Boot volume broken/gone, target disk mode fails, any hope for me?

gbiche wrote:

my guess is that this HD is totally broke.

So.

Everyone seems to want to begin with a completely reduntant "So" or "OK". So I will too.

OK, you guessed right: your HD is indeed totally broken and since you've done all the correct things to try and get to your data, I think the next step would be to install Disk Warrior on the Mac Mini and try that. If DW doesn't work, you're looking at paying a professional data recovery company to get back whatever they can.

One more thing: in future, after this problem is solved, you should maintain a complete bootable clone of your hard drive, regularly updated every day or at least every week.

You can't use a older OS on a newer OS. Like the 10.5 on 10.6 or 10.4 on the 10.6

You can recover from this.

Get a blank external powered drive and your 10.6.3 install/upgrade disk. Stick the disk in and connect the blank drive.

Make sure the disk bottom is clean, polish with a bit of rubbing alcohol and a very soft cloth.

Reboot the computer holding the c key down, you'll boot off the 10.6 disk.

Now select Disk Utility and your EXTERNAL DRIVE on the left side (dont make a mistake!), click Erase>Security Option> Zero All Data and click Erase.

Next click the Partition tab and chose 1 partition, Option: GUID, format: OS X Extended (Journaled) give it a name and click Apply.

Now Quit and install 10.6 onto the EXTERNAL DRIVE.

Reboot the machine holding the option key down, and go through the setup, use your same user name as the internal boot drive.

Once in, get online and Software Update until clear.

See if you can access your internal boot drive, copy your user file folder contents (Music, Docs, Pics, Movies, not Library) to the new folders on the external drive.

Install all your programs from fresh sources onto the EXTERNAL DRIVE. (no Filevault or Bootcamp)

Now your all sitting pretty on the external drive, download the free Carbon Copy Cloner.

Use Disk Utility to Erase with Zero the INTERNAL boot drive. (no Filevault or Bootcamp)

Use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the EXTERNAL to the INTERNAL drive.

10.6.3 retail/upgrade doesn't have the free iLife, you can extract the programs using Pacifist off the 10.5 disks.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3358920

gbiche wrote:

Thanks, I'll try DiskWarrior.

I've learned my lesson/. external HDs are cheap and this situation really *****. Thanks again

Disk Warrior will not work on the Mini, your using 10.4 on a 10.6 machine again.

You can't use a previous operating system to repair a newer one, even the software is for 10.4.

gbiche wrote:

what does that mean? are you talking about using an install disk whose OS X version is older than the one currently installed on the machine? or are you talking about using an older machine to access/repair a newer one?

You can use a later issue operating system to repair a disk of earlier issue operating system (to a certain extent), but not the other way around.

Changes are made to the OS, the drive format, the partition scheme etc., that the earleir issue operating systems doesn't know about. (how can it right? changes occur later on.)

Use the 10.6 disk, install it onto a external drive, option boot from it and access your internal drive grab your files, then your free to do as you please.

Or upgrade one of the other Mac's to 10.6, then use Firewire Target Disk Mode.

Don't use the 10.5 disk or a 10.4 Mac to attempt a repair on a 10.6 drive. That's why your failing and could ruin your chances at recovery.

This does not address my problem. I want to save data from a unbootable/unmountable drive BEFORE i reinstall OS X

It's unbootable for unknown reasons, but it's unmountable because your using the wrong OS with it, use a 10.6 OS to address a 10.6 machine.

Once the files are recovered, you can erase and resintall 10.6.

Your drive works, the data can be recovered, provided the right actions are taken.

My understanding is that since Disk Warrior deals with directory repair, it is unlikely to work if the disk is physically damaged, as may be the case here. It's worth a try, though.

There are also data recovery apps which operate at a lower level, scrounging for recoverable files rather than trying to reconstruct the entire volume. Take a look at Data Rescue 3.

There's a free demo to show what files have been found; you then have to buy the full product in order to recover them.

gbiche wrote:

the mac isn't the problem, the drive is

Yes, I know.

If i took the drive out of the macbook pro and put it into a USB enclosure, I don't see difference that would make.

It won't make any difference, unlese there is a problem with the Mac itself, then the drive can be removed and accessed directly, but still you need either a 10.6 or a 10.7 Mac to do that.

Not the 10.4 or 10.5 like your trying to use.

It doesn't make any sense that a machine can't even mount or open a volume just because it has a newer version of the OS installed.

The problem is your trying to access/repair the drive with a OLDER operating system, one from the 10.5 disks:

"I used the Install Disk (10.5.7) to get to Disk Utility and try to repair the startup disk, BUT ALAS disk utility doesn't even see the volume."

