AppleMac Drive inspector software

[Channel Hopper]

A customer has handed me a recent MACbook which has the Apple formatting in the hard drive.

It's been dropped whilst running and the drive has a number of damaged sectors and some of the files include his tax returns.

Running anything in the original environment OS-X gives rise to a premature shutdown of the programme and then shutdown of the o/s even though the remainder of his files appear to be fine, and unless I access these the rest of the machine stays awake (which suggests the mechanics/electrcs are OK)

I've been using the Convair PC Inspector for a couple of years to recover the majority of damaged files on PCs, but is there an equivalent bit of software for non-invasive recovery of MAC files/programmes ?

 

[Topper]

I've been using the Convair PC Inspector for a couple of years to recover the majority of damaged files on PCs, but is there an equivalent bit of software for non-invasive recovery of MAC files/programmes ?

I used Convar only yesterday to recover somebody's photographs but am not aware of a MAC equivalent, but TBH have never really needed to look

 

[PaulR]

I used Mediafour's MacDrive 7 a few months ago for my daughter's similarly abused MacBook Pro and it enabled me drag files off although the options for disk repair didn't solve her problem. They have a free trial period which is what I used.

I left the software on after the free trial expired but eventually uninstalled it as it was slowing down the boot up.

I notice they're up to MacDrive 8 now.

_http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive

 

[PaulR]

Probably of no use to you but since then I fell over a free offer for Paragon Software's HFS+ for Windows 9.0 Special Edition. I istalled it (because it was free - hey!) but haven't had a chance to read a Mac disk since then as daughter is currently slaving in an internship up in Glasgow.

Not a very clever name as it implies you need Windows 9 to run it! If you have a search you may find another special offer. It does seem to consume a fair amount of resources as the processor runs much hotter now and the cooler fan runs for much more than it used to.

Product Concept
After the introduction of Intel-based Apple computers, Mac users have got the option to combine their Mac OS X environments with Microsoft Windows (XP and later), which can be easily installed as an additional OS with the help of Apple Boot Camp. It should have been a real breakthrough if not for a naughty nuance – data sharing between Mac and Windows domains is a real problem, as Windows doesn’t know a thing about HFS+, the primary file system for Macintosh computers, while Mac OS X only provides read access to NTFS is an advanced file system that provides performance, security, reliability, and advanced features that are not found in any version of FAT. For example, NTFS guarantees volume consistency by using standard transaction logging and recovery techniques. If a system fails, NTFS uses its log file and checkpoint information to restore consistency of the file system. In its later versions, NTFS also provides advanced features such as file and folder permissions, encryption, disk quotas, and compression. .

With release of NTFS for Mac, Paragon Software has offered an elegant solution for these limitations. With a low-level file system driver on the Mac side providing full read/write access to NTFS, the company has managed to open up an effective communication channel between Mac OS X and Windows.

Paragon HFS+ for Windows is a promising successor of this trend. It’s a file system driver that currently can offer read access to HFS+/HFSX volumes under Microsoft Windows.

and

Restrictions and Known Issues
Paragon HFS+ for Windows has got a number of limitations, which however are going to be fixed in the nearest future:

Read only access to HFS+/HFSX (or Mac OS Extended) is an updated version of HFS (Hierarchical File System) and is applied nowadays as the primary file system for Macintosh computers. Compared to HFS it supports much larger disks and files. It also uses Unicode instead of Mac OS Roman and similar text encodings for file and folder names. Besides it permits filenames up to 255 UTF-16 characters in length, and file forks similar to that of NTFS. One of the crucial improvements to this file system is the possibility to use a full 32-bit allocation mapping that resulted in less wasted space and other enhancements. HFSX is an extension to HFS Plus having the option to hold case-sensitive filenames. ;

No support for resource forks are constructs of the Mac OS operating system used to store structured data in a file, alongside unstructured data stored within the data fork. A resource fork stores information in a specific form, such as icons, the shapes of windows, definitions of menus and their contents, and application code (machine code). ;

No support for symbolic links (symlinks or soft links) consist of special types of files that serve as references to another files or directories. Unlike a hard link, which points directly to data and represents another name for the same file, a symbolic link contains a path which identifies the target of the symbolic link. Thus, when the user removes a symbolic link, the file to which it pointed remains unaffected. Symbolic links may refer to files even on other mounted file systems. and hard links are references, or pointers, to physical data on a storage volume. On most file systems, all named files are hard links. The name associated with the file is simply a label that refers the operating system to the actual data. As such, more than one name can be associated with the same data. Though called by different names, any changes made will affect the actual data, regardless of how the file is called at a later time. Hard links can only refer to data that exists on the same file system.;

No support for ACL (Access Control List).