It Question For Mac Weirdies

[Kris H]

Dear mac stylee IT bods

 

One of my staff insisted that that we bought an external hard drive to back up all his graphic design malarky from his mac as he was apparently killing our servers, so we have done. However, in transferring his stuff to the new hard drive he's made some type of balls up and apparently lost a whole load of files. Our IT department don't know about much except PCs and the best that they can come up with is some American firm which involves someone using credit cards etc, or a UK firm who specialise in recovery who actually want two grand for the privilege. I have tried the usual (shouting, chinese burns, a wedgie, waving a p45 etc) but it hasn't worked so far.

 

Does anyone have any practical ideas for sorting this out cheaply/effectively?

 

Please make it as simple as poss as well since even thinking about this type of thing makes my head hurt.

 

Kristian

[MattyB]

First of all, make sure he does *nothing* on the computer, or as little as possible. It is more than likely he could get alot of it back. As you are probably aware, data isn't "deleted" on a HD, its simply flagged as being over-writeable, so it could be accessable.

 

I'm not quite following how it happened tho - did he copy it to the new (external) HD, or thought he had, then delete the original only to find it hadn't copied?

 

I know of Data Recovery companies - we use one that charges £300. Have so far had 100% success rate on even totally dead drives. Alternatively we have this "Data Recovery" software, its fantastic, aslong as the HD can be seen by the PC (as in, recognised in the BIOS, not sure how it works with macs) it'll retrieve loads of stuff.

 

But if he can't find the data on either to source Mac or the external drive, then your only hope is data recovery, either by software or a company...

[Kris H]

Matty

 

Basically he's been a bit cocky I think and not paid attention when transferring and the transferred files haven't saved properly. He's then attempted to re-save the corrupted files and done so over the originals, not onto the new HD.

 

The American outfit that we were pointed towards has a kind of scanning tool which shows what's there and allows you to rescue one small file for free to check that it works, which we did, and it does. Bit messy though since someone would have to use their credit card and then claim back through expenses which means getting it signed off my the MD and going through the whole rigmarole of explaining. I've already laid on the big guilt trip so I don't think we need to make him feel any worse. The US outfit won't invoice.

 

Does the firm that you've used in the UK do macs as well? We've found loads of suitable companies and software that will sort PCs but macs seem to be the issue.

 

Does that explain it better?

 

Kristian

[Snapper]

There is a mac dealer Walsall way that rescued stuff from a friends computor once... I think they are called Mac Extreme... Don't let the person touch the computor or the hard drive.... talk to Mac Extrame to see what they will be able to do...

 

I f the person has continued playing around info could be rewriten over... and lost for good.

 

If I find there phone number I will post it here..

 

Hope this helps

[niallf]

Hi Kris,

 

I've definitely seen file recovery tools for Mac used on OS9 and earlier. Norton Utilities for Macs may be what you need. If it's OSX, I'm completely unfamiliar, though I could ask the more clued up in work.

 

http://www.symantec.com/mac/

 

Niall.

[Ladders]

Kris, as Niall says Norton Utilities has a recovery option. Although I've never had the misfortune to have to use it!

 

I would have thought there would be a more local company who could do disc recovery though

 

I'm sure the guys we used to use at our old place could do it for a lot less than a few grand - prob a few hundred!

 

There should be Mac specialists you can ring in the Yellow Pages, or try somewhere like Jigsaw who can point you in the right area.

 

 

PS Mac's rule! Still not seen a good lookin PC

[ally]

Completely seperate question but on the same lines. I want to download a PDF file onto my bog standard pc. i was told you can get acrobat adobe for free, is this so?? on their web site it seems to charge you. Does anyone have a link so i can download it?

Ta

Ally

[Scott_Mac]

I have used a program called Stellar Phoneix Kris... they do a Mac version AFAIK, i have the PC one but i guess that won't help.

 

Search the web for it, i think you get a free trial. *Removed*

It works too as i found some files on my hard drive that i thought i had deleted a long time ago

[Scott_Mac]

Ally - look here for the free Acrobat Reader:

 

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

[ally]

Many thanks scott. It has worked a treat. Downloading the stuff i need as i write. Cheers again, ally

[Kris H]

Thanks for all this stuff folks. Must admit that I had kind of hoped the problem would go away but they are still bleating, so will look into a few of these.

 

Cheers again

 

Kristian

[Scott_Mac]

Thats the worst kind of problem.. one that doesn't go away and people complain still.

 

[Kris H]

I know it's a bit of a generalisation but having staff really is a pain in the arse. Some of them are useful unfortunately. Otherwise

[Scott_Mac]

 

I'm guessing your work load would increase if you got rid of them all though...

[Kris H]

You would assume so but sometimes I'm not sure. Might try picking them off one by one for an experiment. Blimey they're lucky to work for me...