User Tip: MBPr + USB issue and how to recover hard drives.

I did want to share this in case someone runs into this problem:

Since I bought this MPBr in June it has "destroyed" my external USB drives on at least 7 ocassions. By "destroyed" I mean this: Either during a "Wake up failure" or ususally after reboot the drives suddenly were not "recognized" and I would get that dreaded "Initialize, Eject or Ignore" screen we all fear. When it happened and I tried all the standard repair tools (TechTool Pro, Disk Warrior, Data Rescue, etc) most often I ended up wiping the drives since they didn't hold much data, the important stuff safely away inside firewire drives not connected to the MPRr.

That was until last week.

A fact checklist:

• All the drives were from different makers and different ages (some brand new, some 1-2 years old). Made no difference.
• The drives were both powered and unpowered. Made no difference.
• The "destruction" would happen either when the computer went to sleep or simply when trying to use a USB hub.
• I tried 5 different USB hub models. All of them did the same thing.
• To avoid issues, I was reduced to NOT using USB hubs (or even trying) and unplugging EVERYTHING at the end of the day.
  

An assistant who was not aware of these problems made the horrible mistake of getting a USB hub and pluging these drives which now held VERY IMPORTANT information, some backed up, some which it had not been backed up yet. Almost INSTANTLY all the drives went bad: Unrecognized. Now, I really couldn't get mad at her because - let's be honest- using a USB hub is not "up there" in the scale of "dangeorus activities" in the computing the world, but it left me 3 dead large size USB drives..And they all had the same problem:

• When plugged in, the system would simply not recognize them.
• Pluging them into an older mac or another mac had the same response.
• In a few occassions the drives would actually appear briefly and disappear again. We are talking seconds here.
• NONE of the repair tools could fix them: TechTool Pro, Disk Warrior and fdsk were helpless.
• Data Rescue could actually see the partitions greyed out but could not access them
  

After some digging around it seems whatever is happening with MBPr's USB/Mac OSX/Firmaware is destroying the PARTITION TABLES of USB drives. The data is still there, the system simply cannot access it.

Eventually I came up with the solution which involves recovering the partition tables via Terminal using an open source program TestDisk. The name of "Stellar Phoenix Recovery" software also popped into from time to time (which I do remember from the old days), but I could not find an actual example of a succesful recovery.

What you will need:

1. This program runs in the Terminal with a very basic interface that uses arrow keys, enter and a few letters. That said, if you have never used Terminal or are not familiar with the terminology I suggest you find someone who does.
   
2. Get the software here: TestDisk - http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk If everything goes well, this will be the one time you will truly be motivated to donate some cash. The euphory alone will do it. I know it for me, that's for sure.
3. For my recovery I followed this step-by-step tutorial by Perro Hunter, but BE AWARE that it was written at an earlier date as apparently some of the features that the tutorial mentions as "not working yet" are now.
   http://perrohunter.com/repair-a-mac-os-x-hfs-partition-table/
   In my case I did not need to go past step 7, which is good because the warning it gives is pretty bone-chilling. In my case the software was able to write the recovered partition tables by itself and then when I restarted....the drives were there. DO NOT IGNORE THE BACK UP AND LOG INSTRUCTIONS. EVER. Keep in mind that my drives were formatted as Mac OS X HFS+ / GUID partitions. I have no idea how it will work with other types of formatting. The process itself is very fast. if IN DOUBT, just quit terminal and start over (I did twice until I finally figure out what I was doing). Also, take screen shots as you move along the steps it helps.

Needless to say, after recovery use Disk Utility, Disk Warrior or TechTool Pro to get the drives back in shape, and if possible, back up everything and wipe them clean which is what I did just to be sure.

I hope that helps somebody and good luck to you in the process.