Filed under: Hardware, Troubleshooting
Data recovery: The option of last resort (Part 3 of 3)
Back to Part I: losing all the data on a hard disk, and Part II: the trials and tribulations of paying to get it back. Now we find out what happened, and what you can expect from a data recovery specialist.
Greg, the technician from Iomega Data Recovery, sent back two documents two days later: One was a Word document containing a list of files that were recovered from the disk.
The document had most of my files in it, but some were missing. Many of the files were grouped by file type in an "orphans" folder, meaning that the files were on the disk, but their place in the disk's directory structure was lost. Some files were only named according to their file type, such as "m4p-00195.m4p" and "InDesignCS-00003.indd" because their filenames were gone. I would find out later that some files were copied several times (sometimes as many as six times): once as part of the directory structure, and again in the "orphans" folder. Still: many copies are better than no copies.
They offered to return the data on a new hard disk, but the cost of it is not included in the recovery fee. The second attachment to the tech's email was a price list. I chose the cheapest bare hard disk at the necessary capacity, since I had an enclosure to put it in. They offered (more expensive) USB and FireWire hard disks as options for return as well. So add another $55 to the total price.
Greg also asked for a list of the 20 most critical files that could be used as a test for successful recovery. I emailed him a list of mostly files for work I had in progress during the failure, a brochure for a client of mine that manufactures propellers. He called the next day, walking me through the contents of the InDesign document and its support files. "This one appears to be a picture of a propeller blade. This one has a big headline that says 'simply the best.'" Relief. I was satisfied that everything was recovered, approved the recovery, and thanked Greg.
The next part was the hardest: Paying the invoice. The grand total wasn't as bad as I thought: I was prepared to pay tax on all $1,500, but (in California at least) services aren't taxable. So the only tax I had to pay was $4.54 on the replacement hard disk. The grand total was $1,559.54. I'm writing that off my taxes this year.
Once my payment was processed, which took a day, two drives were overnighted to me: the original (failed) drive, and the new replacement drive. I popped the replacement went into my enclosure, and -- tah dah! -- there were my files.
The most significant casualty of the data recovery, however, was the loss of 10 years of painstakingly collected Mystery Science Theater 3000 videos. Many were videos I had recorded originally on VHS, some had been, uh, acquired by other means -- as youthful indiscretions, shall we say. Thankfully, all my project data and purchased music was safe and sound. Everything that was lost could be replaced.
Files on the replacement disk were painfully disorganized, though, which gave me an idea of just how logically corrupted the volume was. Files that were added to the drive after it had been connected via the AirPort Base Station were mostly in the Orphans folder, apparently scattered hither and yon across the disk's platters. I spent the better part of a day copying files, reorganizing everything, and preparing my new backup strategy that included a brand-new, 1.5TB external disk to use with Time Machine.
I learned my lesson the hard way. I had a good experience, but paid dearly for it.
If this story saves anyone any amount of money for data recovery, then it's done its job. Please: Back up your data. The money you spend on a hard disk for backup is far less than what you'd spend on data recovery.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
mentalsticks said 8:32AM on 1-22-2009
and that's a cool THREE page hits for the article! way to boost the ad revenue!
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Michael Rose said 8:35AM on 1-22-2009
And that's an inane comment. It's a very long and thorough piece and I asked that Robert break it up into sections.
Paul said 9:07AM on 1-22-2009
As an AASP I see this far too often. and I gotta say, $1,500 is on the lower end of things for this kind of service. We do these things in house when we can, but if it has to go out to a lab such as Drive Savers, it's going to get much more expensive.
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LD said 9:02AM on 1-22-2009
Be smart, get a Drobo! Don't rely on simply adding another single disk, though that's better than just 1 total disk. However, I assume you'll have to manually initiate a backup to that second drive or at least automate the backup with some software.
Drobo, as I'm sure you're aware, gives you disk redundancy. There is no need to manually intervene and you get protection from a single drive failure. However, as with any good backup strategy, you should also make periodic backups to other media, like DVD.
You still have a bit to learn about your data safety, even after this (long winded) experience.
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GrantC said 9:57AM on 1-22-2009
DROBO is v. expensive!
For a more sensibly priced option, all you need is an old desktop computer, a few spare SATA interfaces and some HDDs- download a Ubuntu image and have a RAID party- i recommend the RAID5- tis tasty :-)
Jbodden said 9:33AM on 1-22-2009
nice article, never before did I know that data recovery was so expensive. Thank god for my paranoia lol
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Tom Waterhouse said 9:16AM on 1-22-2009
Always scary to hear of HD failures...
Does anyone know of any good apps for data recovery? I've got DiskWarrior, but never had to put it to the test thankfully. Just wondered if anyone knew of the best solution?
Thankfully Time Machine does a great job of backing up for me currently.
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Brian Mason said 10:33AM on 1-22-2009
I just had my Time Machine backup crash. I use TechTool and it couldn't recover the data on the external drive. So I lost my backup files. The lesson for me -- back up your backup.
SIP said 9:16AM on 1-22-2009
A friend of mine lost two HDs one after the other and we have recovered both of them using Data Rescue II.
The first was a 60GB that ended up being a 90GB rescue, but there were obviously duplicate files on the new HD -- same thing with the second HD, recovered more data than was physically possible on the broken HD.
