Data Recovery and Disk Utilities Forum @R-TT

Thank so much for you help, Alt!

The scan of the first 100Gb was enough to get the files/folders structure for all the files I needed. I went ahead and purchased R-Studio for Mac, and downloaded and installed the latest release (2.0 Build 903 October 27, 2009). R-Studio recovered all the files that I needed and more! I am very happy that I chose R-Studio.

I think that if R-Studio found the files in the files/folders structure, you should try to recover them. At least it's worth trying. You don't have to scan the entire disk to find the file table on the disk.

R-Studio found all the files (or the table that points to the files) when I tried your suggestion of scanning from 0 to 100 GB. It took just over 11 hours to scan about the first 46GB before I stopped the scan. I will probably run separate scans (with slightly overlapping regions) until the whole disk has been scanned. Thank you for your helpful suggestions.

Okay, I will try that.

R-Studio can scan an object in several successive scans. First, from 0 to 100 GB, second, from 100 GB to 200 GB, and so on. Most important, R-Studio accumulates the information from successive scans and keeps track of changes in this information obtained from different scans. See for more details: ttp://www.unformat-unerase.com/Unformat_Help/index.html -> Data Recovery Using R-Studio -> Advanced Data Recovery -> Disk Scan -> Multiple scans.
I recommend you to scan the first 100 GB to determine whether R-Studio can read the file table, and you'll be able to find the movie in the folders/files structure and recover it.

I started at the 100GB offset because I'm trying to recover a home movie, so I'm trying to determine where in the disk it is, and whether it is recoverable. The time estimate for a full scan is 43 hours and I'm afraid that scanning for that long would make things worse by overheating the disk. I've resorted to placing the disk on a laptop cooler (it has two fans) and running the scan while saving the scan results to a networked disk. I wish that R-Studio had a pause and resume scan feature!

Thank you for pointing out reading material that could help me understand these process better. I'll take a look at it.

I don't understand why you started scan with a 100 GB offset. I'd rather have started from the zero offset. And try to preview found files.
More about file preview: http://www.unformat-unerase.com/Unforma ... index.html -> Data Recovery Using R-Studio -> Basic File Recovery -> Previewing Files.
Your found files are the Known File Types: http://www.unformat-unerase.com/Unforma ... index.html -> Data Recovery Using R-Studio -> Advanced Data Recovery -> Disk Scan -> Known File Types.

To make a disk image I would need a 1TB disk. I wish I had a friend with a totally empty 1TB hard disk! One friend has a 1TB Apple Time Machine, but more than half is already full.

I purchased a SATA-to-USB bridge cable. I opened the disk enclosure and disconnected the power and SATA data cable from the disk. I then connected the SATA-to-USB bridge cable and power cables directly to the disk, therefore bypassing all of the enclosure circuitry, including its power supply. The disk is then detected as a USB disk by Disk Utility. The disk EFS+ partition information is still not detected by the Macbook Pro, so OS X offers to initialize the disk.

In an attempt to see if a small region scan would detect files, I created a Region with a size of 5GB, starting at 100GB. R-Studio found some files, but all the files have generic names, so I don't know whether R-Studio could recover full files, so I am still hesitant to buy it.

I do understand that I may need more free space in my MacBook Pro to perform a full scan, because my MacBook's disk only has about 10GB of free space. I will try to save the scan file to another external disk I have, which has more than 200GB of free space.

R-Studio has consistently estimated that a full scan would take about 43 hours. I know that my 1TB disk had about 450GB of free space, so maybe I could cut the scan time in half by creating a 550GB Region. I just hope that R-Studio does not keep crashing when only 1/5th of scan is completed.

Any suggestions will be most welcome.

Have a pleasant day,

Roberto Maldonado

I still recommend you to create an image of the disk. Maybe, you can borrow a disk from a friend for several days?

I am suspecting the enclosure's electronics as well. It's too strange that no matter which type of connection I use (USB, Firewire 400, Firewire 800, or eSATA), the interface is detected as SCSI.

I would like to make an image but I do not have a drive with enough space: it is the only 1TB disk I have. The closest other one is 500GB, with about 288GB free.

I may attempt to take the disk out of the enclosure. I bought it re-furbished over a year ago, so I don't think that it is still covered by warranty. Funny thing: one of the enclosure screw heads is almost totally worn out, almost as if the refurbisher wanted to make it really hard to open the enclosure.

Thanks for the suggestions.