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I copied 2TB of data on an exfat disk from a dying Mac. Then on Windows this data is (almost) missing

I have an old mac with a dying hfs hdd with failing SMART. I copied 2tb of data on an exfat drive but windows only sees only 3 directories and 80gb. Where’s my other stuff? Now after I did that long copy session that lasted a whole day, the disk died from stress and the mac doesn’t boot anymore. Even if it boots, i don’t think the disk can last another full copy session…

Testdisk can show the data, there’s a way to tell windows that the files are there?

bobsuruncle , (edited )

Just an idea. Copy all the data you can from that external drive to something else just in case that’s all you can get. Plug the external drive into the Mac with the bad drive. Connect the Mac to your network with a Ethernet cable, turn on the Mac while doing command option r combo when you see the Apple. Go to disk utility and format the external to hfs (it will wipe the disk). Exit disk utility and go to the install mac menu. once install on the external drive is complete restart while holding down the alt key and select the external. Boot off the external drive. Recover data by copying it to the external boot drive or another external you have. You may want to test the command option r first and I would disconnect the failing HDD during most of that process.

Magnetic_dud OP ,

i installed macos on an external usb drive (surprised it let me do that), then booting from that i installed ddrescue via homebrew, then i was able to copy the files to the exfat partition

wasted a whole weekend for that…

Magnetic_dud OP ,

I run chkdsk and it found that 2TB of data! But in 60000 nameless and useless chunks in the FILE.000 directory

hoping the drive tomorrow can last another day of copying…

fucking fast boot, lost my data because it’s assuming hard drives don’t change when pc is turn off

HubertManne ,

my experience with smart, which full disclore is from over a decade ago, is that once it alerts things are pretty fucked.

ObiWahn ,

Not sure about mac drives but I’d rather do a bit-for-bit image from the drive if possible and work from there. If you find some data has been missing from a regular copy attempt you still can resort tot the image to extraxt it from there.

Beefytootz ,

I don’t have an answer for certain, but I suspect this may be the usual problem with windows not being able to see or recognize certain file systems. If you have a Linux live drive available, or a VM, you could peek at it through there to see if it’s actually been copied

Magnetic_dud OP ,

it looks like fast boot in order to save me 10 seconds on boot restored the FAT state from before the copy

i booted on another operating system and i see all the files, but the contents are all wrong, looks like everything is gone…

Beefytootz ,

Shit. I’m really sorry to hear that man!

lechatron ,
@lechatron@lemmy.today avatar

You might look for a data recovery tool. I’ve had luck in the past using them. Also, if you still have the Mac and it wasn’t the drive that died you can remove the drive and use a USB HDD adapter to connect it to another machine.

edit: just read the text again and saw it was the drive dying, bummer… Data loss sucks.

Magnetic_dud OP ,

An additional problem is that the Mac is stuck to MacOS 10.7, so even if it boots again, I can’t install anything because “this operating system is not supported”. I would need to find some decade old recovery program somehow. Or find another Mac and some USB enclosure

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