Data recovery typically implies that data is lost by deletion, encryption or hardware error.
15
votes
10answers
847 views
Do you have a backup policy that covers the Worst Case Scenario?
I've a lot of photos and videos of my children. I feel that losing those pictures would be a real pain for me and my family.
In the past I use to make, from time to time, a DVD with all my digital ...
12
votes
4answers
477 views
What's a good way to wipe a hard drive for resale?
I'm selling my MacBook and would like to wipe the hard drive in such a way that the current data can't be easily recovered after I reinstall OS X.
Can you recommend a free tool to help me do this?
...
9
votes
1answer
7k views
How can I delete everything from my MacBook Pro before selling it?
I have a Mac that runs Snow Leopard and I intend to upgrade it to Mountain Lion and sell it on ebay. However, I only have one hard-drive, and I'm sure I can't use something in my OS to delete my OS ...
6
votes
1answer
3k views
How can I recover notes missing from the Notes app?
I recently opened the Notes app and found that about a month's worth of notes are missing. There is a gap between August 5th and September 3rd.
(This time period includes a note I wrote while in an ...
5
votes
4answers
6k views
Can I reinstall a single iOS app without losing its data?
I have a single app that needs to be reinstalled. I have tried all tricks known to man in attempts to get it to work, but all have failed. There is a lot of data in this app that I'd rather not lose. ...
5
votes
4answers
1k views
Why have 5 different iMacs developed corrupt OS X partitions when the physical drives are fine?
I'm a tech for my local school district and we are having some problems with our iMac Multimedia Lab. Over the past nine months, 5 of the 22 iMacs have suffered from filesystem corruption. The only ...
5
votes
4answers
1k views
Locked iPod Touch, any options besides total system wipe
My 2 year old daughter goofed with my son's ipod touch and locked it out. The message says that he can try again in 22,566,234 minutes, which is a heck of a long time.
He is 8, and has lots of photos ...
5
votes
2answers
944 views
How to recover a deleted file on Mac OS X?
We have tried Boomerang but it does not find the deleted file.
The file was deleted 3 days ago. I would think it is recoverable, but Boomerang does not show it.
Any help would be appreciated.
5
votes
3answers
2k views
Any way to recover data from a semi-bricked iPhone?
My iPhone turns on, shows the white apple logo, and then after a few minutes shuts off. It is not a battery issue, it happens even when it's plugged in.
Is there any way I can get the data off the ...
4
votes
2answers
3k views
Best way to copy all files, ignoring errors?
I have a partially corrupted HD that can not be repaired by Disk Utility, but which can be mounted read-only making the data on it accessible.
I am trying to copy all the recoverable contents onto a ...
4
votes
4answers
3k views
photo recovery after iPhone “Erase Data”
Is there any way to recover the photos from an iPhone which has been "erased" after several consecutive failed passcode attempts?
Unfortunately, these photos were not backed up. Apple techs ...
3
votes
1answer
52 views
Find and remove all photos below a certain size threshhold
So, I had a relative's hard drive collapse, and I've used photorec to look for the most obvious files to retain (fortunately they only had pictures on the computer, everything else was cloud-synced, ...
3
votes
5answers
12k views
How to disable Self Control application?
I use SelfControl quite frequently for completing homework and such, but at school, while I was away from my keyboard at the white board, my friend thought it would be funny to set the timer to 10 ...
3
votes
1answer
313 views
Will initiating recovery mode on an iPhone permanently disable it until it is recovered?
I'm trying to solve an issue I'm having, and I thought that placing the phone in recovery mode temporarily might resolve the problem. I'm afraid to try this though, since the phone contains valuable ...
3
votes
2answers
2k views
Recovering an accidentally deleted folder in OSX - no Time Machine or backup available
I am a longtime Windows user, recently switched to Mac. I replaced folder with another folder (they had the same name) thinking that OS X will merge the contents of both folders. But OS X deleted the ...
3
votes
3answers
81 views
How can I recover an unresponding application without quitting?
I've just run a very long Matlab simulation on my Mac Book Air. It uses Mac OSX. The simulation has practically finished, but seconds before the end, Matlab appeared in the activity monitor as not ...
3
votes
1answer
253 views
How can I recover files from a failing hard drive?
