07-01-2011, 12:41 PM

Hello,

One day last year, my PowerBook G4 up and died on me... that it would boot up nicely but it would not get to the log in screen. I pretty much assumed that the PowerBook G4 was DOA and I bought a 15" MacBook Pro a week later. Now, I had a lot of important files in my home folder (i.e. scan of a Canadian visa, a large music library, etc) that I wish to restore.

I've purchased an enclosure last week and I put the hard disk that I extracted from the old mac into the new enclosure. I have been trying to recover the sparsebundle file which has my FileVault protected files because, even though the hard disk will mount and I can see my old Applications, Library and other folders, I can't find my home folder's sparsebundle. I was wondering, does anyone here know of any way that I can recover the old sparsebundle? Note that the hard disk has NOT been used since that happened and I have not changed the file structure on that hard disk (in other words, I have not been saving or deleting files or formatting the drive).

So, does anyone have any ideas? I know that PhotoRec doesn't exactly try to find sparsebundles (after all, sparsebundles don't have a header that they recognize, they only recognize these files) but it has been successful at pulling old Apple EULAs and old Apple TV ads from the hard disk (apparently, the former owner was a fellow Mac geek, who knew? ;-P ) as well as assets and icon sets from (mostly) old versions of Apple applications, a whole lot of plist and txt files that aren't my personal files... as House said, "a lot of apples, no candy bars". ;-P So I know files *can* be restored from this hard disk, I'm just looking for the candy bar in a sea of apples.

Specific details about the old computer:

• 12" PowerBook G4, 1GHz
• 160 GB hard disk
• had the latest version of Mac OS X 10.5
• the computer was updated regularly
• All of my applications, the library and System folder seems to be intact.
• No changes have been made to the hard disk since the loss, other than placing the hard disk in an enclosure.
• Format: Mac OS Extended (journaled)

07-01-2011, 01:09 PM

Originally Posted by OnTheOtherHand

Hello,

One day last year, my PowerBook G4 up and died on me... that it would boot up nicely but it would not get to the log in screen. I pretty much assumed that the PowerBook G4 was DOA and I bought a 15" MacBook Pro a week later. Now, I had a lot of important files in my home folder (i.e. scan of a Canadian visa, a large music library, etc) that I wish to restore.

I've purchased an enclosure last week and I put the hard disk that I extracted from the old mac into the new enclosure. I have been trying to recover the sparsebundle file which has my FileVault protected files because, even though the hard disk will mount and I can see my old Applications, Library and other folders, I can't find my home folder's sparsebundle. I was wondering, does anyone here know of any way that I can recover the old sparsebundle? Note that the hard disk has NOT been used since that happened and I have not changed the file structure on that hard disk (in other words, I have not been saving or deleting files or formatting the drive).

So, does anyone have any ideas? I know that PhotoRec doesn't exactly try to find sparsebundles (after all, sparsebundles don't have a header that they recognize, they only recognize these files) but it has been successful at pulling old Apple EULAs and old Apple TV ads from the hard disk (apparently, the former owner was a fellow Mac geek, who knew? ;-P ) as well as assets and icon sets from (mostly) old versions of Apple applications, a whole lot of plist and txt files that aren't my personal files... as House said, "a lot of apples, no candy bars". ;-P So I know files *can* be restored from this hard disk, I'm just looking for the candy bar in a sea of apples.

Specific details about the old computer:

• 12" PowerBook G4, 1GHz
• 160 GB hard disk
• had the latest version of Mac OS X 10.5
• the computer was updated regularly
• All of my applications, the library and System folder seems to be intact.
• No changes have been made to the hard disk since the loss, other than placing the hard disk in an enclosure.
• Format: Mac OS Extended (journaled)

Have you tried booting from the old hard drive and then logging into your User Account?

07-01-2011, 01:22 PM

Originally Posted by Razormac

Have you tried booting from the old hard drive and then logging into your User Account?

That would be interesting. Especially since the old computer was PowerBook G4 and the new one that I'm using right now is MacBook Pro, but I'll see if I can do that.

07-01-2011, 01:33 PM

Nope. That's so not happening, even though I got an apple icon and not a file folder with a question mark, I didn't get the spinner.

07-01-2011, 01:38 PM

Too bad.
I've never tried it, but thought that perhaps since you were running Leopard it might let you boot from it.

07-01-2011, 01:51 PM

Well, I'm running Snow Leopard (10.6.8) on my MBP and the HD has Leopard (10.5.8) on it.

07-01-2011, 02:22 PM

Originally Posted by OnTheOtherHand

Well, I'm running Snow Leopard (10.6.8) on my MBP and the HD has Leopard (10.5.8) on it.

That shouldn't matter. Your MBP is fully capable of running 10.5.8, must be something in the fact that it was originally formatted to run in your Powerbook that keeps it from fully loading on your MBP.
Oh, well. It was worth a try. Sorry it didn't help.

07-01-2011, 02:53 PM

It's okay. I'm running a deep scan through a demo version of Data Rescue 3, I've told Spotlight not to index the drive and if Data Rescue 3 can find the sparsebundle, I will buy a copy of it.

So far, the demos of Disk Drill and PhotoRec have been unable to.