Recover data drive that ejects go to Genius Bar?

[LauraH]

I have a late 2013 27" mac with 1TB Fusion drive. 3.5 GHz

I work constantly on Photoshop with large files and have been using a Buffalo DriveStation DDR High Speed 2TB but in the last month it kept ejecting sporadically while I was working. YES, I should have swapped out the drive right then!

Now the drive ejects itself when I click on it to select it and I cannot access the data. TimeMachine stopped backing up anything from it on Feb 1st so there is one month of work I need to get off the drive.

I have run it through the Disk Utility Verify and Repair multiple times yesterday and this cannot be completed because it ejects. At first it showed the partition with an odd name like Disk382 then it shows the name I gave it, "Data" then it ejects.

Today I tried a program called TestDisk using Terminal and it can see the drive, but again when I selected it, it ejects.

Does anyone have any ideas of what else I can try. ALSO, would you recommend that I take the drive to Apple Genius Bar? I've never had to rely on someone else to fix my computers and read that Best Buy is terrible.

Thanks in advance for any help on this!

 

[Samuelsan2001]

I have a late 2013 27" mac with 1TB Fusion drive. 3.5 GHz

I work constantly on Photoshop with large files and have been using a Buffalo DriveStation DDR High Speed 2TB but in the last month it kept ejecting sporadically while I was working. YES, I should have swapped out the drive right then!

Now the drive ejects itself when I click on it to select it and I cannot access the data. TimeMachine stopped backing up anything from it on Feb 1st so there is one month of work I need to get off the drive.

I have run it through the Disk Utility Verify and Repair multiple times yesterday and this cannot be completed because it ejects. At first it showed the partition with an odd name like Disk382 then it shows the name I gave it, "Data" then it ejects.

Today I tried a program called TestDisk using Terminal and it can see the drive, but again when I selected it, it ejects.

Does anyone have any ideas of what else I can try. ALSO, would you recommend that I take the drive to Apple Genius Bar? I've never had to rely on someone else to fix my computers and read that Best Buy is terrible.

Thanks in advance for any help on this!

Apple won't touch an external drive, have you tried recovering using a different Mac?? If that works then it's your Mac that's the problem and Apple will look at that if not then it's the external drive and you'll have to spring for data recovery or work out how to do it yourself.

 

[LauraH]

Apple won't touch an external drive, have you tried recovering using a different Mac?? If that works then it's your Mac that's the problem and Apple will look at that if not then it's the external drive and you'll have to spring for data recovery or work out how to do it yourself.

I have tried recovery on a different mac and got the same results. So I can't go to Apple. Would you dare go to Best Buy?

 

[r6mile]

Have you tried removing the hard drive, and putting it into another enclosure? you could buy a cheap USB 3.0 enclosure to try.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

I have tried recovery on a different mac and got the same results. So I can't go to Apple. Would you dare go to Best Buy?

Well they might replace it but they won't recover data, the manufacturer might replace and may attempt a recovery but I doubt it, data is your responsibility I'm afraid.

 

[LauraH]

Have you tried removing the hard drive, and putting it into another enclosure? you could buy a cheap USB 3.0 enclosure to try.

I took it out of the enclosure and used G2G adapter and it still ejects.

 

[MacBadger.com]

Honestly, if you want to attempt it yourself by placing the drive in another enclosure, that's a good place to start. If it's going to be a do it yourself

Neither Best Buy nor Apple are equipped to recover data. They will refer you to DriveSavers -- and their pricing starts at over $1000 for a recovery.

There are smaller firms that do an excellent job of recovering your data. Make sure they have a clean room. My company does an excellent job recovering data cost-effectively, but we're not alone. Data Savers LLC is also an excellent choice. Both we and they do nationwide service.

This isn't meant to be a plug, I just want you be careful when shopping for data recovery. There are a lot of inferior, overpriced data-recovery services out there.

Be careful,

@MacBadger.com

 

[Fishrrman]

I would start copying what I could from the drive (to another drive), as much as you could get "between ejections".

Keep a notepad nearby, and try to get a little at a time.

One other thing (you've probably already checked this, but check again):
If you go to the Energy Saver control panel, have you UNCHECKED the option to "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" ??

 

[MacBadger.com]

Carbon Copy Cloner is an application that does a great job of copying data from bad drives. If it's possible to do it yourself, CCC is the tool to use.

 

[Mr_Brightside_@]

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20050302225659382 This may help.

 

[MacBadger.com]

If you're comfortable using Terminal, ddrescue (NOT dd_rescue) is like dd, but designed to tolerate faults on bad hard drive. It would gracefully handle the hard drive disconnecting and reconnecting, whereas I don't believe dd would.

ddrescue is the next best thing to a dedicated hardware imager. And it's free and open source. Using a command-line utility like this requires patience and a bit of technical ability.

 

[LauraH]

Thanks to you all for your very helpful advice, I've learned a lot! Since I had mostly everything backed up I took a chance and went to Best Buy ($99). Whatever they did, they had no problem with the drive ejecting and transferred ALMOST everything before it started dying. Naturally, what was not transferred were the few folders I needed. I brought it home, hooked it up and had no problem whatsoever with the drive staying connected, thought it was very slow. I got everything off.

Now I have a second backup drive in addition to TimeMachine.

 

[Fishrrman]

LauraH wrote:
"Now I have a second backup drive in addition to TimeMachine."

That's not enough.

What you -really- need to have around is a BOOTABLE CLONED BACKUP created with either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.

This will let you boot and run the computer "normally" if something goes wrong with the internal drive again.

By "booting normally" I mean you can boot up, get to the finder, access any application, access any file.
You CAN'T do this from the recovery partition.