I am in the process of trying to recover files from a failed MacBook hard drive. While I've already replaced the drive in the machine itself and installed a fresh copy of OS X, I have the old drive in ...
3
votes
1answer
257 views
Are .apple files potentially synonymous (or a wrapper to) .dmg files?
We lost a .dmg file on an harddrive. Our tech guy was able to recover files from the drive but not one of them is a .dmg file. But they are a lot of .apple file. Can the .dmg file we are looking for ...
3
votes
0answers
146 views
Missing Time Machine Files caused by FSEvents Failure?
I recently did a clean install/upgrade to Mac OS 10.8.2. I did a final update of my ongoing Time Machine Backup and verified Disk Integrity. After reinstalling and restoring my files, I have learned ...
2
votes
2answers
489 views
Best resources on data recovery from corrupted OS X HFS+ partitions
My Macbook Pro won't boot from it's hard disc. If I boot it from CD, the drive will only mount sometimes. Where should I go to get hints and tips on data recovery? What are the best tools that should ...
2
votes
2answers
7k views
Recover iPhone backup manually from iCloud
I had the misfortune of a stolen iPhone 4 a few months ago. In the interim I've decided not to get a new iPhone.
I can view my iCloud storage page and see there is a 1GB file there. There are random ...
2
votes
1answer
526 views
Dropped MacBook, lots of disk io errors. How to fix?
My 2011 MacBook just slid off the table and hit the floor face down opened. There was a message saying to reset and I did. After that it wouldn't load OS X Lion; it stays at the gray screen forever. ...
2
votes
3answers
140 views
Dealing with a dying hard drive
I have a MacBook Pro with a dying hard drive. It was working poorly for the last month or so and the last 4 times I turned it on it booted correctly once, issued a boot sector not found twice and a ...
2
votes
1answer
347 views
unable to boot my Mac book after file vault 2 activation
after activation of file vault 2 I am unable to boot my computer, the apple sign turns into a prohibitory sign with a spinning circle beneath it , that spins forever. I really need the data on this ...
2
votes
4answers
14k views
Can I recover a deleted iCloud note?
I'm syncing my iPhone's Notes to iCloud. If I delete one of these notes, is it permanently deleted, or is there a way for me to recover it?
2
votes
2answers
122 views
Reinstalling Lion on a Wiped Disk
I have MacBook that was running Lion.
On a journey into finding the perfect operating system for me, I installed Arch Linux. Whilst doing this I wiped the disk (/dev/sda1) and created some Linux ...
2
votes
2answers
143 views
Recovering from Laptop HDD crash
My Windows 7 Laptop HDD crashed. I bought a new HDD and installed Windows on it. I also installed iTunes.
I'm patting myself on the back for setting up full backups of my laptop to an external HDD. I ...
2
votes
1answer
131 views
Find original filename after Data Rescue recovery
Recently, I lost 1,7TB on videofiles on my external hard drive. A terrible loss since it took me many evenings categorising all this data.
With a deep-scan with DataRescue 3, I was able to recover ...
2
votes
1answer
136 views
Hard drive defect? Help me recover my music!
I've an old iPod Classic with 80 GB of Storage, suddenly it stopped showing any music. I can still access the files on it (with Windows Explorer). Copying all files is possible but it stops at a ...
2
votes
1answer
222 views
Data recovery on Lion with a disk that disk utilities cannot mount?
I ran iDefrag last night because my MBP was running sooooo slow. I barely ever use it and it has 300 GB of free space. I used to use OnyX to optimise the disks on Snow Leopard but I didn't see that ...
2
votes
1answer
178 views
How to recover accidentally deleted data?
My data has been deleted accidentally don't know how it got deleted.
Yesterday when I left office the folders where at proper place and when today morning I opened my Mac OS Lion 10.7.4. I found ...
2
votes
1answer
175 views
Restore partition from merged partition
I accidently merged my BOOTCAMP and Mac OSX Partition via diskutil.
Is there any way to recover my data from the Bootcamp partition?
2
votes
1answer
382 views
How to recover a deleted/replaced HFS+ partition from external drive?
How do I recover a HFS Plus partition that somehow I've managed to delete or replace with a Linux command?
I didn't do anything else, I mean, I didn't put any files or folders on the drive, so it is ...
