I have lost count on the amount of times we have received hard drives for data recovery from Mac customers, who are not aware of the Time Machine back software. Time Machine has been preinstalled in every version of OS X since 10.5. This software is easy to setup, and once the first backup of the internal hard drive is complete, it will then carry on backing up as you create new data.
As a small business or personal user it is ideal for your everyday backup needs.
This hard drive was out of a customers Macbook Pro. As you can see in the image, loss of data caused by a severe head crash. Another good reason why Mac users should make sure they back up regularly.
ST9320421ASG Head Crash
HP Smart Array E200i SaS Drive
We have just competed a successful recovery from an HP Smart Array E200i RAID array. Not a standard case this. It had x3 DG146BB976 2.5″ SaS drives, two of which had been overwritten with a new RAID 1 mirror.
We found the disk order which was not the same as the labelled numbers. This is often the case. Also, due to the rebuild that had occurred we had to drop one of the disks and virtually rebuild it using the parity information from the other disks.
3 DG146BB976 / ST9146802SS SaS Drives
If you want to find out which version of Mac OS X is installed on a drive, but cannot boot into it, there is a plist file that holds the version number.
The file can be found at:
Macintosh HD > System > Library > CoreServices > SystemVersion.plist
Mac OS X System Version
The SystemVersion.plist file should look a bit like the picture below. I have outlined the relevant part in red:
System Version Plist
Alternatively you could paste the following command into terminal:
defaults read defaults read /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist | grep "ProductVersion"
This will show you the version of the currently booted system. You would need to change the first bit if you wanted to find out from another mounted drive.
The output will be:
ProductVersion = "10.7.2";
In my limited testing, this seems to have an error when run from 10.5. It says the file doesn’t exist. I will look into this some more.
We get asked this question a lot. The simple answer is that there is no such thing as a reliable hard drive. This is nothing against the hard drive manufacturers, but all drives will fail eventually. Hard drives are delicate machines and must be treated with care. They are not designed to be the one and only storage for all your work, photos and videos. Imagine your computer never booting up again, and then imagine it happening during the most important job you have ever done. That’s how bad it could be, and often is for a lot of people.
A good lifespan for a hard drive is now probably around 3-5 years. In reality we often see hard drives that are only a few months old. If you’re a gambler then maybe you have got away with it so far, but is it really worth the risk?
Backup your data. Maybe then you won’t need to find out how good we are at recovering it.
Read more about backing up your data here
We needed a dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 7 setup today, which had a few stumbling blocks.
Installed Windows 7 on half a 500GB drive and left 250GB free for Ubuntu. When booting to install Linux, it didn’t see Windows 7 due to the GPT partition that Windows 7 uses by default.
Used Gparted from the Linux live cd to format the drive with an MBR partition layout. (Note:- This destroyed the original Windows installation.) Then installed Windows back to the drive. This time, Ubuntu saw Windows 7 during installation and was happy to install alongside it.
Although the machine was now happily dual booting, it would default to Ubuntu, regardless of which changes i made to the grub config. Startup manager would make changes to grub, but it would still default to Ubuntu.
Nariub on the Ubuntu forums suggested changing the os-prober number, so it loads that first. This puts Windows at the top, making it the default. Perfect for what we needed.
The command for this, which worked for us on Ubuntu 11.10 & Windows 7:
mv /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober /etc/grub.d/09_os-prober
update-grub
So now we have the machine booting as we want, with each operating system happily taking up half of the 500GB drive.
This Seagate ST31000333AS 1TB drive suffered a head crash resulting in severe media damage. The contamination caused by the damage can be seen on the disc surface as well as the internal filter. The filter is usually white but is now silver metallic in colour as a result of the contamination. The customer did not have any indication that this was going to happen.
Seagate Head Crash ST31000333AS
Seagate ST31000333AS Filter
The process for restoration varies a little bit depending upon how your Mac is currently set up.
Migration Assistant
You will first have to backup any newly created data. If something goes wrong with migration then you don’t want to lose your new data. If this new system has been created with the same username as the old one, you will not be able to import the old user without renaming which is not advised. After you have backed up your files, you could open “System Preferences / Users & Groups,” (“Accounts” in pre Lion systems) and rename the current user to something else. This will allow you to transfer your original user account and Applications into the correct locations on the new system. If your system is set to automatically login to a user account (ie. doesn’t require a password when you boot) then you will need to turn off “Automatic Login” setting under Users & Groups to allow you to access the old user account.
Fingers crossed you should be ready to migrate.
Connect the new hard drive to your Mac. If it’s a desktop 3.5” drive then plug in the power adapter and switch it on. If you are restoring to a laptop then it would be a good idea to have the AC adapter plugged in, as this can take a while.
Go to “Applications / Utilities” and launch “Migration Assistant”. Choose “From another Mac, PC, Time Machine Backup or other disk.” Then choose the second option; “From Time Machine Backup or other disk.” You should see the orange icon for the external drive, labelled with your job number. Click on it and then click continue.
You can choose to migrate everything, or be a bit selective. You cannot choose individual files to migrate, only whole user accounts, Applications, Settings, and other files. Make your choice and click next.
The migration itself can take a while depending how much data you have. Once complete you can boot into the Mac and it will feel very familiar. As if nothing ever failed. If you backed up any files from the new system then now would be a good time to load them back on.
Migration Assistant generally does a good job of transferring your data and software. If any software installs files into the Mac system in unusual locations it may need to be reinstalled, but most Applications like Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop will be transferred correctly.
Connect the new hard drive to your Mac. If it’s a desktop 3.5” drive then plug in the power adapter and switch it on. The Mac should be off at this point. If you are restoring to a laptop then it would be a good idea to have the AC adapter plugged in, as this can take a while.
Power on the Mac, and wait for it to load the setup assistant. You will be asked a few questions so answer as necessary.
Choose “Migrate from another disk or Time Machine backup,” and then click next. You should see the orange icon for the external drive, labelled with your job number. Click on it and then click continue.
You can choose to migrate everything, or be a bit selective. You cannot choose individual files to migrate, only whole user accounts, Applications, Settings, and other files. Make your choice and click next.
The migration itself can take a while depending how much data you have. Once complete you can boot into the Mac and it will feel very familiar. As if nothing ever failed.
Setup Assistant generally does a good job of transferring your data and software. If any software installs files into the Mac system in unusual locations it may need to be reinstalled, but most Applications like Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop will be transferred correctly.