How to recover files off this disk that won’t mount

disk-utilityhard drive

I have an HFS+ disk that will not mount. I've tried it in multiple enclosures, and the problem is the disk itself. Disk Utility says it cannot repair, and so does DiskWarrior. With fsck I get this weird output.

$ sudo fsck_hfs /dev/disk4
** /dev/rdisk4 (NO WRITE)
   Executing fsck_hfs (version hfs-285).
volumeType is 0
0000:  0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000       |................|
. . .
01b0:  0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 00fe       |................|
01c0:  ffff eefe ffff 0100 0000 af6d 7074 0000       |...........mpt..|
01d0:  0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000       |................|
. . .
01f0:  0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 55aa       |..............U.|

Here is some output from syslog:

9/29/16 08:11:58.747 diskarbitrationd[67]: unable to repair /dev/disk4s2 (status code 0x00000008).
9/29/16 08:11:58.752 diskarbitrationd[67]: unable to mount /dev/disk4s2 (status code 0x00000001).

Best Answer

Disk4 is the whole disk device and no slice with an (HFS) file system. The output is the content of block0 omitting most lines containing only zeros. Block zero often is equivalent to the MBR/pMBR of a disk. Block0 doesn't contain a file system!

enter image description here

To verify/repair a file system, you have to choose a particular partition and the volume has to be mounted. The common external disk has two partitions: the EFI and the main volume - so try:

sudo fsck_hfs -f /dev/disk4s2

If the external disk has more than one visible volume, enter diskutil list and choose the appropriate partition (e.g disk4s3 or disk4s4).

If fsck_hfs fails to mount and/or repair the disk, try a data recovery tool like Data Rescue, R-Studio, Disk Drill etc.

If they also fail contact a professional data recovery specialist like Kroll Ontrack.

Related Question