I need a disk utility that works. Disk Warrior has been recommended. Other suggestions?

[eppur_se_muova]

Agree/Disagree ? Anyone got alternatives ?

Apparently, having a HD crash in such a way that Apple's Disk Utility can see it, but not mount it, is quite common. This has happened on my old eMac (twice), an older iBook, and an iMac Core2 Duo. With DU (sorry) my only options are to erase or partition the disk. I cannot see, much less recover, the files, but there's plenty of info re the disk available in both DU and Profiler.

I'm not in a position to shell out a bunch of $$$ for a third-party utility, but I *might* be able to borrow one if I know what to look for. If anyone knows of an alternative fix, I'd like to hear it. Right now it looks like I'll probably have to open the eMac and connect the drive as an ext, which is nontrivial.

[onehandle]

1. Haven't had a HD crash in a while, but when I did, Disk Warrior was my goto app.

But carefully read their System Requirements here:

http://www.alsoft.com/diskwarrior/requirements.html

[Stinky The Clown]

2. Try Northern Softworks. Apple Care recommended it to me.

I had a disk issue DU couldn't help with. They had an app I could run as a demo that fixed it.

[sir pball]

3. If it's visible in the device list, I'd try dd first...you already have it.

Unfortunately I'm short on time so I can't really explain how to use it (it's not an "app" per se, but rather a Unix utility - a string of commands you type into Terminal), but this is a good primer. It works at a lower level than any OS X software and can do things no other utility can. Good luck!

[eppur_se_muova]

4. Thanks, I should have thought to ask for a Unix utility!

I had a vague memory there was a Unix program which would force a read despite errors, but hadn't ever used it. Now I have to see if I can find an extra disk that will hold the image -- my iMac has one of my biggest hard drives I've ever owned.