2
votes
1answer
2k views
Recover docx files
We have just discovered that none of the passwords on our word documents work any longer, and I need a recommendation of an application that I can use to recover the files.
I believe the files had ...
2
votes
2answers
61 views
What do I need to read/recover data from the hard drive of an Apple II CX?
My father bought an Apple Macintosh II CX in 1990 and it survived until 2010, when the main harddrive broke down and despite trying multiple times, booting from floppy disks failed for an unknown ...
2
votes
0answers
1k views
How to recover data from iPhone backup files WITHOUT the info.plist, status.plist, manifest.plist, manifest.mbdb, and manifest.mbdx files?
I have iTunes 10.5 and Mac OS X version 10.6.8.
I would like to restore my iPhone from backup.
iTunes detects all my backups EXCEPT one, which happens to be the backup I want.
I looked in the ...
1
vote
2answers
221 views
Exact clone of HD
I managed to broke something on my iMac's internal HD. I have now done a successful restore using DiskDrill, but just in case I want to make an exact copy of the internal HD. Not just some partition, ...
1
vote
4answers
4k views
How to copy files from an unbootable Mac?
My MacBook Pro (2008) will not boot, so I want to copy some files before reinstalling Lion.
How do I do this from the Recovery disc?
1
vote
2answers
1k views
iPhoto Lost Faces
I just noticed that my iPhoto lost all of the "Faces" data (reason unknown). It must have happened fairly recently. I sync the entire library with my iPad, and the faces are still on the iPad. And ...
1
vote
3answers
820 views
How to recover previously saved text file after an overwrite and a reboot?
I was programming in python and I had two text editors open to the same file, and right before I shut down my computer I saved in the wrong one and overwrote the version I wanted to keep. How can I ...
1
vote
2answers
665 views
Fixing up a HFS+ filesystem enough to rescue some files
I have a HFS+ formatted drive that just died on me. I have a back up but it's a about a week old. Unfortunately, I have a few files that I've changed and added since then that I would like to rescue ...
1
vote
3answers
2k views
Recovering data off of a dead hard drive
My hard drive died in my macbook and it no longer will start up. It will not mount in an external enclosure but disk utility is still reading that the hard drive is there, and I tried to repair disk ...
1
vote
2answers
2k views
How to recover 'Reminders' wiped out by Mountain Lion?
I had a large list of reminders in OSX (Mountain Lion) sync'd to iCloud (i.e. my iPhone). While editing the list on the Mac and trying to delete (not 'checkbox') one work item, I accidentally deleted ...
1
vote
1answer
2k views
My Launchpad organization was reset with Mountain Lion. How can I recover it?
I had neatly sorted the applications in Launchpad when I was running Lion. But after upgrading to Mountain Lion, none of my custom folders are there any more, and it seems Launchpad is back to the ...
1
vote
1answer
710 views
Restoring mail from backup after hard disk died
The hard disk on my iMac (Mac OS X 10.5.8) died, and after getting it replaced I have been trying to restore my files from backup. The backup I have is just a copy of my user directory. I copied the ...
1
vote
1answer
35 views
HD failure - recovery possible if system can't see drive?
I've got a 2.5" SATA HD in an enclosure, plugged into a Mac Pro (trying to see if I can use Data Rescue II to recover anything). Unfortunately, my system is not seeing the disk, either in Disk ...
1
vote
2answers
86 views
Restoring data from iPad to new Mac after old Mac died
My wife's Mac died. We sent the hard drive to a data recovery service, but the platters are damaged beyond repair or recovery, nor do we have a usable backup. Now she has a new Mac.
Her iPad 1 (iOS ...
1
vote
2answers
343 views
I repartitioned my harddrive while installing Windows 8 and lost my OS X installation, can I get it back?
I tried to install Windows 8 on my MacBook using Boot Camp. Because the normal installer did not recognize the partition that was made by Boot Camp, I opened up the command promt and ran DISKPART. I ...
1
vote
1answer
275 views
Mac Air Flash Drive Retrieval
If my Mac Air has been water damaged, can I still retrieve the data from the flash drives even though the machine will not start at all?
1
vote
2answers
220 views
Recover Folder from xcode project
I feel sick...
I just accidently deleted the www folder of my phonegap app in xcode 4.2. It's not in finder or trash. From what I read, its actually deleted. I have tested on my ipad.
How can I ...
