how to access files old hard drive

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Level 1

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how to access files old hard drive

I broke my old macbook in a wine related incident. I have the hard drive from it and have put it into a reader and plugged it into my new macbook. I want to recover some of the files from it and transfer them to my new macbook.

When plugging it in it makes a whirring noise and the little light flashes, so it appears to be working. It shows up as an alternative disk, when I select it the mahority of the memory is full, as it was when I borke it. A number of folders, applications, system etc are displayed but when I look in them there are no files. I can see the users folder and go into the username folder but there are no further files or folders from there. I have tried viewing hiddne files, a couple of documents show up (autodiskmounted & DS_store), but not anything that I want.

Does anyone know how I can get the folders and files back?

Cheers

MacBook, OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)

Posted on May 10, 2014 1:38 PM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

May 10, 2014 1:44 PM in response to PtttDMouse

I suspect your drive is not usable any longer. Your option is to send it to a data recovery center. They tend to be pretty expensive and provide no guarantee of success. So what you do depends on how badly you want what was on the drive.

The fact that it mounts on your Desktop as an external drive is a good sign. What you might try doing is repairing the drive using Disk Utility. However, if that doesn't work then you would need to purchase file recovery software to try and recover files.

General File Recovery

If you stop using the drive it's possible to recover deleted files that have not been overwritten by using recovery software such as MAC Data Recovery, Data Rescue II, File Salvage or TechTool Pro. Each of the preceding come on bootable CDs to enable usage without risk of writing more data to the hard drive. Two free alternatives are Disk Drill and TestDisk. Look for them and demos at MacUpdate or CNET Downloads. Recovery software usually provide trial versions that enable you to determine if the software would help before actually paying for it. Beyond this or if the drive has completely failed, then you would need to send the drive to a recovery service which is very expensive.

The longer the hard drive remains in use and data are written to it, the greater the risk your deleted files will be overwritten.

Also visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Data Recovery.

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