Data recovery for OS X

Question

I've got a Mac that won't boot and I'd like to recover whatever data I can before wiping the hard drive and reinstalling. I'm looking for something similar to TRK (which is Windows-centric) — boot from CD, mount the hard drive, and copy to a network share.

I just noticed TRK does appear to support HFS+; has anyone had success with this?

Answer 1

I ultimately did use TRK, which does support HFS+. I had to do a fair amount of Googling to get mounting to work, but I ended up with this:

# mount -r -t hfsplus /dev/sda2 /sda2

-r mounts the drive read-only (to avoid any further damage to data) and -t hfsplus tells it you're mounting a HFS+ partition. (hfsplus didn't show up in the man page or with man -? – I spent at least half an hour figuring that one out.)

I then mounted a shared drive on a Windows server.

# mount -t cifs -o username=**** //server-ip/share /mnt0

It will ask for your password and mount the share.

Since my Windows server runs Windows Server 2008, I had to allow unsigned SMB connections. (I was getting the error smb signing is mandatory and we have disabled it.) Fire up regedit and navigate to

 HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters

and change requiresecuritysignature to 0.

Answer 2

You could try using PhotoRec, which is free, open source, and has some similar capabilities. It's on the Knoppix Live CD along with TestDisk.

Answer 3

+1 to Alex - agreed you should get an external harddrive to perform the deposit point next time. I think your just adding extra complications to the recovery actions that you probably dont need.

Taking the drive out of the laptop, using a 2.5 ata connector, bought from any computer parts store and placing it in a desktop pc or an external harddrive case, then run your recovery software of choice. Ask a friend for loan of pc or laptop if you dont have a spare computer to work with.

I personally use 2 types. "R-Studio" which recovers any type of file system, runs on windows, or BackTrack bootable linux cd. Have tried many many others, but these 2 will always stay in my kit.