Tag Archives: Apple

Format Your Drive For A Mac

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Plenty of shops will sell you a “Mac Hard Drive” but there is no reason why you cannot use a windows format drive on a Mac. You just need to format it first. There was once a time when a drive was specially formatted by Apple to use on their Macs, but these days Apple use the same hard drives as everyone else. To use with the latest versions of OS X I would recommend following the steps below.

NOTE: Formatting your drive will destroy all the data. Make sure there’s nothing on there you need.

1. First attach the drive to your Mac. The Mac will notify you with a small finder window to initialise the drive. See below.

Format Your Drive For A Mac

Initialize Your Drive For A Mac

2. Once you have clicked initialize you will see the Disk Utility Application window. See below.

Format Your Drive For A Mac

Mac Disk Utility

3. You need to select the drive you want to format in the left hand window of the utility as highlighted in blue. Internal drives show as grey and external drives show as yellow. At this point make sure you choose the correct drive, the utility will not allow you to format the internal boot drive. See below.

Format Your Drive For A Mac

Drive selected

4. Now choose the Partition Tab. See below.

Format Your Drive For A Mac

Partition Tab

5. Now click on the Partition Layout drop down bar and choose the first option “1 Partition”. Also to the right under Partition Information give your drive a name and below that choose the partition type you want which will be Mac OS Extended ( journaled ). We are nearly there. You now need to click on the options tab in the bottom left of the utility window and choose GUID Partition Table and click okay. As you will read in the text information, this allows the drive to be used with all current OS X Macs. See Below.

Format Your Drive For A Mac

Options Tab

7. Now all you need to do is click the apply button as shown in red below.

Format Your Drive For A Mac

Apply

8. Another window will appear asking for confirmation to partition the drive. Click partition. See below.

Format Your Drive For A Mac

Partition Drive

9. A formatting window with a progress bar will now appear and then disappear when done. You will now see your named drive in the left window, which means that your drive is now formatted. Close the disk utility and the hard drive is ready to use. See below.

Format Your Drive For a Mac

Hard Drive Formatted

 

SSD Data Recovery

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SSD Data Recovery

SSD Data Recovery

SSDs (Solid State Drives) may one day become the standard form of storage in computers. Apple laptops are already heading that way. There are certainly many advantages when comparing SSDs to HDDs (Hard Disk Drives), however they do bring their own problems, which are often not well reported. We don’t care how good SSDs can be. We care about how they fail. It’s common to hear things like: “I’m replacing my hard drive with an SSD so I won’t have to worry about it crashing again.” While this is technically true – there are no moving parts to crash – there are plenty of other ways an SSD can fail. Whether it’s technically crashed or not doesn’t matter at all when you can’t access your files. It’s a shame but an SSD does not get you out of the boring task of running regular backups.

There are some pros and cons which specifically affect data recovery from SSDs. I haven’t listed things like battery life or read / write speed as they are not relevant when it comes to recovering data from them.

SSD Pros:

  • Shock resistance. No moving parts to crash.
  • Just as susceptible to filesystem issues, deletion, reformatting, bad sectors etc which can be recovered using existing equipment.

SSD Cons:

  • False sense of security. The word reliable comes up a lot in SSD marketing with phrases like “More reliable, faster, and more durable than traditional magnetic hard drives.” Maybe research exists that shows SSDs are less prone to failure it doesn’t seem to be the case. Anything that holds your valuable data runs the risk of getting drenched, getting stolen, getting lost, and that’s before we take general failures into account.
  • Susceptible to electronic failure, Maybe more so than a hard drive as the storage and electronics are combined in SSDs. Some of the most common hard drive failures are caused by errors in the firmware which controls the performance of the drive. SSDs have very complex firmware, which opens the possibility of firmware corruption. In many cases firmware corruption will block access to your data.
  • Encryption. Most modern SSDs encrypt the data at a hardware level, which makes it impossible to remove data chips and extract data from them externally (you can do it, but the data is encrypted). The keys to the encryption are often stored within the controller chip, so if that fails, you could be locked out of your data for good. Modern encryption works well. You can’t get round it.
  • Wear-levelling algorithms. Which move the data around the SSDs to improve performance, can make recovery difficult as these algorithms would need to be taken into account when accessing a failed SSD. They don’t store data in logical order like hard drives do.

Our Apple Mac Data Migration Service

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We have been offering Apple Mac Data Migration as a service for many years now. Here’s a quick reminder about this service which we call Mac Setup. You are bound to be over the moon when you are told that we have recovered your lost data, but in many cases this is only half the battle.

We wrote a detailed blog on the subject back in November 2011, but it still appears to trouble many customers.

