Q. I have a apple powerbook G4 laptop and it started messing up last night. It woulnd't come on, then today it did come on and it was running really slow. It was making this clicking noise. So I took it to the apple store and the guy said it was my hard drive. I have apple care on it, but they don't do hard drives. Please help me, thanks.
He said I would have to go a data recovery company cause apple doesn't do it, and see if my data can be retrieved. This is the only computer I have, and I didn't back it up with anything. Is there anyway I can fix this myself or does anyone know of a cheap place near Dallas/Fort Worth, Tx area that does it for a reasonable price?
#2, and #3, I have EVERYTHING on my laptop. So, yeah, ALL my information is VALUABLE. If you don't have a real justified answer, please don't answer. I need REAL help from anyome who can give it, thanks again.
Linix os, It was working up until a few hours ago, now when i turn it on, it just shows a white screen with the apple logo and that's it. It won't do anything now. Is there anything else I can do?
He said I would have to go a data recovery company cause apple doesn't do it, and see if my data can be retrieved. This is the only computer I have, and I didn't back it up with anything. Is there anyway I can fix this myself or does anyone know of a cheap place near Dallas/Fort Worth, Tx area that does it for a reasonable price?
#2, and #3, I have EVERYTHING on my laptop. So, yeah, ALL my information is VALUABLE. If you don't have a real justified answer, please don't answer. I need REAL help from anyome who can give it, thanks again.
Linix os, It was working up until a few hours ago, now when i turn it on, it just shows a white screen with the apple logo and that's it. It won't do anything now. Is there anything else I can do?
A. Can you get this laptop connected to a network and share your files? I took my important files off of a dying hard drive by doing that. This worked when nothing else would.
A usb flash stick might also work as long as you can access your computer. It wouldn't work in my case.
If the hard drive is dying then putting it in another machine won't work. Tried that once and nearly fried the working machine.
Taking the drive to a recovery company should not cost more than a couple hundred dollars. Have also had to go that route. I'm near Chicago and I know a company here that does this service.
A usb flash stick might also work as long as you can access your computer. It wouldn't work in my case.
If the hard drive is dying then putting it in another machine won't work. Tried that once and nearly fried the working machine.
Taking the drive to a recovery company should not cost more than a couple hundred dollars. Have also had to go that route. I'm near Chicago and I know a company here that does this service.
Which should I buy - cam corder?
Q. - High Definition Hard Disk Camcorder or;
- Standard Definition Tape camcorder?
I wuz told by some people HD Hard Disk Camcorder isnt that good coz it compresses the quality to save more memory. Which should I buy since "i wuz told" that the quality is about the same?
What do u recommend?
and no, i dont want Canon HV20
- Standard Definition Tape camcorder?
I wuz told by some people HD Hard Disk Camcorder isnt that good coz it compresses the quality to save more memory. Which should I buy since "i wuz told" that the quality is about the same?
What do u recommend?
and no, i dont want Canon HV20
A. What is your budget?
It depends on what you think you will be capturing to video - and the audio that goes with it. If the audio is REALLY loud (loud music, planes, other motors, large loud crowds of people, etc), there is enough "long term" vibration that can cause the hard drive heads to park and not record. If you plan on being at high altitudes (skiing/snowboarding?) - over about 9,700 feet, hard drives won't work there, either. If you don't plan on either of these environments, then a HDD camcorder still stays on your short list... but... if you get a HDD based high definition camcorder, what are you planning to edit that video with?
Pretty much all video editors can deal with DV from a miniDV tape based camcorder - though your computer needs a firewire 400 port to transfer the video so if you computer does not already have a firewire (IEEE1394a, i.LINK, DV - all the sam thing), hopefully it has an expansion slot so you can add one. They are cheap to buy and easy to add - if there is an available expansion slot.
AVCHD compressed high definition video quality looks better than standard definition - but not all video editors can handle AVCHD from all camcorders - so if you go that route, do you homework on that, too.
The HV20 is a good camcorder but discontinued. The Canon HV30 and Sony HDR-HC9 are the current 1080i (HDV) and DV consumer camcorder contenders. Both have a mic jack and manual audio control. The Sony has SuperNightShot (built-in infrared emitter for zero-light video capture) and SmoothSlowRecord for short bursts of 240 fps video which translates into slo-mo playback (it is not high def). The HV30 does not have either of these capabilities, but has 24p and 30p recording capabilities.
Back on the hard drive - if you drop that camera and it breaks - you will probably need to send it to a data recovery service to get the video you have not yet transfered. With miniDV tape (or flash memory), you can typically get the tape (or memory card) out of the camcorder and just get another camcorder...
It depends on what you think you will be capturing to video - and the audio that goes with it. If the audio is REALLY loud (loud music, planes, other motors, large loud crowds of people, etc), there is enough "long term" vibration that can cause the hard drive heads to park and not record. If you plan on being at high altitudes (skiing/snowboarding?) - over about 9,700 feet, hard drives won't work there, either. If you don't plan on either of these environments, then a HDD camcorder still stays on your short list... but... if you get a HDD based high definition camcorder, what are you planning to edit that video with?
