Tuesday, August 17, 2010

While Using Boot Camp Deleted Mac OS X Volume


Boot Camp is the utility in Mac OS X which assists Mac OS X users in creating a partition and installing Windows on Intel-based Macintosh computers. Although it is designed for non-destructive repartitioning of hard disk, but sometimes it might work different from what is expected. According to many Mac OS X users, Boot Camp has often been found to corrupt or delete Mac OS X partitions, making it impossible to access the data by normal means.

Running fsck or Disk Utility doesn't bring any affect and thus the only option left with the users is to recreate the lost partition. Doing so can no doubt is a suitable workaround of this problem, but data restoration is possible only if you have a valid data backup in place or use a Mac Recovery Software. After a general description, here is a specific problem that narrow downs this issue.

Suppose you as a Mac OS X user uses Boot Camp to create a Windows partition. After the installation is successfully done, when you view Mac OS X partition(s), they appear to be missing. More specifically, just a single partitions that doesn't correspond to any of the existing partitions. You can try solving the issue using 'Disk Utility' and/or 'fsck'.

Also, booting up the computer while holding the option key might help.Reportedly, many Mac OS X user cannot view their partitions on trying to install a Windows version that Boot Camp doesn't support. Most of these problems have been reported when Windows XP SP1 is even tried to be installed. Service Pack of Windows XP is not supported by Boot Camp, so you should instead try to install Windows XP SP2 or later.

This is the case of partition map corruption, so the prime solution to make your Mac workable is to recreate the lost partitions and restore from backup. In cases, when you cannot restore from backup, running a Mac File Recovery utility can aid in recovering all lost files and folders. Mac Recovery Software are exclusive products that can scan your crashed Mac drive and recover all the possible information safely.

Friday, July 30, 2010

Tips to Solve Blue Screen at Startup in Mac OS X 10.6

Blue screen error is one of the most common error among Mac users.What can be more frustrating than finding your Snow Leopard not starting up. Instead of the Finder, a blue screen appears and you have no access to important data that you want to access. No doubt, the situation is annoying, but it can turn to be a simple problem if you apply some Mac Recovery fixes to make your Mac bootable. Before coming to the solutions, let's consider a scenario depicting the discussed problem.

When you try to start your Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard computer, you might find it not starting up. A blank blue screen displays and no further startup process seems to occur. In place of blank blue screen, you may also see a blue screen with a colored pinwheel. Since the boot process doesn't proceed, you have no data access. Most of such problems occur because there lie few corrupted or incompatibile applications or startup items that might be preventing your Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard to start.

This same issue has also been observed that if you try to boot your Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard computer from a DVD of another Mac model.In order to resolve the above issue, you should try the following steps:

You should try starting your computer in safe mode. If this works, you can choose Apple menu and then Restart to see whether the computer will restart normally

You can analyze it as the problem due to incompatibile login items if the startup doesn't proceed in spite of that login window asks for a user name and password. You need to remove such login items.

You should start your Mac from its installation disc and use Disk Utility to repair the disk

permissions and startup disk.

If all the above measures fail, the last resort is to use installation disc to reinstall Mac OS X and restore the data from backup.

In case of backup unavailability, you need a Mac File Recovery utility. A Mac Recovery software can help you recovering lost files and folders after any type of logical crash with Mac systems.In this way you will able to save your data and files from disaster.

Monday, July 26, 2010

Mac Journal Corruption and Recovery

In Apple Mac OS X journalizing is the process in which files can protected from any unexpected power outage. The journal keeps all the vital information that Mac computer requires to get back to a previous working state. Serious consequences can result if journal gets corrupted. For instance, it can make a volume unmountable, while rendering the data inaccessible.

We know that keeping a valid backup is an excellent way to prevent data from any lost, either if the backup is not available we can try Mac Recovery. The reason is that you can then safely erase the corrupted volume without fearing of any data loss. HFS Plus is a journaled file system and is thus susceptible to above discussed problems. Below is an error message that can occur in system log of a Mac OS X computer when a HFS Plus volume is corrupted:

Journal corruption usually damage the Mac volume to an extent that it cannot be repaired by Mac OS X built-in utilities. These include the 'Disk Utility' and its command-line utility- fsck. So you must adopt some other methods of Mac Data Recovery.

