Glitched HDD; Photorec did not recover everything, please help?

Previously it was the internal standard hard drive that my iMac came with (2017).


I destroyed it last year (March 2021) because my Mac was freezing, due to several factors that were my fault. Her name is Macayla, by the way, it's not weird, every Mac gets a name from their human.

So last year, Macayla was freezing badly, for many hours.

I should have left her alone but I manually shut her down, destroying her hdd, and I did it more than once!!




Eventually I ripped our her hdd and made it a nice external hdd on my desk: I just bought a nice shell enclosure with a USB cable.



So it's still a glitched hdd though, albeit in a nice shell. Macayla has a new hdd.


I ran Photorec and only recovered some stuff. For example I had a nice music library that I never got back.


I could give more technical details but I don't think that's needed here yet. It's basically looking for who is the most experienced with data recovery, specifically what could someone do, after running Photorec but not recovering everything.

I thought a friend and some online acquaintances have said that Photorec is the most that can be done.




I'm sure that I destroyed it with multiple manual shut downs. She had been freezing during her boot-up process and apparently I did some heavy damage.




...However I still know that there's more there, which has not been recovered. Maybe it's unique because I destroyed it several times during her freezing last year.

But for example, if I plug in the glitched external hdd, Macayla will take hours to look at it, but eventually... she will see my old music library for example.


For that specific thing, I know then I should be able to drag & drop things but there's a huge lag to actually accessing anything.



Furthermore, I made a beautiful 20-min. video last year, 99% ready to upload to YouTube, it was in whatever format iMovie would save in. It's vanished without a trace, even if I leave it plugged in, for many hours, it never turns up. The folders show up but not my actual movie project.









Also btw, re: Photorec: When choosing the target drive: It's been a while since I looked at this, but I did the normal way of using Photorec.

I remember there was also a couple odd choices of target drives with an "r" in front of it. I did not try these strange "r" targets because I don't know what it really is.

It's also hard to find this specified anywhere so I'm really mainly looking for people who are already familiar with such projects.



I only saw the "r" choices mentioned in a YouTube video, which was a guide for using Photorec, and he only said like one sentence, that the "r" choices might be "faster" or something to that effect. Which might mean that the "r" choices are somehow less thorough than the main normal choice of how to use Photorec. That's what I figured he meant, otherwise, I have no idea what it is.



Anyone familar with the details of the situation here? Thanks!!

Turn it off, unplug it, and call a local IT guy.

For a few hundred bucks they can try to recover your data, but every second that system runs it's destroying the data you lost.

I had a external hd drive die once. The drive developed a bad sector on the MBR. Surprised to see you had no issues doing recovery on the drive while in an external enclosure? For me i had to rip it out of its enclosure and mount it internally + use ddrescue (i did this in linux btw) to make a full drive image. I had extra work to do to decrypt it using github.com... and ultimately i used photorec (don't remember the settings) and some other windows program to scrape as much as possible from the drive (i think it might have been EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard but can't confirm). All i can say is good luck, this will take forever to manually go through the files. I had to develop a program similar to an image viewer, for quickly viewing searching and deleting text files (you'll be amazed how many copies of license agreements you'll recover, in all languages of course xD). Also created a small program that could test and search inside of compressed files (every time a rar file is altered you get a old "ghost" copy of the file that is deleted and ultimately damaged as it gets overwritten... but photorec will still recover this file not knowing the difference between a lost or deleted file... so this program helped to do bulk testing to determine if a archive was damaged or not, and for the most part it helped me recover lost cbr files xD). Also developed a python script pastebin[dot]com/VimRpgv1 for detecting duplicate files (not all files were lost to me, i had duplicates of projects on other drives or stuff i emailed to myself, and this script helped me to match them with the randomly named recovered photorec files). It took a long time but i whittled it down to only 5,177 Files that still need review. This sucked. Everything i have now is triple backed up xD

originally posted by: lordcomac
Turn it off, unplug it, and call a local IT guy.

For a few hundred bucks they can try to recover your data, but every second that system runs it's destroying the data you lost.

Thanks. I'm not using it.

I asked at Best Buy -- I know there are local guys too -- but Best Buy's Geek Squad quoted up to $2,000 to try data recovery on a glitched hdd.

Also no guarantees on actually accomplishing anything, which is understandable for data recovery.

But it sux that altogether, someone can take the glitched drive, essentially do nothing, and then charge me $2,000.

And then I guess at THAT point it would be like a ransom to pay them the $2,000 to get my own hdd back, haha.

So it just doesn't seem financially possible to pay someone to work on this.

