Data Recovery You Can Trust
Many hard drives we see have been more damaged by a failed recovery than they were in the first place. We have released the Data Survival Guide to help people avoid some of the common mistakes. This first version is for Mac users but we have more on the way.
Why not print this out and keep it in your laptop bag in case of emergency!
When we recover iPhones, although we can usually provide the data in a computer-readable format, it is often easier to just load the data back onto another iPhone. Fortunately, as long as you restore the data in the correct order, you should get your iPhone up and running with your restored data.
Before you attach the iPhone you need to make sure iTunes is ready for it. You need to put the recovered iPhone backup into the correct place for iTunes to find. Quit iTunes first.
The iPhone backups go into:
Users/username/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup
Note: Since 10.7(Lion) this folder is hidden. Click here for more info.
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Apple Computer\Mobile Sync\Backup
Now copy your iPhone backup folder from the recovered data to the backup folder on the computer. If you’ve ever made any iPhone backups they will be in this folder with long unreadable names of random numbers and letters. It doesn’t matter that you can’t read it, iTunes can. Don’t rename it!
So now your /MobileSync/Backup folder should look something like:
Remember that the string of numbers will not be the same.
Next you can launch iTunes and see if the iPhone backup is seen in the list. Within iTunes select Preferences and then the Devices tab (Image Below). If your backup file has been recognised then you should see the iPhone name in the list and the date of the backup. If not, go back and check that everything is in the right place.
Next, it’s a good idea to sign in to the iTunes Store. If you’ve not used this computer with this iPhone before you may also need to authorise the computer to access your purchased apps and media. Once signed-in to the store you should choose the Store menu and select “Authorise This Computer…” Be aware that you can only authorise a set number of computers. (The limit can be reset if needed.)
Now you can import the Music and apps into iTunes. Don’t worry if some of the apps don’t have icons yet.
Once all that is finished you are ready to connect the new iPhone. You will need to follow some on-screen prompts and settings, and then it will ask if you want to set it up as a new device, or restore it from a backup. This is where all that hard work pays off. Choose the backup, and let iTunes work its magic. It can take a while if you have lots to restore but when it’s finished your phone should boot into a familiar screen. Your Contacts, Messages, Calendars, Notes and lots of other data will be back in their respective apps.
If none of the other apps got transferred you can choose the Apps tab within iTunes and tick “Sync Apps.” You can then tick whichever apps you want to send to the iPhone.
Starting with Mac OS X Lion (10.7) Apple decided to hide the Library folder within the User folder. It’s not gone, just hidden. Some crucial files like Mail accounts and iPhone backups get stored there, so there is a handy way to find the folder again.
To find the hidden library folder, go to Finder and click the Go menu at the top of the screen. You will see a list of folders. Now if you press the alt / option key on your keyboard you will see the hidden library folder appear. This is only a temporary way in, and you will have to press the key again next time. The folder remains hidden the rest of the time.
Now in a new 7mm slimline form factor, and Advanced Format specification, the HTS5450 hard drive is proving a popular choice for vendors with limited space. The drives are especially popular in Ultra thin laptops and slim portable external cases. Now being manufactured by Western Digital under the brand name of HGST, the 500GB boasts just a single media platter to store all that data. Part of the redesign also brings Advanced Format to these drives. Certain older operating systems such as Windows XP require the use of the HGST Align Tool provided by Western Digital. Users of the latest OS X systems and Windows 7+ do not require the use of this Tool.
Advanced Format has been introduced to cram more data on a single platter. To do this the manufacturer has increased the standard 512 byte sector size to a 4096 byte sector. This format design also incorporates better data integrity, hopefully giving the customer all round better performance and reliability.
If you’ve lost data from a HTS5450 drive, try our Hitachi Data Recovery Services to get your data back.
Remember, electronic devices can malfunction at any time, so make sure you always backup your precious data.
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.
2. Once you have clicked initialize you will see the Disk Utility Application window. See below.
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.
4. Now choose the Partition Tab. See below.
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.
7. Now all you need to do is click the apply button as shown in red below.
8. Another window will appear asking for confirmation to partition the drive. Click partition. See below.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 noted the failure of these hard drives in a post 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.
This recall program has now ended. If you have one of these hard drives that has failed you may be interested in our Mac Data Recovery Services.
This immense 2TB iMac drive may be heavy, but have you ever wondered why?
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.