We still often get the questions: ”What do I do with the recovered data once I receive it?” and “How do I get the data back into it’s original places on my Mac?” For out-of-warranty Macs, this is where our Mac Setup comes into play. For a fixed cost we will provide you with a new installed hard drive, with all your recovered data migrated into it’s original locations, so that when you receive your Macintosh computer back, hey presto! it’s as if your Mac had never failed in the first place, everything up and running as it was.

iPhone Data Recovery – Obstacles

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Hardware

iPhone Data Recovery

iPhone Data Recovery

When developing our iPhone data recovery process we had to make a few decisions about the devices we can support. The newer iPhones (4s +) are not accessible in the same way as older models.

With the iPhone 4 and below we can extract the data using a forensically clean process. What this means is that we can take the data off without writing anything to the NAND chips (storage) inside the iPhone. This fits in perfectly with our regular data recovery process as we never write data to a device we receive.

With the iPhone 4s, Apple changed the part of the system we use to access the iPhone’s memory. There is a chance that a new method of extraction for iPhone 4s will become available, but until it does we will not be recovering files from these devices.

Physical damage

iPhones store their data on NAND chips which are soldered to the main circuit board of the phone. The data can only be correctly decoded if we also have access to other parts of the circuit board, so it is crucial that the iPhone is electronically functional. If water damage has shorted the iPhone then we have no way to access the data externally. It’s not that it’s impossible, just that the work would be unreasonably expensive and time consuming.

Deleted Files

Another potential barrier for iPhone recovery is down to the way files are stored. Since iOS4 most files including iPhone camera photos and videos are encrypted before being written to storage, using unique encryption keys. This means every file ends up with a different header. When files are deleted there is nothing to distinguish a photograph from any other random collection of bytes.

Another problem with the file based encryption is that if you restore the iPhone using iTunes, those encryption keys get erased and new ones are generated. This prevents recovery of the old data, which is good for security but bad for data recovery.

 

How Hard Drives Store Data Across Multiple Heads

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In most computers, the data you save gets stored on a hard drive. However the drive does not store your files in a straightforward way. When you save files on your computer the data is written magnetically by a fixed comb of heads stacked above one another. These heads pass between several magnetic discs, writing data as they go. In most cases, instead of storing files on one whole disk they are split up and distributed among the disks. This means that when we carry out data recovery we usually need all of the disc surfaces in good condition to get the data back.

How Hard Drives Store Data Across Multiple Heads

How Hard Drives Store Data Across Multiple Heads

When required we can use a process to take the data from the drive one disc surface at a time. This can allow us to avoid using a failing head until we have the rest of the data extracted. When we have extracted all of the data the parts are rejoined to allow access the files. In some cases this is the only way to get the data back.

Hard drives do not allow access to individual disks during normal operations so we need to use specialist hardware and software.

 

Apple iMac 1TB Seagate Hard Drive Recall

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Apple have recently announced a recall program for all iMacs with internal 1TB Seagate Hard Drives. These hard drives fail unexpectedly with no prior warning. We highlighted the failure of these hard drives in a blog back in 2009. You can check whether your iMac has an internal 1TB Seagate Hard Drive by entering your iMac Serial Number at this link.

If you have one of these hard drives that has already failed and you wish to recover your data, then please contact us.

How Your HDS722020ALA330 Looks To Us

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This immense 2TB iMac drive may be heavy, but have you ever wondered why? 

HDS722020ALA330 2TB iMac Drive

HDS722020ALA330 2TB iMac Drive

When we recover these drives we often have to work on individual heads. As you can see from the image, this monster has 10 heads (the first is numbered zero). This means there are 5 spinning disks inside the drive.

From the outside, the only clue that these drives are so rammed full of disks is their weight. They are no bigger physically than any other desktop hard drive.

Where Does My Computer Store My Files ?

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It is surprising how many times were are asked this question when a customers data is recovered and ready to be put onto a hard drive to send back. Apart from a customers personal pictures and documents many of them are not familiar with what other information they may need. This will include such data as Mail, Address Book, Internet Bookmarks & Favourites, Calendars and some Program Data Files.

The operating system you use will determine where this data is held. I will try and give a general description below of locations for Mac & PC users.

PC Windows Operating System

All user data should be stored within the users profile folder, which is created when the PC’s is first used. This is usually located in the following locations depending on the version of Windows:

Windows 95,98,NT,2000 & XP Local Disk C:\Documents and Settings\User ( for example C:\Documents and Settings\John )

Windows 7 Windows C:\Users\User ( For example C:\Users\John )

In systems earlier than Windows 7, some software may put user data or settings within the “Program Files” folder in the root of the drive. This was considered bad practice so in Windows 7 any Program Data should be found in the “Program Data” folder on the root of the drive and not in “Program Files”.

