thekev wrote:
"Keep in mind these only work if you can actually mount the drive. If it's not visible to the system, none of that will work."
This is correct.
However, there's "a workaround" -- for those who are brave.
I once had a partition on a drive that "went dead" on me.
Nothing could restore it or get it to mount again.
How to get the data (which was mostly mp3 files) off of it?
Here's how I did it:
I ERASED THE ENTIRE DRIVE using disk utility.
I wiped out all previous partitions, erasing it to only one partition.
However ... I just did "a quick erase" ... I DID NOT "zero" the drive (use "security" features).
This wiped out the directory, but left the actual DATA untouched (in the sectors of the platters on the drive).
Next...
Now the drive would mount in the finder.
However... to the user... it looked like it was "empty" -- because the disk directory had been wiped/replaced with a "clean" one.
BUT... the actual data was STILL ON the platters.
So...
I was now able to launch Data Rescue, and it could now mount and scan the drive.
DR was able to "look past" the [empty] directory, and it FOUND and RECONSTRUCTED the lost data onto a scratch drive.
Of course, all pre-existing file names and folder hierarchies were lost (because those exist in the directory, which was gone).
But I found a trick to get those back:
I opened iTunes and created a NEW library.
I then imported all the [now "nameless"] files into the library.
iTunes was able to look at the metadata associated with each mp3 file, and it then presented me with a list of all the files, MOST of them with their names!
(the metadata exists as "a part of the file" independent of directory info, and thus "survived" the erasure).
It still took work, but that's how I "got the unmountable partition back"...
