drcreek Posted November 19, 2006 Share Posted November 19, 2006 Right I"m really in trouble I have a 24" iMac and i use a external 500GB drive to store all my movies, music & photos...etc It's borked! I switched on my mac to get a error saying "Disk Insertion, The disk you inserted is not readable by this computer." Initialize, ignore or eject." What do i need to do get it working again? I'm a struggling student so i can't afford expensive data recovery companies. I know it's probably dead but if there is ANY chance i can get my stuff back, I'm so upset i had family photos on there and personal music collections (i.e master copies of music i created) Please tell me what i need to tell you to fix it. I really need those photos back. There are people what are no longer with me anymore on those photos. I'm an idiot for not backing up. I'll give the site a donation or £20 to your charity of choice if i get this fixed. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/33661-oh-my-god-guys-please-help-me/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
McSkywalker Posted November 19, 2006 Share Posted November 19, 2006 I know it's unlikely, but if it is formatted as FAT32, try plugging it to a PC. You may also try to connect it to a Macdrive installed PC. Sometimes it works. (A friend of mine has an 80 GB external HD and sometimes he goes through the same problem as yours with his mac mini.) Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/33661-oh-my-god-guys-please-help-me/#findComment-238044 Share on other sites More sharing options...
drcreek Posted November 19, 2006 Author Share Posted November 19, 2006 No it's Mac formatted Heres some more info from it Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/33661-oh-my-god-guys-please-help-me/#findComment-238052 Share on other sites More sharing options...
McSkywalker Posted November 19, 2006 Share Posted November 19, 2006 You may want to read this thread to fix your mbr: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...80&hl=fdisk Make sure not to miss Rammjet's post there. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/33661-oh-my-god-guys-please-help-me/#findComment-238057 Share on other sites More sharing options...
TopazBar Posted November 20, 2006 Share Posted November 20, 2006 I'm sorry to hear that. I recommend the following: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php 1. Download and burn a CD. 2. Boot off the CD and run testdisk on your external disk If the external disk has hardware problems, obviously, you are pretty much out of luck. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/33661-oh-my-god-guys-please-help-me/#findComment-238244 Share on other sites More sharing options...
C0ReDump Posted November 20, 2006 Share Posted November 20, 2006 Try using any Live CD Linux distro, something like Knoppix on a PC, and mount your drive. Create folder in root when it boots up using terminal app, and mount HDD to that folder. mount -t hfsplus /dev/deviceid /diryoucreated where deviceid is id of your device in /dev directory. Once you find it ( using mount command, just type mount as root), mount it to your created directory, and copy over everything onto DVD (Knoppix has DVDRW support ) ad ther you go. If HDD is detectable in OS X should be no problem. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/33661-oh-my-god-guys-please-help-me/#findComment-238259 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rammjet Posted November 20, 2006 Share Posted November 20, 2006 Not so sure that GParted or Knoppix are going to work on his real Apple iMac. Perhaps if the external hard drive was to be plugged into a PC. Since Disk Utility can see the drive, probably not a problem with the MBR. Looks to be problems with corruption with the data catalogs on the drive/partition itself. This occurs when the hard drive loses power during its write operations or wasn't properly unmounted prior to disconnection. It is a little unusual to see an iMac running a hard drive with a PC-style MBR and HFS+ formatted partition that is more common to a Hackintosh. Typically, DiskWarrior would be used to repair this kind of problem, but Alsoft has not released a version for Intel Macs: http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior Otherwise, the following on Demonoid might help: File Salvage for MAC Data Rescue 1.1 for Mac [NEW] Drive Genius 1.2 and [NEW] Data Rescue II 1.0.1 [Must Have BOOT CDs] Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/33661-oh-my-god-guys-please-help-me/#findComment-238276 Share on other sites More sharing options...
drcreek Posted November 20, 2006 Author Share Posted November 20, 2006 Thanks guys I'll look into this stuff. Irony is, it died about an hour after I'd bought a new one to replace it. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/33661-oh-my-god-guys-please-help-me/#findComment-238277 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Betterdays Posted November 20, 2006 Share Posted November 20, 2006 I have a 24" iMac I'm a struggling student so i can't afford expensive data recovery companies. I'll give the site a donation or £20 to your charity of choice if i get this fixed. and a Macbook in 2 weeks?? something isn't right, here. No, you can't be acting like a cheapskate (c'mon, £20) when you have all those. Perhaps Daddy can help? struggling student, what a joke... If your disk stopped spinning you can still try a PCB swap. I went through all of this, I too lost a drive lately and paid for the recovery on my own dime. Now, lesson learnt, I never leave vital stuff only in 1 place. Backup backup backup. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/33661-oh-my-god-guys-please-help-me/#findComment-238370 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schweppes Posted November 20, 2006 Share Posted November 20, 2006 Try using File Salvage (universal Binary)...it`s a good recover disk application and an excelent file recover too. Good luck! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/33661-oh-my-god-guys-please-help-me/#findComment-238629 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dc3p0 Posted November 22, 2006 Share Posted November 22, 2006 hi there spinright at grc may help you here as it is spoken very highly about by the security teams on the twit network. sorry have not used it myself but i believe that this may fix your issue. also have you ran fdisk in windows fdisk x: -f as a command if the file strucyure has been screwed over goodluck Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/33661-oh-my-god-guys-please-help-me/#findComment-239758 Share on other sites More sharing options...
nekton Posted November 26, 2006 Share Posted November 26, 2006 I'd try File Salvage too. It has saved my clients' asses more than a few times. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/33661-oh-my-god-guys-please-help-me/#findComment-242311 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Numberzz Posted November 26, 2006 Share Posted November 26, 2006 File Savage all the way. Most others don't help at all. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/33661-oh-my-god-guys-please-help-me/#findComment-242480 Share on other sites More sharing options...
mac os x forever Posted November 26, 2006 Share Posted November 26, 2006 spinright 6 (pc only) Fixes all hard disk problems it may fix your mac hard disk but you have to plug it in a pc. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/33661-oh-my-god-guys-please-help-me/#findComment-242535 Share on other sites More sharing options...
wolf103fm Posted November 26, 2006 Share Posted November 26, 2006 I get the message saying the disk is unreadable, with my thumb drive on my MBP, when I leave it plugged in through a reboot. If I just unplug it, and plug it back in, it works. But mine is Fat32 formatted. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/33661-oh-my-god-guys-please-help-me/#findComment-242649 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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