Macintosh Operating System

All user data is stored within the users profile folder, which is created when the Mac is first used. This is located in the following location.

Macintosh HD/Users/user ( for example Macintosh HD/Users/john )

Recovering Deleted Data

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In the vast majority of cases, deleted data is actually still lurking around on your hard drive. If you put data in the Recycle Bin or Trash, and them empty it, all you are actually doing is telling the system that it can reuse those parts of the disk when it wants. Until you replace those areas with new data, the old data will still be there.

Recovering Deleted Data

The Filing Cabinet

The tried and trusted analogy is of a filing cabinet. When you delete a file, you are removing the index card from the front of the drawer, but the actual file is still in there.

This is why it is really important to switch off your computer as soon as possible if you have accidentally deleted some files. You may not realise but even small actions like checking e-mail or browsing the internet can write cache files to the disk. That is when data could be lost.

Overwritten / Deleted Data

We often hear about the FBI being able to recover overwritten files. While this may have been possible on very old – low capacity hard drives (~100MB), it is unlikely to be possible on modern hard drives. The magnetic material is far too densely packed. Even then, it would only be tiny fragments of data recovered, and not whole files.

The Problem With SSDs

Solid state drives bring a whole new problem of their own. Due to the way the data is distributed around the device, known as wear levelling, you can never be sure of which sector you are writing or overwriting. Wear levelling is necessary to prolong the life of an SSD, but it means the drive could be moving data around behind the scenes, making deleted files much more difficult to track down.

Specifics

In most cases, we can recover deleted files with the original file names and folders. With deleted Mac data, this is often not possible. In that case we have to use a special type of scan, which finds all files of a given type and saves them to numbered files. This means camera photos may be recovered into a JPG folder, with files named like photo0001.jpg, photo0002.jpg and so on.

If required we can process certain types of these files into more meaningful order. For photos we can arrange into folders by date taken, and for music files we can arrange into Artist / Album order.

The Important Bit

If you accidentally delete some files, they are likely to be recoverable. It’s the actions you take next which can make the recovery difficult – if not impossible.

Burning Linux ISO to USB Using a Mac

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My main computer is an old MacBook Pro. I often download Linux ISOs to install on other computers. In recent Debian-esque releases this is actually really simple.

1. I find it quicker and easier to install from USB so first insert a USB pen / stick of some sort.

Note: This USB stick will be erased, so don’t use one with data that you need to keep!

2. Next we need to find out which number has been assigned to the USB stick. If you only have one disk in your Mac then the USB will usually be disk1, but always check first. (Note: Disks are numbered from zero, so your internal drive should be disk0) On your Mac open Disk Utility, which is located within Applications / Utilities. (See Image)

Disk Utility

Disk Utility

Select the USB stick from the lefthand window and then click the Info button which is on the toolbar. (See Image)

USB Info

USB Info

You will get a pop up window with loads of information about the device. We only need the Disk Identifier. Make a note of this for later.

Disk Identifier

Disk Identifier

3. To allow us to write data to the USB stick we need to unmount any volumes currently on there. (see image)

Unmount USB

Unmount USB

4. Now comes the actual writing. First locate the Terminal application, again within Applications / Utilities. (see image)

Mac Terminal

Mac Terminal

5. Remember to change the code to match your Disk Identifier from earlier. There are a few things to note about the following command.

  • sudo – allows you to run dangerous commands, so will require an administrator password
  • Instead of typing the location of the ISO file you can just drag the ISO onto the terminal when required.
  • “if” means input file (in this case the ISO file), “of” means output file (the USB stick)
  • When we found out the Disk Identifier, it was disk1. That will work in the command, but we use rdisk1 instead, which gives us raw access to the disk. This may not be necessary, but it works for me.

There is a lot of discussion about block sizes, but I find 4MB is reasonable for writing ISOs to USB. In Linux we often type bs=4M, however the Mac prefers it like bs=4096 instead. It’s the same thing, just expressed differently.

The command:

sudo dd if=[drag iso here] of=/dev/r[disk number] bs=4096; sync

Example:

sudo dd if=/Users/dan/Desktop/linux.iso of=/dev/rdisk1 bs=4096; sync

If you’ve got it right, you shouldn’t get any feedback until it finishes. Your USB stick may have a blinking LED whilst the data is being written. For reference the 200MB debian-netinst ISO took just over a minute to write.

Once complete you should get something like:

48896+0 records in
48896+0 records out
200278016 bytes transferred in 95.151719 secs (2104828 bytes/sec)

This means you’re finished. Now eject the USB and try to boot your PC with it. The Mac may complain that the disk is not readable but just ignore that and try it on a PC.

Debian Boot

Debian Boot