Read Apple hard drive -

[Ian Astley]

On 11 Feb 2008, at 15:58, Bob Goodwin wrote:

> [...]
> Ok, that seems to work.
>
>    parted /dev/sdb print
>    Model: ATA ST380024A (scsi)
>    Disk /dev/sdb: 80.0GB
>    Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
>    Partition Table: mac
>
>    Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name             Flags
>     1      512B    32.8kB  32.3kB                
> Apple                    2      32.8kB  61.4kB   
> 28.7kB               Macintosh                3      61.4kB   
> 90.1kB  28.7kB               Macintosh                4       
> 90.1kB  119kB   28.7kB               Macintosh                 
> 5      119kB   147kB   28.7kB                
> Macintosh                6      147kB   410kB    
> 262kB                Macintosh                7      410kB    
> 672kB   262kB                Macintosh                8       
> 672kB   934kB   262kB                Patch Partition           
> 9      934kB   80.0GB  80.0GB  hfs+         Untitled
>    Information: Don't forget to update /etc/fstab, if necessary.
>
> I don't know how to interpret it yet, it appears to be a list of  
> partitions?  So many?

The first eight partitions are system stuff from Apple, you should  
mount /dev/sdb9 and get the files off it a.s.a.p.

> At any rate I can see some of her image files and gthumb is happy  
> to display them full screen.  Another interesting project rears its  
> head!

This augurs well for being able to dump her data files to a temporary  
directory on your hard disk. You can then try repairing the disk --  
drastic measures might involve erasing the disk by re-formatting it  
as ext3 and using

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb1

to work the whole disk, then re-partitioning to your taste (needless  
to say there will not be much left on the disk after this lot, pretty  
much zero in fact ;-) ). You might also use smartctl at this point. I  
have done similar things with a disk which was playing up and it has  
worked fine since.

Best wishes,

Ian