This is my second post from my blog’s web-interface since God knows when. I’m already missing Ecto. Unfortunately, I’m too tamad to install the Windows version.

It’s official (at least as far as I’m concered): the Powerbook’s hard disk has physical damage. The good news is that I was able to recover most of, if not all my important files. So now I’m not worried about having this unit serviced - they can do whatever they want with it.

The Concern

I was hesitant in having the unit repaired because of the fact that I couldn’t access the hard drive at all at - and couldn’t salvage any of my important files.¹ This fear, and need to back-up was from Juan’s previous mishap from what was supposed to be a simple hard-disk upgrade. While I have no doubts that our Apple service centers have competent technicians, I’m also not surprised as to how they seem to not care about data loss.

It seems to me that ultimately, they just focus on getting the hardware aspect of the service done by any means necessary - even if it meant losing data. Of course they’ll try to back your stuff up, but should something happen that is out of their standard contingecy protocols, I doubt that they’ll feel obligated to spend some extra service time to redo everything just to make sure you don’t lose your data.

So I delayed the trip to the service center until I exhausted all avenues of getting my data back myself.

Getting My Files Back

I partially retract my statement about the absence of Mac software that can bypass the famous B-Tree (or whatever the hell it’s called), and read data from a direct and exhaustive surface scan. Such software exists and, more importantly, works! Which is more than I can say from the other more popular disk utilities. But first, let me tell the story in the proper order.

Long Live the Older Generations

I’m sooo glad I didn’t sell my 60GB iPod photo. Older Macs (non-Intel) cannot boot from USB, only FireWire; which can be quite a hassle since almost every goddamn preipheral being sold now uses USB. I had 3 drives that support both USB and IEEE 1394 (FireWire), but imagine how pissed I was when I couldn’t boot from any of them! The enclosures indeed are sexy, but their chipset sucks! When I get enough cash, I’m replacing all my enclosures with something better.

Luckily, my girlfriend calls me up, was off early, and had the iPod with her; so I pass for her and went to her house for the cable. To hit two birds with one stone, she also grabbed the first season of Prison Break (which we haven’t seen, and which is awesome by the way) to watch while I tried fixing my ‘puter.

Long story short, I installed OS X on the iPod and booted from it.

Data Rescue

After failed attempts with DiskUtility, DiskWarrior and TechTool Pro, [Data Rescue II,][de] by Prosoft Engineering, saved my ass! It was able to scan, and not hang when it hit the bad blocks. The other apps wouldn’t continue when they hit those blocks. Data Rescue on the other hand, when hitting bad blocks, switches to a “slow search” on the blocks around it so it can continue the salvage.

At the end of it all, it was able to detect the data in the hard disk. Yay!

What Now

As of the moment, I’ve just finished recovering the files to another drive - which I’ll keep with me, while I send the unit for service in a couple of days. In the meantime, I’ll be using the PC more often - which probably is a cue to start dealing with my music.

It’s also worth mentioning that if you guys can afford to do so, get a Flashdrive and start dumping portable applications on it. I did this ever since I got my USB drive from Australia. I never got to actually use the apps that much, until now. You tend to appreciate this stuff when you’re in a pinch. They are sooo useful. Now that I can’t access Adium (my Instant Messaging client), I simply plugged in my Flashdrive which had Trillian on it, and continue to chat with friends. I also have a portable FTP client on it which allows me to continue on my site even if my source files are in the Mac.

It also saved me a lot of time downloading stuff for the newly installed OS on the iPod. This is also applicable to when you have PC problems. Here’s what I have installed on my Flashdrive:

Windows Stuff:

1. FileZilla (portable FTP client)
2. Trillian lite (custom² portable IM client)
3. Portable FireFox (self-explanatory)
4. uTorrent (Bittorrent client)
5. VLC player (just in case I need to view media files)

I didn’t install open-office portable because while small compared to the desktop counterpart, it still was too big for comfort.

Mac Stuff:

1. Stuffit Deluxe installer (compression software)
2. VLC player (for Mac)
3. Transmission (Bittorrent client)
4. SerialBox (Yaaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh matey!)

And finally, for passwords, I’m using a cross platfrom portable app which has different executables, but access the same encrypted database. Now that the Mac is dead, I’m not sure how easy the keychain could be recovered, but in any case, I have everything in the Flashdrive drive anyways.

I’m still looking for portable versions of the other windows apps. I can’t include just any FTP or IM client because Apple based-apps usually have configuration files stored in /User/Library/Application Support folder. Which means everytime I load that drive on another computer, I start with a fresh “install.”

The Windows apps that have been made “portable” usually have everything in the same directory as the application, so you retain your data. If you have any suggestions what Mac apps I could try for the portable side, drop me a line.