Hard drive fried - need help restoring from backup

Pamela · Feb 6th, 2007, 06:21 PM

I can't believe it. First time EVER. Lost EVERYTHING.

So where do I start...

I had been using apples 'backup 3.1' program to back up very basic preferences etc...to my idisk. So since I have limited space on my idisk I was only backing up keychains and other prefs. Now due to this limited space, I would go every so often and delete the old backups. I went to look today to see what's there, and luckily the last time I backed up was on friday. The problem is I seem to have hastily removed the 'full backup' copies and only have 'incremental backups' saved there. No biggie I thought...I'll just go ahead and take what I can get. Unfortunately when I go through the restore process I seem to keep getting an error message saying:
"Can’t find backup in (null) on “(null)”. To look for the backup, click Locate."

Now of course I have tried to jump through the hoops, but I keep getting the same message. Are these incremental backups not restorable without the full backup????????????????????????

Just shoot me now if that's the case. It's bad enough it turns out I wasn't backing up daily changes on my HUGE backup drive. But please don't tell me the backing up I WAS doing was totally useless?!

Somebody lead me through the steps....pllllleeeeasseee....

ColBalt · Feb 7th, 2007, 09:10 AM

yup. your S.O.L.
And you got it right. You need the INITIAL full back-up and all the incremental back-ups to completely restore anything.

Kosh · Feb 7th, 2007, 11:45 AM

I don't know much about Apple's Backup, but generally incremental backups only backup what was changed since the last full or incremental backup. Generally, you need all the incrementals since your last full backup and the last full backup to recover. The incrementals do not contain enough info (and therefore that's why they are smaller) to recover from. I never do incremental backups unless time to backup is a problem.

Pamela · Feb 7th, 2007, 12:35 PM

Unbelievable.

Pylonman · Feb 8th, 2007, 04:56 PM

Sorry to hear about your situation. The same thing happen to my wife's hard drive. I wasn't aware of the "full backups".
I don't know your value of lost data, but ActionFront Data Recovery Labs http://www.actionfront.com in Toronto can recover just about any hard drive. I sent my neighbours Powerbook HD to them.
Prices start at $700.00.

Might be worth a look...

Here's there number:
Phone - 905.474.2220 ext. 253
Toll Free - 1.800.563.1167 ext. 253
Fax - 905.944.8648

HowEver · Feb 8th, 2007, 05:06 PM

DiskWarrior is a much less expensive to try first, but only if it's unlikely you'll be shelling out $$$s for hard drive rescue services, since the more you fiddle with the drive yourself the less likely any sort of recovery will be possible.

krs · Feb 8th, 2007, 05:36 PM

Pamela -

What exactly is wrong with your drive?
Apparently in many cases the electronics go, not the actual magnetically stored information on the platters. I know people who bought anothe drive of the same type to replace the electronics and they were back in business.