²¥===============================================================================================¥³ Bladerunner's Ramblings on some last ditch efforts to resurrect a trashed drive. This article assumes that you have already tried the usual ways to repair the drive. ²¥===============================================================================================¥³ Hard Drive Despair Repair (Part one of two)... [check out part two of this in the !!!Brand New Docs!!! folder in the Files area. File name: H Drive Despair Repair (2 of 2)]. Some disk formatting software allows you to do a device copy (like FWB's HDT) from one disk to another. This completely copies EVERYTHING from one disk to another. This includes all the headers, the disk tree, all of it. So, if you have a disk that is totally screwed up AND you have another disk that is empty, or can be made empty that is the same size or larger you can do a device copy of the trashed disk to the blank disk. Why do this? For a very, very good reason. This way you can now attempt to fix the copy, which now has the same problems as the original WITHOUT permanently losing data from your repair attempts on the original. Now, here are things you can do on the copied disk and why they may work. First, if the problems are physical (like say bad blocks) the copied disk won't possess the same physical problems that the original does. This can greatly increase your chances of resurrecting the disk, or at least restoring your data. Second, it allows you to use the beta of Norton on HFS+ volumes WITHOUT having to worry that you may irrevocably trash the disk and the data using a beta. Third, this suggestion is for the ORIGINAL disk. NOT THE COPY. This is done on the drive that is trashed. The caution about the next item can NOT be stressed enough. THE NEXT SUGGESTION CAN BE VERY, VERY RISKY AND SHOULD ONLY BE DONE AS A TOTALLY LAST RESORT. DO NOT DO THIS ON ANY DISK THAT YOU HAVE ANY OTHER HOPE OF RESTORING, INCLUDING USING A DISK RECOVERY SERVICE LIKE DRIVESAVERS!!! With that said, sometimes temperature or humidity can cause a disk to physically mutate in minute ways. Heat causes things to expand, cold causes things to contract (obviously) and these physical factors can trash a disk. In the old days, if you wrote to a disk in one kind of environment (cold or hot) and then tried to use it in the opposite environment, a lot of times it wouldn't work. This was terrible for portable computers. When the data was written on say a warm disk, the platters were fractionally larger. So when the disk was moved to a cool place and then it tried to access the data, since the platter was now fractionally smaller, from the cooler temps contracting it, the head sort of "lost it's place" and the disk was screwed. Things have come a LONG way since then, and now all kinds of advancements in disk technology have almost totally erraticated this kind of problem. BUT... On a disk that is completely fried, one that you have tried everything on and don't plan to send to a recovery service like DriveSavers you MIGHT want to try to use physics to illicit some help. Take the drive and put it in a cool place for a while. NOT, NOT, NOT the refrigerator or an ice chest!!! Moisture will surely make matters worse, and this kind of cold is too drastic. Try maybe putting the drive in a pantry for a while away from the heat of the computer. Some users have put a small ice pack under a folded towel and set the drive on the towel - but take care to not let moisture get on it! You don't to void your warranty and be left with nothing. When the drive is cool, connect it back up and try to resurrect it again. Lastly, a few tidbits of prevention insurance. First, partition large drives. This increases your chances of only losing one partition rather than the whole magilla. Second, make one partition HFS rather than HFS+ and put the System file on that partition. This also increases your chances, and the tools you can use, to resurrect the disk. Third, use disk recovery tools like TechTool or Norton to make a copy of your disk's info for later use in recovery attempts. Norton calls these files, VIFs (volume info files). This can be a BIG help in recovering data especially if not the whole drive. And lastly, I'd be remiss if I didn't say this. BACK UP IMPORTANT DATA! If you don't have room to back up everything, just back up the important stuff that you cannot replace, or cannot easily replace. MAKE yourself do this daily or weekly. You will be glad you did. All, all, all my files are backed up daily (the ones that changed that day) and I have had THREE hard drive crashes. It only took the first one to get me on a vigilant back up routine. The last two crashes only inconvenienced me, but I lost NO data, except stuff from that day (except the News here, because I back it up every three days anyway, so I lost the last three days, so I'm not perfect :). Look for Part Two, soon. Hope that helps, Bladerunner (Sean Damkroger)