JPF Home Page Forums Musician Gear and Techniques General Technical Forum Mac crashed...

A few weeks ago, my Mac started running supper slow. Realizing I had never backed all my files up, I began researching hard drives and purchased one today. Of course, go figure... It worked last night but when I returned with what I thought would be a life bout for my sinking files, my Mac refused to fire up. It goes through the motions but just won't start up fully. I tried rebooting in safe mode but had similar results. Dose anyone have any other suggestions? Just hoping to get it fired up long enough to salvage my music. If not, is it possible to extract those files from a fried Mac? Trying to stay optimistic but I may have acted a day too late.

Most likely yes, but you need specialized equipment that can access the hard drive independently of the computer.

Just take it into a reputable repair shop.

Perhaps your local Apple store can help

Yikes! I better get to backing my projects up. Yeah, what John said. A reputable tech can probably salvage your stuff. Good luck!

Best, John

That's why I put all 400 of my songs on you tube....I have mp3's here and lost a lot of them. SO....50 years from now people can find Barry Butler songs on you tube....It's like a Library of my songs...lol

John and John, that is what I will most likely do. I just tried to reinstall the operating system witch unlike a factory reset, in theory would have saved what was on my hard drive. After it went through the hour long process, it flashed on the screen that it was unable to download the additional items needed for re installing operating system. I might be able to just erase the drive completely and do a full factory reset but that would mean saying good-bye to my files forever. Augh!

Barry, I have about 90% of my stuff on sites where I can down load the wave or mp3s. What I won't have is the raw files with the individual tracks for editing purposes. Can't believe after using it for 5 years, it picked the day I baught the external drive to go south on me!

Well, a frustrating day is ending better than it started. After watching an endless amount of Youtube videos and trying almost everything, my Mac fired up long enough to transfer my music files to an external hard drive. Almost that is, it's taking a long time but it looks like I should good here. Lesson learned!!!!

No computer is completely infallible. Always make backups. As a rule: constantly backup between two hard drives and when a project is finished also make two BluRay backups, plus storage backup hard drive. Storage is so cheap these days its silly not to backup to multiple drives and formats.

Long time Mac user and have had drives go out from time to time. It is frustrating. But now I do so many backups its more an inconvenience than anything. Next big purchase for the studio is a 4 drive enclosure to do a RAID 10 backup system of 6TB.

On the plus side - after getting back and running after heart surgery I just found out Windows has messed with their firewire and I now havea UA firewire anchor and a Mackie 1620i anchor -- both use different 1394 chipsets too :-(

On the plus side my new 6core 32 gb ram computer kills it with cgi/vfx

So sad to think about all the musicians who have these Firewire interfaces for their DAWs, and now the computer manufacturers have decided that Firewire is Old and Busted. Apple is all about the Thunderbolt (a tiny connector that falls out all too easily) while PC is all over USB 3.0 and 3.1.

A studio owner friend of mine insists that it's Not Data until it exists in at least 2 more physical locations other than your hard drive. It's a hassle but it's true.

Final solution was to go with two computers - Both are super fast with a ton of ram. The old i7 was run back before they screwed it up and works great with all the music software and hardware. The 6 core is just for graphics and by both being specialized they kick butt.