Replaced hard drive wondering which data recovery method i should use

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Yesterday morning i recieved the dreaded flashing folder with question mark. I turn on the mac and first the logo comes then a no smoking sign (without the ciggarette) pops up then the flashing folder with question mark comes. I took it to the genius bar and the genius there tried everything. When we pulled the hard drive out of my mac and plugged it into their mac we were able to see the hard drive. When he was diagnosing it we were able to even go into the hard drive and see my folders, except we couldn't see any of the files in them.

He told me about a data recovery service but they charge huge amounts of money, he also told me about data recovery programs i can run on the hard drive.

I was thinking that because we can see the hard drive and the folders i might not have to send it off to a data recovery service. Your suggestions are well appeciated

Also he heard the drive spinning with no clicking..Someone please help
 

cwa107


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Did he say the drive was actually bad or failing? It's possible the filesystem might just be damaged.

If it's actually faulty, I would start by replacing it. Then, pick up one of these external adapters and once you've got your system up and running again on the new drive, plug it in externally and copy whatever data you can find back to it. If that doesn't work, Paragon actually has a beta of their Rescue Kit for Mac available to Mac-Forums members that should be able to help with your issue.
 
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www.DriveSavers.com and talk with them, they charge a lot of money but if your data is really important then it is totally worth it.
 
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What would you do if it is under warranty. Apple service center is going to replace mine but won't they want to keep the bad one also?? Just how common is this folder/? hard drive failure.
 
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the guy said i needed a new drive and consequently installed it. he gave me the old one so i can try and recover stuff from it. I was just wondering that because there is no clicking and the hard drive is visible when plugged into another mac and that i can even see folders that retrieving files using paragon or the program they sell at apple would work. or would i have to shell out the money for a service to do it.
 
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Way... way too many specs to list.
there is no clicking and the hard drive is visible when plugged into another mac and that i can even see folders
If all that is true, why not just copy it off of the drive while attached to the other mac? Paying for recovery is generally extremely expensive, I recommend against it if at all possible (ie, regular backups.)
 

cwa107


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sounds like the drive has developed bad sector on the drive, I would be careful if you are going to use data recovery software to scan the drive. If it takes longer than you expect by behaving very slowly or seems like it hangs I would say stop and send it to a data recovery company if the data is important. You might want to follow this guide if you are going to do it yourself http://www.datarecoveryadvice.org/data_recovery_diy.html
 
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I have to agree with what everyone here has said, only other thing I can say is invest the 300 dollars in a Time capsule haha, there well worth it when something like this happens, and you get a 802.11N router as well!
 

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