I checked in the past, years ago, I don't know where exactly, but I remember the same general estimate of two-thousand dollars with no guarantee of anything.

originally posted by: FocusedWolf
I had a external hd drive die once. The drive developed a bad sector on the MBR. Surprised to see you had no issues doing recovery on the drive while in an external enclosure? For me i had to rip it out of its enclosure and mount it internally + use ddrescue (i did this in linux btw) to make a full drive image. I had extra work to do to decrypt it using github.com... and ultimately i used photorec (don't remember the settings) and some other windows program to scrape as much as possible from the drive (i think it might have been EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard but can't confirm). All i can say is good luck, this will take forever to manually go through the files. I had to develop a program similar to an image viewer, for quickly viewing searching and deleting text files (you'll be amazed how many copies of license agreements you'll recover, in all languages of course xD). Also created a small program that could test and search inside of compressed files (every time a rar file is altered you get a old "ghost" copy of the file that is deleted and ultimately damaged as it gets overwritten... but photorec will still recover this file not knowing the difference between a lost or deleted file... so this program helped to do bulk testing to determine if a archive was damaged or not, and for the most part it helped me recover lost cbr files xD). Also developed a python script pastebin[dot]com/VimRpgv1 for detecting duplicate files (not all files were lost to me, i had duplicates of projects on other drives or stuff i emailed to myself, and this script helped me to match them with the randomly named recovered photorec files). It took a long time but i whittled it down to only 5,177 Files that still need review. This sucked. Everything i have now is triple backed up xD

Thank you,

Your post is largely over my head, as I'm unfamiliar with most of what you mentioned.

Something I should have mentioned though, is that my glitched hdd was NOT encrypted. So decryption is not part of this.

Also I'm not really worried about duplicate files and such, haha, I had used Photorec already so I know it's a deluge of pretty random recovered stuff with a lot of duplicates and garbage files etc.

So I'm familiar with that, not worried about it.






...Actually I was talking about the output files from Photorec.

If you were describing something different, then sorry, I wasn't familiar and I thought you were talking about Photorec but now I'm not sure.

Anyway I'm not sure what, if anything, to take away from your post, thanks but it's not clear to me.

I will glance at the program you mentioned: EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard... but wait if it's Windows then I probably can't run it.

I'm in macOS here. I don't have Windows or Linux at my disposal right now.

Thanks for input though, we may just be confusing each other more, haha.

Don't bother with best buy, find a local shop. Best buy corporation uses top of the line software and then pays lowest bid minimum wage donkeys to use it. Any idiot with a pipe wrench can hammer in a nail- but they won't do a good job.

Find a local shop. If you're close with any local business, ask who they use. Generally the small shops won't advertise- they get new clients by word of mouth only, because there's too many people and not enough time.


I did data recovery for well over ten years for people in your position, we used to charge about $50/hr for residential work. The kinds of things we recovered were worth tens of millions, and the real takeaway is.... figure out your data backup situation.

I say that, but I've got the cobblers shoes and my backups suck.
Back up your stuff, or else you get where you are.

a reply to: JamesChessman

Send it to datarecoverynj. Larry does excellent work. No fee if no recovery.

Try freezing the HD overnight and try running the recovery program and see 😎

originally posted by: lordcomac
Don't bother with best buy, find a local shop. Best buy corporation uses top of the line software and then pays lowest bid minimum wage donkeys to use it. Any idiot with a pipe wrench can hammer in a nail- but they won't do a good job.

Find a local shop. If you're close with any local business, ask who they use. Generally the small shops won't advertise- they get new clients by word of mouth only, because there's too many people and not enough time.


I did data recovery for well over ten years for people in your position, we used to charge about $50/hr for residential work. The kinds of things we recovered were worth tens of millions, and the real takeaway is.... figure out your data backup situation.

I say that, but I've got the cobblers shoes and my backups suck.
Back up your stuff, or else you get where you are.

Thanks,

Unfortunately I'm broke, though I'm probably on the edge of starting to make $$ but not quite yet; I'm still broke.

I don't really have $$ to spend and plus my car needs repairs before my pet project with my glitched data, haha.


...How much $$ do you think I should actually be looking to spend though? It's a terabyte hdd though not full, but it's possibly a ton of content to recover...

If $2,000 is Best Buy's quote, then what do you think I should hope for? Slightly less than that? haha


I'd much rather exhaust options myself, at least, before paying $$ for someone else to do it. I don't mind learning as I go, because it's valuable to learn, plus it's free.

Do you know about software to do it myself? Photorec didn't quite get everything back, after the 1st try. Do you know about the "r" target options?

originally posted by: drewlander
a reply to: JamesChessman

Send it to datarecoverynj. Larry does excellent work. No fee if no recovery.

Wow, no kidding. Well that's a better set-up, at least, so I appreciate the suggestion.

Best Buy will charge even if they don't recover a single thing, maybe not even touch it, haha.



Anyways I gotta exhaust my own options first. On my own desk. Photorec's first try didn't get everything back. Do u know what I should do next? What about those "r" target options that I didn't try, is that just nothing?

a reply to: JamesChessman

Thats the tjing about data recovery. The more you screw with it the less likely you can have it professionally recovered. I have had both failure and success doing my own recoveries, but if its important to me I send it to a recovery specialist.

Eta: datarecoverynj.com...

originally posted by: xuenchen
Try freezing the HD overnight and try running the recovery program and see 😎

Yes, stick it in the freezer overnight and retry. SEALED IN A BAG.

