[X-Newbies] DiskWarrior recovery help.

[Steven Rogers]

On Nov 21, 2006, at 10:10 AM, Brian Durant wrote:

> This is where we lose some of the context from earlier postings. At
> this point, I am just trying to recover my files on the "suspect"
> drive, before I try to let DiskWarrior loose on the suspect drive. I
> am just trying to save a backup copy of my files on a "non-suspect"
> Firewire drive at /mnt/osx2. The problem being that /mnt/osx2 seems to
> only want to be in a "read-only state when mounted under Xubuntu.
>
> The files on the suspect drive can't be recovered under OS X until I
> run DiskWarrior. The problem being that I risk losing at least some of
> the files when DiskWarrior recovers the directory b-tree catalog.

Ah - well now we may be down to the real issue - because  
unfortunately there really isn't a good way to recover files before  
fixing the directory catalog. If there is a major problem with the  
catalog, then just mounting the drive could goof it up or make it  
unrecoverable. Even if it does mount, if the catalog issue affects  
your user files such that Disk Warrior will loose it in the repair  
process, then copying off the file before recovery will just copy off  
garbage.

The only time you'd want to copy before anything else is when you're  
pretty sure the disk is hardware failing - e.g. its acting erratic,  
making whining noices, unmounting itself, failing to respond, etc.  
and you have a limited amount of time before it croaks altogether.  
(sometimes putting the drive in the freezer for a few hours can buy  
time in that situation - sounds weird, but it works).

Otherwise, if there's any issue with possible catalog corruption, the  
best policy is to run Disk Warrior first before doing *anything*  
else. If the catalog is goofed up, obviously booting from it would be  
a really bad thing, but even seemingly innocuous things like mounting  
it could make things worse too. Anything Disk Warrior has to throw  
away is lost already to any ordinary techniques short of a  
professional disk recovery.

I should have noticed this earlier, but like you say - in the  
exchange of short messages, I think I lost the context of the  
original issue.

SR