You can try resolving the given problem by disabling journaling and then re-enabling it again. If you have a backup from which full data recovery is possible, erase the corrupted volume and restore.

It would be more efficient to use a Mac Recovery utility to scan, locate, and recover the lost data. These are easily available products with competency to restore lost or deleted information from Mac disks. Due to their interactive nature, these programs can even be operated by a novice.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Solving Hard Drive Errors in Mac OS X Using Mac File Recovery Software

Are hard drive and file system errors preventing your Mac OS X computer from starting? Are you unable to access your precious data from Mac OS X hard drive due to hard drive errors? Well, this behavior occurs if your drive is damaged or corrupt. Power interruption, forced reboot, and unexpected system shutdown are major reasons of such kind of problems. Most of such issues can be fixed using the Disk Utility tool. However, if it does not work, you need to opt for Mac recovery solutions to get your precious data recovered.

The Mac hard drive errors may occur while performing typical computing operations, like accessing a volume, verifying a volume, opening any application, or mounting a Mac OS X hard drive volume. Such errors generally include the cause of the error and possible fix that you can help you resolve it. Some of the most frequent hard drive errors in Mac OS X are as
given below:

• file system dirty, run fsck.
• The disk cannot be accessed because a disk error occurred
• Attempting to copy to the disk failed. The disk could not be read from or written to.
• Firmware update failure. Disk write error.
• The Disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved.

Back up the disk and use Disk Utility to format it as a Single Mac OS
Extende(Journaled) volume. Restore your information to the disk and try using Boot Camp Assistant again.

• Error detected (-9972) while verifying/repairing volume disk0s2 Macintosh HD When it occurs, the disk becomes totally unusable. To retrieve data from such disks, you must figure out the cause of this behavior and carry out data recovery Mac by fixing it.

Cause

The problem generally occurs due to missing, corrupt, or damaged data structures of Mac OS X hard drive. Corruption may occur due to virus infection, improper system shutdown, user errors, and more.

Resolution

Use Disk Utility or fsck tool to check the integrity and consistency of problem hard drive. If it fails to work, Mac recovery software come to your rescue. These are third-party tools, which thoroughly scan entire hard drive and extract all lost data from it. The Mac file recovery program offers assured recovery in all logical data loss cases.

Stellar Phoenix Macintosh Data Recovery is the most comprehensive and advanced tool to successfully recover all types of lost data. The software is designed for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, 10.5 Leopard, 10.4 Tiger, and 10.3.9 Panther. It salvages data from HFS, HFS+, HFSX, HFS Wrapper, and FAT file system volumes.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Disk Utility Live Verification Fails on Unmountable Mac OS X Volumes

Hard drive inconsistency and integrity problems are very common in Mac OS X operating system. To handle such problems up to an extent, Mac OS X operating system provides you an inbuilt tool, called Disk Utility. It verifies your hard drive and repairs the damages in some situations. The utility can be run from boot disk of Mac OS X operating system. You can run this program even on the live hard drive. This process is known as Live Verification.

However, in some situations, Live Verification of Mac hard drive may cause serious problems that lead to hard drive failure and data loss. At this point of time, you need to go for Mac Data Recovery solutions, if there is no valid backup in place.

You should keep the below things in mind while performing a Live Verification of Mac OS X had drive:

• The Live Verification works only on Journaled volumes of HFS+ file system. If you try it on non-journaled volumes, you may get an error message stating: “ERROR: could not freeze volume (Operation not supported).”

• The progress indicator of Disk Utility might stop advancing, applications may become unresponsive or work slow, or your system may freeze during Live Verification.

• Once you initialize the Live Verification process, you may not abort it.

• You may come across some problem when you attempt to repair or verify a unmountable Mac volume.

What happens when you run Live Verification on unmountable Mac volume?

Disk Utility program may freeze without showing any error, or stall the machine for few minutes, while repairing or verifying the unmountable volume.

When you attempt to verify a non-startup volume and Disk Utility cannot unmount it for any reason, verification process may start, but and may stop without any error.

After this behavior of Disk Utility and your Mac OS X system, the drive remains in inconsistent and damaged state. You cannot access data from such drive and need to perform Data Recovery Mac by resolving this issue.