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Mike K. said 10:23AM on 1-22-2009
Literally last week I had my boot drive on G4 Sawtooth die, and I was able to recover at least my important and most recent files by using Disk Rescue II. That's $100 well spent. I'm just glad I had backed up that drive just before my recent Leopard install.
Another trick for data recovery that I can't remember where I heard it from, is to put the hard drive in a ziplock, and put it in the freezer and take it out after a couple hours, let it warm up so the condensation doesn't do bad things, and then run your disc utility of choice. It works, and I don't know why, but it has let me boot disks I thought were dead.
Of course if you have a hardware failure, there's not much that can be done, short of a clean room disassembly and scan of the bare platters.
Steve said 9:23AM on 1-22-2009
I believe you could have saved $1,470 if you had tried out SpinRite ($89 @ http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm ) before sending the disk to recovery
Then, you could have mounted your drive into a regular PC (using SATA or IDE) and run Spinrite. It often seem to work in cases like yours.
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Murray said 11:09AM on 1-22-2009
Steve,
How would Spinrite handle a Mac drive?
At work I backup my data every few days to an external FW drive that I take home with me. I also periodically make bootable copies of the drive using SuperDuper! on a different partition of the FW drive. I also have a Time Machine drive attached to my work machine.
At home I have a Time Machine Drive and I have just signed up for Back Blaze to backup my photos and music. I think I am going to sign up for Back Blaze for work as well.
Murray
lrtitze said 12:04PM on 1-22-2009
I've used SpinRite numerous times on what seemed to be completely dead Mac disks and had nearly 100% success - recovering every file and directory.
SpinRite operates at the level of the bits on the disk sectors and doesn't need to know anything about the OS or format of the data.
Otsego_Undead said 9:40AM on 1-22-2009
Robert, I'd like to hear about your set-up that you have now. I currently have a similar situation- I use an external HDD connected to my AEBS-N, which is half also used as a file share, so I'm curious to know if you are still using your drive on the airport, and if so, what are you doing for redundancy for that dirve?
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Robert Palmer said 10:07AM on 1-22-2009
The short answer is that I don't have any drives connected to the AEBS anymore. I have a printer connected there, which is handy, but I'm gun-shy now about connecting disks to it (as you might surmise).
I use Time Machine for backing up now, though I have been eyeing a Drobo-like solution for a more centralized place for a network backup between my two computers.
So, for Time Machine, I have two external disks: one for the iMac and one for the MacBook. For the iMac, I have a 1.5TB WD MyBook USB external hard disk that's worked great for me so far. I haven't had to do a full system restore with it (touch wood), but for the files that I've needed to recover because I made a bonehead move, it's worked great.
For the MacBook, I have a 250GB LaCie brick drive (I think that's what it's called -- it's the Lego-shaped one ;) that I connect up while I'm at my desk using a long (it must be 12', if not longer) USB cable. It's long enough to let me move the computer around on my desk and onto my lap without yanking the cord out of the computer.
Hope that answers your question!
Chaz Mangus said 9:45AM on 1-22-2009
I think this could have been recovered locally Via a Macintosh Consultant http://apple.com/consultants/ if you are not missing anything from your story the drive showed up with Disk Utility meaning DiskWarrior would have been able to rebuild the file structure and preview and grab the data off as it sounded like they did. I save clients from having to send drives off all the time buy simply knowing how to use DiskWarrior. Also, I always have a Backup of a Drive meaning i would not just for a 1 disk Solution buy a Two Drive Kit that can do RAID 1 as i tell everyone i know "It's not if your drive will fail It's When?", and what cost to you.
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MacRebel said 10:02AM on 1-22-2009
It clearly proves the importance of good backups. And "good" backups mean that you verify from time to time if you are able to restore the data. It wouldn't be the first time that I hear a customer who has nothing but a corrupt backup media.
http://www.macrebel.com
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Charles said 10:34AM on 1-22-2009
A similar thing happened to me a couple of years ago. I had purchased a 500gb Lacie drive and for the next few weeks dutifuly ripped my entire cd collection to it. About 600 discs. Then I took all of the cds down to the used record shop and sold them. Two months later, boom. Same thing. Wouldn't mount, couldn't be repaired. After screaming and pulling most of my hair out, I sucked it up and reformatted/partitioned the drive. It's been working fine ever since. I couldn't part with the crazy money recovery would have cost, even though it would mean recovery a few thousand dollars worth of purchased music. If I learned anything, it's that everything, even data, is replaceable (or can be lived without). I do however back up the stuff-I-wanna-keep-forever on DVDs, though I've found the ones i burned 3 years ago are still sitting in a drawer. Good to know they are there, but there is something to be said about fresh beginnings.
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caleb said 1:30PM on 1-23-2009
serves you right for stealing content like that!
Dean said 5:45PM on 1-23-2009
I would like to know how to backup my Time Machine backup. I am looking for a copy/duplicating/cloning program that will properly handle the multiple hard links in a TM disk. My first attempt tried SuperDuper which seemed to choke. It reported various errors related to hard links before quitting part way through. I am now trying Carbon Copy Cloner to see if it works.
I want to make a copy of my TM disk that I take offsite (home -> work). When the original TM disk crashes, I would bring back the copy and resume TM, with only a week or two of backup missing.
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