What to do after rescued.

Asked by Jay Zhang

Hi everyone,

I'm currently rescuing data onto a newly purchased disk from a failing drive, and wonder what is the next step to extract/view the data on it once my recovery process is done? I'm using a Mac. Much appreciated for any detailed bits of help/directions as I'm fairly new to this.

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Jay Zhang
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Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty (hamishmb) said :
#1

Hello Jay,

Are you recovering to a file on the new disk, or are you recovering directly to the new disk?

Either way, you'll hopefully be able to simply mount the new disk/the file on it when you're finished and examine the data. If not, of if parts of the data is missing or corrupted, you might need to use something like PhotoRec (https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec) to help finish the process off.

I'm happy to provide support/advice here when your recovery is done.

Hope this helps,
Hamish

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Jay Zhang (jayzhaaang) said :
#2

Hi Hamish,

I'm recovering directly on to the new disk. And is 22% now, been days, but that's what it takes. Thank you for answering!

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Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty (hamishmb) said :
#3

Hi Jay,

Ah I see. Do you potentially have a third drive to move important files to, in case you end up having to reinstall macOS?

Glad it's making progress.

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Jay Zhang (jayzhaaang) said :
#4

Hi Hamish,

Why would I have to re-install? Since I'm backing up directly to a new HDD, I can just try to repair and read the data off of the new drive?

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Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty (hamishmb) said :
#5

It would be a good idea to avoid writing to the destination drive at first - your filesystem(s) from the source drive may have been corrupted when the drive failed. As a result, macOS might not boot or you may need further recovery steps like using PhotoRec. Because of this, I generally recommend recovering to a file on the destination drive, but with luck all will be fine.

Just in case you need it, do you have a third drive you can use temporarily for saving data?

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Jay Zhang (jayzhaaang) said :
#6

Hi Hamish,

It's a pure DATA recovery, no OS on that corrupted drive, so I was already been recovering for days into an .dmg file to the new drive. I bought the new one just for this purpose so I don't have a third one. And I was looking at PhotoRec at the beginning, but it won't rescue .NEF files because I shoot Nikon's raw format.

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Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty (hamishmb) said :
#7

Ah that makes more sense. Recovering to a .dmg file is ideal - a third drive probably won't be necessary then.

I guess it'll just be waiting it out for now, but I'm happy to offer some more advice if needed when it's finished.

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Jay Zhang (jayzhaaang) said :
#8

Hi Hamish,

Because that's what DDRescue originally do, no? Since I use the GUI so I didn't get to manually type the code in terminal like how I've seen people been sharing. I hope it is recording a .DMG to my new drive.

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Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty (hamishmb) said :
#9

Hi Jay,

ddrescue can do either of those things. If in doubt, you could email me (hamishmb at live dot co dot uk) a screenshot and I'll have a look for you.

Hamish

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Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty (hamishmb) said :
#10

Jay,

I'm replying here because it's easier for me to keep track of support requests this way.

Unfortunately, from the picture you've sent me, it seems you are recovering directly to the new drive, and not to a .dmg file.

With luck, this won't matter. We just have to hope that your filesystem is relatively intact. That you are retrying bad sectors at this stage isn't very encouraging, but the screeenshot shows you're still pulling data off the drive so that is definitely good news.

One thing it might be worth thinking about is making sure there's plenty of airflow to the old drive - they can become hot if struggling to read data, and keeping them cool often improves the situation. If it feels hot to the touch, directing a small fan at it might help.

Hamish

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Jay Zhang (jayzhaaang) said :
#11

I see.

Let's just say I want to abort it and redo it, would it speed up by recovering in .DMG file instead?
I have been running it for a couple days, I can shut it down for today and let it rest for a couple hours.

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Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty (hamishmb) said :
#12

It would be unlikely to result in any speed improvement, but it might make it easier to manipulate the data when finished (if any manipulation is required, eg because the filesystem is damaged).

It's only really worth doing this if your new drive is bigger than the old one, ideally twice as big or more. There's always a risk in restarting a recovery as well, in that some data you pulled off in the first attempt might have become unreadable since as the drive slowly deteriorates.

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Jay Zhang (jayzhaaang) said :
#13

So I will just rest for now, and resume the process until it's done? Then we will try to read the new drive with recovered data later? I've heard people use Disk Drill to read data off of the new drive, what do you think?

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Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty (hamishmb) said :
#14

I would suggest just letting it run, and trying to read the data later.

I haven't personally used Disk Drill so I can't really say either way on that one, though it looks like it could be useful. However, if you did have to use this tool, or a similar one, you'd need a third drive to store whatever Disk Drill/a similar program salvages.

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Jay Zhang (jayzhaaang) said :
#15

Hi Hamish,

I've finally rescued about 85% of my DATA, the rest I don't think I can since it's showing to be N/A or thousands more days to run. So I'm okay with it. Now what do you suggest I go from here?

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Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty (hamishmb) said :
#16

Glad to hear it, great news :)

If your disk was less than 85% full, there's a chance you got everything back. I would recommend you try mounting the new disk with Disk Utility, and seeing if you can read the important files (maybe make a selection, enough to make you feel confident that you've got what you need and that it isn't corrupted). However, make sure not to write to it at this point.

If you can't mount it, you might need something like PhotoRec or Disk Drill to continue, but let's cross that bridge when we come to it.

Hamish

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Jay Zhang (jayzhaaang) said :
#17

Hello Hamish,

I managed to recover most of my files using Disk Drill, only a small amount of corruptions. I'm also doing another pass using Disk Drill on the actual broken drive to see if I can salvage any further from it, since I got a couple spare drives to do it with so now I'm just taking the time.

After all, I'd say it's a successful attempt, even though it's time consuming.

Lesson learned. I thanks You for the effort and helps! Wishing you all the best and be safe!

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Jay Zhang (jayzhaaang) said :
#18

It's done.

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Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty (hamishmb) said :
#19

Glad to hear it was a successful recovery.

You stay safe too, I hope you don't have to use these tools again, it can be a stressful experience :)