You can easily recover your valuable data using Mac recovery software as they have interactive graphical user interface. The Mac data recovery applications employ high-end scanning techniques to thoroughly scan entire hard drive and extract all lost data from it.

Stellar Phoenix Macintosh Data Recovery is the most efficient and comprehensive utility that ensures absolute recovery in all data loss scenarios. The software safely recovers lost data from HFS, HFS+, HFSX, HFS Wrapper, and FAT file system volumes. It is usable with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, 10.5 Leopard, 10.4 Tiger, and 10.3.9 Panther.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Catalog File Corruption and Mac OS X Error

Like every operating system Mac OS X-based hard disk is also divided into different volumes. Each volume is comprised of four basic items: files, file threads, directories and directory threads. To define these items, Mac volumes keep their records in the form of catalog file. This catalog file is structured in B*-tree formation. Thus to locate a file or directory, system has to traverse whole catalog B*-tree.

But sometimes, this tree or its nodes can suffer issues, which may require reformatting the volume. In such cases, you are suggested to take full data backup so as to restore it later. In case of backup faults, Mac Recovery solutions are required. User may observe an error with Mac volumes:

“Invalid B-tree node size”

This error is observed with Hierarchical file system based volumes while verifying its integrity using Disk Utility. Damaged volume fails to be repaired using Disk Utility. The error is encountered if node size of B-tree is not correct. Note: The allowed size for records in HFS Catalog file is 512 bytes and in HFS Plus Catalog file is 8 KB.

To resolve the issue, you can try these solutions:

Disk Utility fails to correct invalid node size of B-tree. Thus, you can run fsck. It should be used in single user mode.

You can also use third-party disk repair applications. Such applications can cause more damages, so it is suggested to maintain a copy of all data, prior to use these applications.

If problem remains the same, you can backup all important data and perform clean reinstallation of Mac OS X. It can be carried out using Erase and Install option. Also, data backup must be valid enough to offer complete restoration.

Thus after backup process, the log reports and media must be checked. If data backup proves invalid to give required files, you can use commercial Data Recovery Mac tools. Mac Recovery applications scan media, in question, and recover lost data. These software products offer safe recovery with advanced searching options.

The procedures are safe. Such applications perform suitable file searching processes, irrespective of file system metadata. Thus, you can use these tools in any case logical data loss case. Macintosh Data Recovery is advanced Data Recovery Mac software for HFS, HFS+, HFSX, HFS Wrapper and FAT file system based disks. It uses influential and secure scanning algorithms.

Monday, May 10, 2010

HFS+ File System Corruption and Recovery

Mac OS X has a number file types like HFS, HFS+, and HFSX, among all HFS+ is the improved version of Mac OS Standard, HFS. HFS Plus volumes are comprised of different metadata structure information like Volume Header, Catalog File, and Allocation File etc., defined on their various sectors. Volume Header is the replacement of Master Directory Block of HFS volumes and stores volume metadata.

But due to corruption or inconsistencies in one or more metadata information, HFS+ volumes may get damaged. In such cases, data gets inaccessible and hence users may require HFS Data Recovery tools to recover (if data backup is unavailable, incomplete or damaged). As a scenario, when Mac OS X users attempt to boot the system or access one of the HFS Plus partition, an error is encountered:

“HFS+ partition Error”

This error is generally observed on dual-boot systems, more often with GRUB. System fails to boot when the affected volume is startup volume.

To solve this partition error, users can follow up given solutions:

User can use fsck and Disk Utility to repair the damaged volume

If GRUB is creating issue, user can check for its correct installation

If problem persists, partitioning scheme can be the concern. HFS Plus partitions use APM (Apple Partition Map) as their partitioning scheme. Particularly, incorrect starting sector number (odd number) of partition can create such errors.

Thus, it is required to repartition the disk and restore data from recent backup. If data backup is unavailable or incomplete, HFS Recovery applications come as rescue to recover lost information.

These applications search the affected drive for lost data and restore it securely. Mac Recovery software are the specialized tools to scan the drives and recover lost information. These applications make file system and operating system level scanning. Upon finding lost files, these solutions recover them.

Most of these applications come with interactive user interface, enriched with graphic tools and options. Hence, irrespective of any level of technical background, users can use them quite easily. These software products are safe to be used because of read-only design they possess.