Salvaging movies from a broken hard disk

Using advanced tools to read movies from a faulty disk

Oct. 15, 2020 - Willem L. Middelkoop

This week I received a message from someone with a iMac that crashed. It contained more than 50.000 photos, covering two decades of personal history. As there was no backup, it was up to me to attempt to safe as much as I could. Could I possibly recover the personal photos?

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The hard disk inside the iMac - containing the personal photos

This chip is was originally part of a external USB disk drive - you might have one around that you can use for this

Be careful when lifting the display as it has multiple cables attached to the main logic board

Connecting the disk to a SATA-to-USB convertor

The display is fixed using Torx screws - it can be a little tricky to remove the screws as the magnets easily catch them!

Running macOS “First Aid” from Disk Utility

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Articles (148)

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2024-02-16 Vision Pro
2024-01-16 Health and fitness data
2023-12-15 Backup Rotation Scheme
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