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Disk Warrior and Disk Utility (Repair Disk and its cousin fsck) can repair a directory of a healthy hard drive. Prosoft Data Rescue with an external Firewire hard drive of greater size can recover information from a dying hard drive as long as the directory is in good shape. As such, not having a backup would leave you in a catch-22 situation if both the directory and the hard drive are in bad shape, leaving you only with a data recovery firm (see my aforementioned backup your data link for more info on data recovery). A dying hard drive and a damaged directory can have identical symptoms. Given those exceptions visit these sections to find the type of repair you need to perform:Ĥ. You can't repair permissions while booted from CD, except in Mac OS X 10.4 or later. You must boot off a CD, or connect the drive via target disk mode that you wish to repair the directory of.ģ. You can't repair the directory (Repair Disk function of Disk Utility) of the current boot drive. Issues which require software based repair frequently appear to have the same symptoms as a dying hard drive.Ģ. You MUST backup your data prior to repairing anything. Important exception notes many people forget:ġ.
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* Special note for Disk Warrior users at bottom of FAQ *
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This FAQ has been written as it is a frequently answered question how to repair your disk directory. If you need technical support for issues after reading this FAQ, please visit my Tech Support page, where I offer fee based support. Need computer help? Book now to resolve most computer issues. Download my résumé as a Word compressed zip file and Adobe Acrobat.
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