My computer got fried a few weeks ago and ever since I've been trying to restore an external backup hard drive.
Since the enclosure was dead, I bought an external enclosure and pulled the drive.
Anytime I insert, I get a "Could not read, initialize?" error.
I've looked at the drive with a bunch of different tools — and it looks like the data is all there — but that the partition is "lost."
From testdisk, it appears as if volume headers are available:
Scanned 300 MB.
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A Volume Header has been found.
Partition start: 314597376 (Byte), 0x12c06000, 614448 (LBA Sector), at 300 MB
Volume Header start: 314598400 (Byte), 0x12c06400, 614450 (LBA Sector), at 300 MB
Signature: 0x2b48, H+
LastMountedVersion: HFSJ, last mount by Mac OS X.
FileCount: 14375770
DirCount: 1452607
BlockSize: 8192
TotalBlocks: 488318330
AllocationFile StartBlock: 1
ExtentsOverflowFile StartBlock: 46366
CatalogFile StartBlock: 524318
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Using HFSPRESCUE, I get this basic sequence on the drive:
>> sudo hfsprescue -s1 /dev/disk2s1
>> Warning: Unusual block size! Use -b 557843968 to force this block size.
>> sudo hfsprescue -s1 /dev/disk1s1 -b 4096
>> 100.00% scanned (465.75 GB). Found: 1436358 directories, 13923483 files.
>> *** Force block size: 4096
>> Signature: 0x00, (Unknown)
>> LastMountedVersion: , last mount was not done by Mac OS X.
>> FileCount: 0
>> DirCount: 0
>> BlockSize: 4096
>> TotalBlocks: 0
>> AllocationFile StartBlock: 0
>> ExtentsOverflowFile StartBlock: 0
>> CatalogFile StartBlock: 0
>> Total size: 465 GB
>> sudo hfsprescue -s2 /dev/disk1s1
>> Fresh database created with 13711253 entries. 163422 duplicate entries removed.
(At this point, I copied the HFSPRESCUE data onto a different external drive ("Restore") as I didn't have space on my internal drive for the restore and wanted to avoid messing up the drive I was working with.)
>>sudo /Volumes/Restore/hfsprescue/MacOSX/hfsprescue -s3 /dev/disk1s1 -b 4096 --force -d /Volumes/Restore/
>> You are forcing the block size. I assume, the Volume Header is not correct.
>> Automatic extracting of the ExtentsOverflowFile has been disabled! This means
>> strong fragmented files will not be restored! When you want to use the
>> ExtentsOverflowFile, then you have to restore it manually with '--extract-eof'.
>> Use '--ignore-eof' to restore without ExtentsOverFlowFile.
I then ran:
>> sudo /Volumes/Restore/hfsprescue/MacOSX/hfsprescue -s3 /dev/disk1s1 -b 4096 --force -d /Volumes/Restore/ --ignore-eof
I let this run for a little bit, but it looked like everything returned a "Invalid start block for…"
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I'm not exactly sure where to go from here!
Any help would be appreciated as I really believe this data can be recovered — and that the partition has just gone "missing."