Pretty much all video editors can deal with DV from a miniDV tape based camcorder - though your computer needs a firewire 400 port to transfer the video so if you computer does not already have a firewire (IEEE1394a, i.LINK, DV - all the sam thing), hopefully it has an expansion slot so you can add one. They are cheap to buy and easy to add - if there is an available expansion slot.
AVCHD compressed high definition video quality looks better than standard definition - but not all video editors can handle AVCHD from all camcorders - so if you go that route, do you homework on that, too.
The HV20 is a good camcorder but discontinued. The Canon HV30 and Sony HDR-HC9 are the current 1080i (HDV) and DV consumer camcorder contenders. Both have a mic jack and manual audio control. The Sony has SuperNightShot (built-in infrared emitter for zero-light video capture) and SmoothSlowRecord for short bursts of 240 fps video which translates into slo-mo playback (it is not high def). The HV30 does not have either of these capabilities, but has 24p and 30p recording capabilities.
Back on the hard drive - if you drop that camera and it breaks - you will probably need to send it to a data recovery service to get the video you have not yet transfered. With miniDV tape (or flash memory), you can typically get the tape (or memory card) out of the camcorder and just get another camcorder...
My external hard drive files are missing?
Q. I was transferring files with my external hard drive yesterday but it freezes my Windows laptop, so I unplugged it without safety remove. I normally do this and things stayed the same as they were until yesterday.
When I re-plugged my external hard drive it doesn't freeze my laptop anymore, instead it became 298GB free of 298GB with only an unrecognizable file "USBCù". All my other files and folders are gone, it's like my external hard drive reformatted itself.
Those files are really important for my course work and projects, and also some multimedia files like mp3, mp4, mkv, avi and jpg etc. Is there any way I can retrieve those files? Or copy them?
I'm willing to try any possible way as long it gets my files back, but it would be awesome if there's a free method. I plugged my external hard drive into other usb cords of my Windows laptop but the same thing shows up. I tried plugging it to my friend's iMac and the drive shows nothing and it's renamed to "Untitled". (It's a Hitachi external hard drive by the way, if that helps)
Thank you so much!
When I re-plugged my external hard drive it doesn't freeze my laptop anymore, instead it became 298GB free of 298GB with only an unrecognizable file "USBCù". All my other files and folders are gone, it's like my external hard drive reformatted itself.
Those files are really important for my course work and projects, and also some multimedia files like mp3, mp4, mkv, avi and jpg etc. Is there any way I can retrieve those files? Or copy them?
I'm willing to try any possible way as long it gets my files back, but it would be awesome if there's a free method. I plugged my external hard drive into other usb cords of my Windows laptop but the same thing shows up. I tried plugging it to my friend's iMac and the drive shows nothing and it's renamed to "Untitled". (It's a Hitachi external hard drive by the way, if that helps)
Thank you so much!
A. External hard drives formatted to NTFS [the default for Windows XP onwards] need to use the "Safely Remove Hardware" function to ensure data is not lost or the drive becomes corrupted.
This is because they use disk caching to speed the file transfers. If you reformat the drive to FAT 32 [used by most USB Flash drives] than you can unplug the drive without using the Safely Remove Hardware option, without fear of losing your files. If you use FAT32 though, the drive will copy files more slowly and you will have single file size limit of 4GB.
It sounds like although you have got away with just unplugging it in the past, that this time the drive has become corrupted and may need to be reformatted to use again.
You can try and use a free recovery tool like Recuva to see if can get your files or at least some of them back: http://www.piriform.com/recuva
Running a defrag as another answer suggested will not help you at all in this case.
The reason your friends Mac cannot read the disk at all is because Mac OSX uses a different file system to Windows and can't read a drive formatted as NTFS [which yours is]
If Recuva can not get your files back and they are that important to you [you should always keep at least one back up of important files] then you may get the files back by using a proffessional recovery firm who have other methods involving taking the drive apart physically in a clean room.
But these firms are not cheap and may charge you a significant amount to recover your data. Kroll Ontrack is one firm that offers this service but they are not cheap: http://www.krollontrack.co.uk/
This is because they use disk caching to speed the file transfers. If you reformat the drive to FAT 32 [used by most USB Flash drives] than you can unplug the drive without using the Safely Remove Hardware option, without fear of losing your files. If you use FAT32 though, the drive will copy files more slowly and you will have single file size limit of 4GB.
It sounds like although you have got away with just unplugging it in the past, that this time the drive has become corrupted and may need to be reformatted to use again.
You can try and use a free recovery tool like Recuva to see if can get your files or at least some of them back: http://www.piriform.com/recuva
Running a defrag as another answer suggested will not help you at all in this case.
The reason your friends Mac cannot read the disk at all is because Mac OSX uses a different file system to Windows and can't read a drive formatted as NTFS [which yours is]
If Recuva can not get your files back and they are that important to you [you should always keep at least one back up of important files] then you may get the files back by using a proffessional recovery firm who have other methods involving taking the drive apart physically in a clean room.
But these firms are not cheap and may charge you a significant amount to recover your data. Kroll Ontrack is one firm that offers this service but they are not cheap: http://www.krollontrack.co.uk/
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