Problem recovering files from Macbook hard drive

[MikeK]

So here's my problem. My girlfriends macbook hard drive experienced hardware failure and will not boot... i tried everything to recover the info on the disk with the disk utility on the OS Discs... i tried Disk Warrior which wouldn't even boot.. and then i tried Knoppix which i've used several times on my PCs to recover files... That seemed to work; I can see the files on her hard drive now which is great cause i know they aren't gone... however I can't copy them over to my external hard drive because i keep getting an error telling me that the file system on her drive is read only... now i understand that this is a problem with the fact that her drive is formatted for HFS+ but i'm thinking there HAS to be some way to copy the files off of an HFS+ Drive... I read about the "hcopy" command that supposedly should accomplish this but when i tried it it came back with an error telling me that it isn't a recognized command in knoppix... if anyone knows how this could be done i would be EXTREMELY grateful as she really needs the files... And if Knoppix absolutely can't do it then if there are other recomendations of other boot discs or utilities i am very open to them.. Thanks in advance.

-Mike

[Capricorny]

So here's my problem. My girlfriends macbook hard drive experienced hardware failure and will not boot... i tried everything to recover the info on the disk with the disk utility on the OS Discs... i tried Disk Warrior which wouldn't even boot.. and then i tried Knoppix which i've used several times on my PCs to recover files... That seemed to work; I can see the files on her hard drive now which is great cause i know they aren't gone... however I can't copy them over to my external hard drive because i keep getting an error telling me that the file system on her drive is read only... now i understand that this is a problem with the fact that her drive is formatted for HFS+ but i'm thinking there HAS to be some way to copy the files off of an HFS+ Drive... I read about the "hcopy" command that supposedly should accomplish this but when i tried it it came back with an error telling me that it isn't a recognized command in knoppix... if anyone knows how this could be done i would be EXTREMELY grateful as she really needs the files... And if Knoppix absolutely can't do it then if there are other recomendations of other boot discs or utilities i am very open to them.. Thanks in advance.

-Mike

This seems to be a good case for Knoppix. But - doesn't that read-only message indicate problems in your recovery setup?

I would have tried doing this fully manually, in a terminal window. Assuming you have a USB hard drive, it could be something like this after booting Knoppix on the PC and opening a terminal window:

 
su         # Simpler to stay root in this case 
fdisk -l   # To see what drives are called in this session - this may vary between seesion
mount -o ro /dev/sda1 /media/sda1   # Or whatever the drive to rescue is designated - see fdisk output
                                                       # You may also possible specify type here
mount /media/sdc1                           # Or whatever your USB drive is called
df                                                    # See what is mounted now
du --max-depth=3 /media/sda1          # Get listing of directories and space used on drive to rescue
rsync -ax /media/sda1/<dir-to-recover from> /media/sdc1 &  # Run as background, monitor
     # You may get a lot of complaints from rsync about not being able to preserve file properties, just ignore them
df                                                     # Issue to check the copying process 
# wait for completion
sync  # flush buffers
umount /media/sdc1
umount /media/sda1

And, then, buy your girlfriend a couple of pendrives or a USB harddrive for backup from now on. You realize how lucky you are, just being able to get in contact with that disk, don't you? All hard disk fail sooner or later, and it's no telling when.

Good luck!