Hard Disk Failure

Causes of data loss on Mac OS X systems

There are a number of causes of data loss on Macintosh systems, by far the most common cause, as with data loss on all computer hardware is usually failure of the storage media itself. This failure can be caused by any number of problems such as:

Bad Sectors/Media Degradation

This can normally be identified by any one of the following: Files and folders spontaneously disappearing, a slow down in the responsiveness of the system Failure of disk/data utilities to read from the device Inability to mount the volume

Physical Failure

Normally manifests itself as an unusual noise coming from the hard disk drive. This failure would normally be a clicking or ticking noise but can also take the form of a beeping, grinding or whirring noise coming from the area of the hardware where the hard disk is located.

Electronic Failure

Can occur spontaneously or be due to electrical irregularities, such as failed power supplies, static, power surges etc. In any case of failure data recovery stands the best chance if you speak to a skilled data recovery engineer, such as those at Recover My Mac as soon as the failure is noticed. The lab facility at Recover My Mac is a fully controlled static safe environment, our staff include electronic engineers, read more here: (link to lab facility)

Logical problems

Damage to file system components is a very common failure on Macintosh HFS and HFS + file systems, the Volume Wrapper, B-Tree or inode structures can all become corrupt and unreadable. In many cases operating system repair is possible using applications such as the Mac OS X Disk Utility. When these products fail you need a professional data recovery company who specialise in Macintosh systems.

Accidental Deletion

Macintosh File Systems such as MFS, HFS and HFS + are not the most forgiving of file systems for data recovery. Unlike NTFS, FAT, EXT2/3 file systems once a file is deleted all file system entries relating to the file are erased, normally beyond recovery. However, as with other systems the data area is not overwritten immediately, in these cases further usage of the system is not recommended.

For more information, or to request a quote, contact ReMac on 0845 224 1592 or use our contact form.

Tags: accidental deletion, bad sectors, data recovery, electronic faults, hard drive failure, logical failure, physical failure

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 at 1:04 pm and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.