Can't copy files FROM a very greedy external drive

globetrottinpjglobetrottinpj
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
Okay, I've tried damn near everything. I have a 1.5TB drive with ALL my music, movies, and TV shows that I'm trying to backup to a 4TB Drobo.



-A simple drag and drop gives me a "file/drive cannot be read or written to" error. Fine.



-Tried open iTunes with a library from Drobo and "Add to Library" and get a "file cannot be read" error.



-Tried using Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper and both failed 25% of the way through or so.



-Tried rebuilding the directory with DiskWarrior, but after 5 days of working, my house lost power and I lost the progress. God knows how long that would have taken for a full 1.5TB drive anyway.



-Tried using Data Rescue II to pull the media from the drive but it pulled pieces of most movie files while I still see the full sized files on the drive..



-NOW: Using Data Rescue II to clone the drive from the 1.5TB external to the 4TB Drobo with another 400 hours to go...





This drive does NOT want ANYONE taking it's media, it's very greedy. I've tried plugging it into several different Macs so who knows. ANYONE have any ideas on what would work the best?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,326moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by GlobetrottinPJ View Post


    -A simple drag and drop gives me a "file/drive cannot be read or written to" error. Fine.



    Try using the terminal to copy from the drive. I wrote a shell script to allow you to copy a folder - it's not recursive:



    Code:


    ARGS=2

    E_BADARGS=65



    echo "Beginning copying files"



    if [ $# -ne "$ARGS" ]

    then

    echo "usage: `basename $0` input_folder output_folder"

    exit $E_BADARGS

    fi



    for filename in "$1/"*

    do

    echo "copying $filename"

    if [ -f "$filename" ]

    then

    dd bs=265b conv=noerror if="$filename" of="$2/${filename#$1/}"

    fi

    done



    exit 0







    Copy it into textedit as plain text and save it as recover.sh. Then in the terminal, drag the .sh file in, then the input directory from your drive and finally the output directory somewhere else and hit return.



    You can also use the command on it's own for a single file e.g:



    dd bs=265b conv=noerror if="<drag file in here>" of="drag destination here"



    Some info about your drive though - is it USB/firewire/internal? If external, have you checked the cables are ok? Have you checked the drive with Disk Utility to see if it finds any errors?
  • Reply 2 of 5
    globetrottinpjglobetrottinpj Posts: 3member
    Thanks, I'll give that a shot. The source drive is FW800, cables are fine. The destination is a USB Drobo. Source drive checks out fine in Disk Utility, Drobo is freshly formatted and checks out fine as well.





    EDIT: I get a "permission denied" error...thoughts?
  • Reply 3 of 5
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,326moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by GlobetrottinPJ View Post


    EDIT: I get a "permission denied" error...thoughts?



    Try repairing permissions for the drive and your own internal drive using Disk Utility and also selecting the drive then open the Get Info dialog and check the box ignore ownership on this volume.
  • Reply 4 of 5
    globetrottinpjglobetrottinpj Posts: 3member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post


    Try repairing permissions for the drive and your own internal drive using Disk Utility and also selecting the drive then open the Get Info dialog and check the box ignore ownership on this volume.



    I don't get the option to repair permissions on the external, just repair disk, which I've already done. Thanks for the help so far.
  • Reply 5 of 5
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,326moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by GlobetrottinPJ View Post


    I don't get the option to repair permissions on the external, just repair disk, which I've already done. Thanks for the help so far.



    Sorry, that's only if if there's a system on it. The ownership box should be in the get info dialog too.



    What format is the drive partition?



    You can manually set the permissions of all your items. You can check it on a single folder to see if it will work. Choose a folder that you can't copy. Then in a terminal type:



    sudo chmod -R 777 <drag folder you can't copy here>



    Hit return and it will ask for the password.



    This will recursively set the permissions of the folder to be read/write under all circumstances. Doing the ignore ownership should do the same thing but for the whole drive.



    In the worst case, that you aren't able to get your stuff off the drive, you may be able to open the external drive and put the HD inside it directly into the drobo and switch it with one of the drobo ones. Saves doing a copy procedure. Some of those externals are tricky to open though.
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