SD crashed, now my HD is unbootable / unrepairable.

[bergz]

Please forgive the length. I hope to post all pertinent info. I have done a forum search for "error" and have found nothing similar. I'm sorry if this problem has been previously discussed, and would appreciate a link to the original thread if there is another.

HW: Powerbook 1.67 1.5 GB RAM 100GB internal HFS+ 500 GB external iomega silver series USB 2.0 HFS+

OS: 10.4.5

SD: v2.1.3 unregistered

Several months ago there was a little power surge in my home which I suspect damaged my HD slightly. Certain large movie files were corrupted and Mail had some serious problems. But other than that it has worked fine.

I recently saved up the cash to buy a big external HD to do a full backup (I usually just backup my docs onto a 40 GB). I followed all of the SD Manual's instructions, zeroing the new external HD and starting up pressing shift, etc.

I set up a Full Backup onto a Sparse Disk on my external HD. Less than half an hour into the process, 17 GB approx. of about 45 GB of files, SD started showing files that it was having trouble copying. At that point, changing from SD to the Finder or opening menus was very, very slow.

It finally discovered one file that it couldn't copy, and, according to procedure, cancelled the backup. It was a pdf in my Downloads folder. I didn't write down the unspecific error message (I believe it said that it wasn't permitted to copy it) because I wanted to open the console and see what had happened. But then the system crashed. I could move the mouse and that's it, so I restarted. My machine since then has refused to boot from the HD.

I immediately put in my System disk and Disk Utility informed me that my HD, with a strange new name (something like r9s0) couldn't be verified nor repaired because of error -9972 "the underlying task reported failure on exit."

DiskWarrior doesn't even recognize the HD at all (!).

Please, if anyone has any ideas for alternative recovery options, I am open to all suggestions. I hope that in the future, Shirt Pocket places a warning in the manual about the consequences of using their software on drives with possible damage.

Thanks for reading the long post. Please, any suggestions are appreciated!!

--Bergz

[dnanian]

Unfortunately, Bergz, it sounds like you simply had a drive failure -- the drive was showing signs of trouble before, and -- when you copied it -- by chance it gave up the ghost.

I'm not sure a warning would be appropriate: the real warning is "if your drive is failing, don't use your computer since it could be damaged more"... but, anyway, that doesn't fix your situation, unfortunately.

What I'd probably try is Data Rescue II, from Prosoft Engineering. There's a downloadable demo, and it might be able to recover. It's certainly worth a shot. Don't touch your backup, though: at least you have 17GB of files copied... hopefully many of your useful ones are in there!

[bergz]

Thanks for the tip. I've already downloaded DRII.

It's frustrating, but the 17GB that SD successfully backed up couldn't have been more off the mark. I have almost the entire home folder complete, but within each folder (docs, downloads, etc.) it's as if Mr. Murphy (of the Law) picked and chose precisely what I either have no need for or what I already have backed up.

Thanks again for the quick reply.

I do disagree, however, on one point. On sites such as macupdate and versiontracker, Super Duper comes up when doing a search for "recover," and so perhaps a warning would indeed be appropriate, so that no one makes the mistake of using this program instead of those meant to be used on damaged disks such as Data Rescue or Disk Warrior or File Salvage.

Thanks again,

--B

[dnanian]

Thanks, Bergz. I'll see what I can do to help people avoid the trouble you've encountered in a future manual revision.

[bergz]

I appreciate that!

BTW, I have another question, seeing as I have the attention of a knowledgable ear: If I have no FireWire drive, or other mac with FireWire, is my only option, in the case of using the Data Rescue demo, to burn a boot disk? I have an old ibook with usb 1.1 and the iomega drive with USB 2.0. and am not sure how to proceed once I have these utilities.

thanks, again.

--B

[dnanian]

I'm sorry, Bergz. I'm not familiar enough with its specifics to be able to help. But you'll need to be able to start from something, and since you can't boot externally I think a boot disk is your only real option.