regular
> backups in the future, I mean.)

> Thanks,

> -- JK

Regards,
Mike
-- 
Michael H. Warfield (AI4NB) | (770) 985-6132 |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
   /\/\|=mhw=|\/\/          | (678) 463-0932 |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
   NIC whois: MHW9          | An optimist believes we live in the best of all
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