Data Recovery from Mac OS X Systems

Mac OS is the trademarked name for a series of user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. (formerly Apple Computer, Inc.) for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface. The original form of what Apple would later name the "Mac OS" was the integral and unnamed system software first introduced in 1984 with the original Macintosh, usually referred to simply as the System software.
The HFS and HFS+ file systems used by the Apple Macintosh to reference data stored on their hard drives are very different to the FAT and NTFS file systems used by Microsoft operating systems. Due to these differences, HFS & HFS+ data recovery methods and techniques follow a unique path that is quite different to that of Windows systems.
Although this file system is very reliable, stable and secure the media and storage system may become physically corrupt which impacts on the operability of the file system significantly thus requiring data recovery to be performed, usually this would require opening the media in one of our clean room facilities and repairing any faulty components such as the read write head and or preamplifier, this CompuRecovery routinely carries out this form of recovery to Apple Mac systems.
Perhaps you have dropped your Apple Mac laptop or computer system, in ordinary circumstances this would probably mean that your data was gone forever, please never be tempted by Mac recovery software you may discover on the internet as in this type of situation you could render the data unrecoverable, the solution is simple calmly call us.
Examples of errors where we can perform a full recovery of data are:

• Cannot access drive because a disk error occurred.
• This disk is unreadable by this computer. Do you want to initialize the disk?
• The disk drive cannot be accessed because a disk error occurred
• Segment Loader Error
• No such volume
• Bad file name
• not a Macintosh disk
• bad master directory block
• drive not installed
• r/w requested for an off-line drive
• Directory not found
• Not an HFS volume
• Internal file system error

This list is by no means exhaustive there are other error messages that you may encounter.
CompuRecovery can recover data in practically all cases of corruption to a disk formatted with both HFS and HFS+, running operating systems OS 8 up to the most recent version, Mac OS X 10.4.
Mac OS X is a 32 or 64 bit multi-tasking UNIX like operating system, the latest version of the Apple Macintosh operating system, designed to run on Apple’s own Power PC processor architecture. First commercially released in 2001 there have been 4 major releases of OS X, the latest being OS 10.4 codenamed Tiger. The OS itself consists of two main parts: Darwin, an open source Unix like environment which is based on Mac microkernel/BSD Unix and the GUI (Graphical User Interface) ‘Aqua’ developed by Apple.
Although OS X is built on the stability of UNIX, and the hardware used by Apple tends to be of a high quality, mistakes, accidents and hardware failures do happen, an Apple system is just as prone to data loss as any other system. These types of failure can include:

• Hard disk failure
• Degradation of hard disk or peripheral media
• User Error (accidentally deleted data etc)
• Accidental initialization or formatting of media
• File system corruption
• Malicious damage and more

Recovery of data from an OS X system requires an in-depth knowledge of not only how the operating system is put together but also and perhaps most importantly, how the file system at the core of OS X works.
CompuRecovery have developed custom tools and solutions for every type of Macintosh data loss situation:

• File system corruptions.
• Incorrect Kernel commands leading to data loss.
• Incomplete File Vault operations due to power failure or system crash.
• Recovery of external media using other file systems. For instance FAT32 formatted external hard disks.

It is even possible in rare cases to recover data from an OS X system where the files in question have been deleted using the Finder’s Secure Empty Trash facility, this is however dependant on the type of data that is to be recovered
CompuRecovery can also recover data from Linux/Unix distributions compiled for the PPC (Mac) architecture.

Data Recovery from failed X-Serve G4/G5, X-Serve RAID and X-SAN systems

CompuRecovery specialize in the recovery of Mac systems from iPods to Powermacs and also large distributed file systems and RAID configurations.
Whilst RAID and storage solutions from all manufacturers are getting much better and far more reliable, no system is foolproof, accidents can and do happen, hard disks can fail even when RAID security levels are used.
CompuRecovery is able to recover from HFS, HFS+, UFS and X-SAN systems in most configurations, from spanned volumes to RAID configurations including Striped, Mirrored and Parity based RAID (see our RAID data recovery page for further information). We often recover mission critical data from the following systems:

• X-Serve spanned volume storage sets
• Performance striped arrays for media and video editing
• Security parity based arrays with 2 or more drive failures
• HFS, HFS+, UFS and X-SAN file systems with logical corruptions
• Accidental initialization, formatting or re-configuring of RAID

CompuRecovery can also recover Macintosh data stored on Windows, Linux/Unix, Novell and other servers, and return the data to you as it was or on a Mac optimized format.
In most cases we can recover and get a system up and running again within 72 hours, this can include weekends, evenings and public holidays.

Data Recovery & Conversion from Older Macintosh Systems

The Macintosh originally used the Macintosh File System (MFS), a flat file system with only one level of folders. This was quickly replaced in 1985 by the Hierarchical File System (HFS), which had a true directory tree. Both file systems are otherwise compatible.
CompuRecovery is able to perform recovery of data from all Macintosh systems, from the earliest systems using the Macintosh File System (MFS) through to Hierarchical File System (HFS; introduced with system 3) to the most recent HFS+, UFS and X-San systems.
We regularly recover data from the following loss situations:

• Formatted media
• Deleted files
• Inaccessible damaged or corrupt media
• Faulty hard disk drives displaying any symptoms
• Recovery of faulty peripheral media, such as CD, Floppy disk (all sizes and formats), ZIP and JAZ disks and tapes.
• RAID configurations whether striped, mirrored or parity based RAID.

Recovered data can then be optimized for your current system whether that is a modern MAC, PC or other and returned to you on the media of your choice.
Conversion: In addition to data recovery, we can also convert your classic systems as well as their peripherals and data to more modern media. We have a huge selection of systems allowing us to convert all kinds of obsolete media at our Data Conversion facilities. For example:

• Low capacity SCSI, IDE or other ATA hard disk drives to CD or DVD
• Floppy disks, 5.25", 3.5" to CD
• Zip or Jaz disk conversion to CD or DVD
• Obsolete Word processing, spreadsheet or database documents to text files or modern word processing formats
• Cross platform conversion i.e. Mac to Windows and vice versa

In all cases it is not necessary for the original media to be in a working condition for us to perform a recovery.
Call CompuRecovery and talk your problem through with us on 866 4245123, or get a quote and we'll call you back