When you installed or upgraded to 10.6, likely the disk format and partition map scheme was changed, older operating systems can't deal with it or repair it.

So you can't use 10.5 or 10.4 Disk Utility on the Mini to repair a 10.6 formatted drive. 🙂

gbiche wrote:

I don't have any 10.6 install disks, only 10.5

Well your going to have to get some.

If you upgraded the MacBook Pro from 10.5 then the 10.6.3 Snow Leopard Retail disks will work. $29.

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC573Z/A

If your MacBook Pro came with 10.6.4 or later, order the grey disks from Apple. You will need your make and model exactly, as there are specific hardware drivers on the grey disks for certain machines only.

Grey disks 10.5 and 10.6 have the free iLife, the white 10.6.3 disks do not.

You can extract the iLife programs from the 10.5 disks with the program called Pacifist later on and place them on your new 10.6 install.

In target disk mode, the Host Mac Mini (running tiger) saw the problem drive but could not mount it.

10.4 can't work with a drive formatted with 10.6

gbiche wrote:

In every route I've tried so far, the problem drive has been inaccessible. At best it is seen but can't be mounted.

Your drive being "seen" is a good sign, it means it can be accessed with the RIGHT operating system/boot disks.

What your doing is using the WRONG operating systems and boot disks. Get it? 🙂

gbiche wrote:

Is it possible, with what I have available, to salvage the data from my problem drive?

No.

No software is going to work neither, as software depends upon operating system "calls" to execute, and how can it access something it doesn't understand?

Even if it did work, it's $99 for Data Rescue to access the data and you need another drive to output the results to, then you still have to install 10.6 again and that's another $29

You can't install 10.5 because it's obsolete, no security or other updates for it. Also any programs files created with 10.6 version are not going to work with 10.5 versions.

As soon as you get the $29 10.6.3 or 10.6.x grey disks from Apple and a external self powered blank hard drive, we can proceed with file recovery.

When you installed or upgraded to 10.6, likely the disk format and partition map scheme was changed, older operating systems can't deal with it or repair it.

So you can't use 10.5 or 10.4 Disk Utility on the Mini to repair a 10.6 formatted drive

I can't be sure, but I doubt that this is so. There have been changes in the way disk permissions are handled, and it is true that you should not run Repair Disk Permissions on a volume with a newer OS than the one that Disk Utility is running on. But I believe that the underlying hfs+ directory structure of a Mac volume has actually not significantly changed in the last few years, and that therefore you can probably in a pinch still use DU's Repair Disk running on Tiger or Leopard to repair a disk with Snow Leopard installed. The only file system change for Snow Leopard that I know of was the addition of "file compression" capability. When you do a normal upgrade-install of Snow Leopard, the target volume does not get re-formatted or re-partitioned- all your previous non-system files remain intact, and all that happens is that the old system files are replaced by new ones.

As it happens, I was able to explore this a little My wife uses an older Mini that came with Tiger, and the HD has since been upgraded to Snow Leopard. We kept a bootable clone of the Tiger system, and are also maintaining a bootable backup clone of the SL volume. I just booted that Mini into the old Tiger clone, and the Snow Leopard volumes mounted immediately on the Desktop. I then launched its Tiger version of Disk Utility, and attempted to run "Verify Disk" on the Snow Leopard clone. It ran fine, checked all the expected parameters, and gave a normal report.

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Verifying volume “WD 52 SL”

Checking HFS Plus volume.

Checking Extents Overflow file.

Checking Catalog file.

Checking multi-linked files.

Checking Catalog hierarchy.

Checking Extended Attributes file.

Checking volume bitmap.

Checking volume information.

The volume WD 52 SL appears to be OK.

Mounting Disk

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I didn't want to risk running "Repair Disk" since I couldn't be positive this would be safe. I still can't be sure, and I certainly don't advocate doing this if the appropriate version of Disk Utility is available, as it normally would be.

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With respect to DiskWarrior, my own Mac is a dual-boot SL-Lion setup, and I have Disk Warrior 4.3. I just ran it while booted from a Snow Leopard volume, with a Lion volume as target. This ran fine also, with the following report:

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DiskWarrior has successfully built a new optimized directory for the disk named "LaCie Lion 2." The new directory is ready to replace the original directory. All file and folder data was easily located.

.

.

Errors, if any, in the directory structure such as tree depth, header node, map nodes, node size, node counts, node links, indexes and more have been repaired.

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I suspect the OP's disk is just too sick to be repairable by any version of Disk Utility.