This reduces all the internal mechanical tolerances and can free up areas not accessible before, especially for the pivot mechanism on the reading arm.

The other thing to try is ONE FIRM SLAM onto a flat solid surface from a few inchess high. Can have the same effect as above.

Both options are free and VERY satisfying when they work.

BE PREPARED to copy info immediately if using the freezer technique as the hdd will warm up again fast.

EASEUS Data Recovery program from EaseUS
You have to purchase it as the free version only recovers a small amount .
No guarantees as that depends on how bad the drive is .
Try the free version first.
If it recovers anything....
I do believe there is a Mac version .

a reply to: Gothmog

Easus is likely only going to recover if a partition or master file table has been damaged or lost. If the platters are damaged, board is roasted, or heads crashed, you do not want that disk to spin up any more than it has to. If its ssd it could be locked from writes. Sometimes there is a reset process to bring ssd back to life, and even a software utility for certain vendors where drives lock after x# reads or writes. Ssd have much lower potential for recovery. I cannot stress enough you do not want to power that disk up repeatedly if there is a physical problem.

originally posted by: drewlander
a reply to: Gothmog

Easus is likely only going to recover if a partition or master file table has been damaged or lost. If the platters are damaged, board is roasted, or heads crashed, you do not want that disk to spin up any more than it has to. If its ssd it could be locked from writes. Sometimes there is a reset process to bring ssd back to life, and even a software utility for certain vendors where drives lock after x# reads or writes. Ssd have much lower potential for recovery. I cannot stress enough you do not want to power that disk up repeatedly if there is a physical problem.

Thanks for the input,

As for my glitched hdd, I don't think there's a mechanical problem though. I glitched it out... by some very regrettable manual shut-downs, when my Mac was freezing, due to a few things but not hardware related.

So that was the big problem, and the big destruction / corruption of data: My manual shut-downs when my Mac was freezing for hours, during her boot-up process.

I don't think that really counts as a hardware problem, I think it's pretty clearly just software problems, but you guys can let me know if you're more familiar...

Anyway I think the data is just corrupted a few times with my shut-downs, and that's really the "only" problem...

I was hoping to find some folks familiar with Photorec and other data recovery software...

I really don't want to spend $$ on it... plus I want to exhaust my own options here, there's always free software and programs etc. but the key is finding what's worthwhile, and specifically, what to do after Photorec didn't work completely...

originally posted by: JamesChessman
I will glance at the program you mentioned: EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard... but wait if it's Windows then I probably can't run it.

EaseUS Data Recovery is good, I have used it several times with good results, but it's not free. The free version only allows you to recover 1GB of data but it shows all the files it can find, so it's a good way of knowing if it's possible to recover the data or not.
They have a Mac version here.

originally posted by: xuenchen
Try freezing the HD overnight and try running the recovery program and see 😎

That some times works, but only for mechanical problem, usually those when we ear the drive "clicking".
File system problems cannot be solved by freezing the disk.

a reply to: ArMaP

Ok here is your post from the other thread, about my glitched hdd:

I have used Testdisk and Photorec with some good results.
Another program I use (I used it today) is R-Undelete (free for home users). A few weeks ago I was able to recover all the files from an USB drive that I accidentally formatted with a different file system.

Thank you but see, I still don't have a clear path forward. It just seems like people mentioned a few programs and I really don't know what to do.

Specifically I would hope there'd be a suggestion for what to do after a first attempt with Photorec did not recover everything.

I haven't run Photorec again because it would be pointless and redundant, if it did the same thing again, i.e. only recover a small bit of my stuff, and then it would all be duplicates of the files from the first incomplete recovery. That's how I'm considering it, so far.

Is there like a standard next move, if Photorec didn't recover everything, on the first attempt?

Also what about those "r" target choices, a video mentioned them as faster so I imagine they might be somehow less thorough than using the normal target choice in Photorec. So I don't really know much about it but it doesn't seem relevant either.

a reply to: ArMaP

Also can you or someone list off / rank the best home data recovery programs?

I previously thought that I heard that Photorec was the very best one?

Are the other suggestions better / worse than Photorec?



Is there different hardware of some kind, that should be used for the best data recovery, from my glitched hdd?

The problem with recovering data from a damaged disk/file system is that it depends, some programs are better at some things than others.

I have had good results with Photorec/Testdisk, but I also have to use other programs because Photorec/Testdisk wasn't able to find the files I was trying to recover.

I also had good results with Easeus, and they have Windows and Mac versions.

So, if I were you, I would download the free EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac, which allows only the recovery of up to 2 GB (I never tried to see if using it a second time you can recover another 2 GB, I suppose it does).
When you start using, as soon as you get the list of the disks available, select the affected disk and make an image, that way you have a copy of the disk, so if the disk is really damaged and gets worse by being read, you have the image to work with.
From what you have said, it's probably a file system error, not a physical damage to the disk platers, so the data should all be there.

Good luck!