Get photos off of hard drive? Something something FAT NTFS... ???
December 23, 2020 5:36 AM Subscribe
I dusted off an external hard drive that has some old digital pictures on it. Macs and Windows PCs fought over this hard drive, but I don't know who won. I plugged USB into a current Windows machine and it can see a drive prepended with FAT in the name. The files are visible in Windows Explorer but can't be opened. How do I open them (and back them up)?
Web searching turns up loads of software that I think purports to do this, but there's enough jargon (and suspected crapware) that I'm not exactly sure what I need. Any guidance will be helpful. I do have access to a 6-7 year old Mac OS machine, but don't want to get it involved if I don't have to.
Web searching turns up loads of software that I think purports to do this, but there's enough jargon (and suspected crapware) that I'm not exactly sure what I need. Any guidance will be helpful. I do have access to a 6-7 year old Mac OS machine, but don't want to get it involved if I don't have to.
Can you copy them to another device without opening them? That would at least solve half your problem.
posted by crocomancer at 5:50 AM on December 23, 2020
posted by crocomancer at 5:50 AM on December 23, 2020
Response by poster: > What file extension(s) are in the filenames on the drive?
.jpeg, mostly for the relevant ones I'm interested in. Properties indicates they are hidden and most start with "." .
> Can you copy them to another device without opening them?
Yes.
posted by GPF at 5:55 AM on December 23, 2020
.jpeg, mostly for the relevant ones I'm interested in. Properties indicates they are hidden and most start with "." .
> Can you copy them to another device without opening them?
Yes.
posted by GPF at 5:55 AM on December 23, 2020
Properties indicates they are hidden and most start with "."
You need to rename the files and remove the starting "."
posted by Thorzdad at 7:35 AM on December 23, 2020
You need to rename the files and remove the starting "."
posted by Thorzdad at 7:35 AM on December 23, 2020
Can you open the copies?
posted by crocomancer at 7:39 AM on December 23, 2020
posted by crocomancer at 7:39 AM on December 23, 2020
I'm more of a Linux guy, but a dot is used to hide files on a Mac. It shouldn't be enough to fool Windows into mixing up file types.
I worry that what you actually have is a drive full of metadata, with no files. Are the copies the right size? 2-10MB? Or are they like 16KB? You might be in a situation similar to when someone copies a shortcut to a file rather than the file.
The dot files you're seeing might just be housekeeping information for a Mac, hidden with a dot to keep down on clutter.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_fork#Compatibility_problems
(My primary experience with this is graphic design coworkers filling up my network folders with dot files. Because they're on Macs and no one else is.)
posted by Snijglau at 7:45 AM on December 23, 2020 [5 favorites]
I worry that what you actually have is a drive full of metadata, with no files. Are the copies the right size? 2-10MB? Or are they like 16KB? You might be in a situation similar to when someone copies a shortcut to a file rather than the file.
The dot files you're seeing might just be housekeeping information for a Mac, hidden with a dot to keep down on clutter.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_fork#Compatibility_problems
(My primary experience with this is graphic design coworkers filling up my network folders with dot files. Because they're on Macs and no one else is.)
posted by Snijglau at 7:45 AM on December 23, 2020 [5 favorites]
I worry that what you actually have is a drive full of metadata, with no files. Are the copies the right size? 2-10MB? Or are they like 16KB? You might be in a situation similar to when someone copies a shortcut to a file rather than the file.
This is what I was thinking. If they have JPEG extensions, then they should be openable on Windows, with or without a dot starting in the filename. I renamed a couple JPEG files on my Windows box to have dots at the beginning of the name, and Windows didn't really care.
Do the files start with ._? Dot + underscore was the Mac's way of handling resource forks (a carry-over from Mac OS 9 and below) on non-native filesystems—like FAT.
Are there any files that don't start with a dot? Can you open those?
posted by vitout at 8:04 AM on December 23, 2020 [2 favorites]
This is what I was thinking. If they have JPEG extensions, then they should be openable on Windows, with or without a dot starting in the filename. I renamed a couple JPEG files on my Windows box to have dots at the beginning of the name, and Windows didn't really care.
Do the files start with ._? Dot + underscore was the Mac's way of handling resource forks (a carry-over from Mac OS 9 and below) on non-native filesystems—like FAT.
Are there any files that don't start with a dot? Can you open those?
posted by vitout at 8:04 AM on December 23, 2020 [2 favorites]
I'm afraid you will have to dust off that Mac. The above commenters are all on the right track - Mac OS can read and write FAT drives but Windows cannot read and write HFS+ drives (HFS+ is the Mac disk format).
If the disk went back and forth between Mac and Windows machines, it makes sense that the drive would be formatted as FAT as the commonly useable file system. The Mac OS will create those small hidden files to store metadata about the files - icons, location in a finder window, etc, and put a . in front to try and hide it so you do not see it. Windows shows them to you.
I will caution you that the original files could be gone or deleted on Windows but those small . files remain if the Mac did not do the deleting.... I hope for your sake that is not the case but it is possible.
I'd try the mac and see if through some strange permissions issue the files become magically visible.
Another thing you can do before resorting to specialized or recovery software... is use Windows to display the Properties of the disk and show how much space is used. Do some math to calculate how much is taken up by the . files and see if there are lots of other space.... It could be the data is still there but the File Allocation Table (FAT for short - get it?) that lists file names, locations, and sizes has been lost or damaged.
If you start up the mac and do not find anything there..... I strongly suggest you stop and make a complete clone of the HDD before attempting anything that further damages the file structure on the drive. If possible, make two clones to known-good storage media. Treat Clone A as initial-state backup and do not touch, attempt recovery on the clone B, and leave the old HDD unplugged and dormant. If you try a repair on Clone B and it doesn't work, you can delete it, and make a new Clone B form Clone A and start again.
As a last last resort you can ship that hard drive to a professional recovery company and see what they can do.
Two mac clone programs:
Carbon Copy Cloner has 30 day free trial - could be enough to get this done
https://bombich.com/
Super Duper!
https://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
has a free mode that makes complete clones - some features disabled. SuperDuper has saved my butt many times. You can also clone to virtual drives or disk images that can save you on getting two more external HDD's to use for this recovery project. Search the help for how to create a disk image as destination for the clone.
After clones are made I would google repair disk for mac and go down that road for a bit.
posted by sol at 8:25 AM on December 23, 2020 [5 favorites]
If the disk went back and forth between Mac and Windows machines, it makes sense that the drive would be formatted as FAT as the commonly useable file system. The Mac OS will create those small hidden files to store metadata about the files - icons, location in a finder window, etc, and put a . in front to try and hide it so you do not see it. Windows shows them to you.
I will caution you that the original files could be gone or deleted on Windows but those small . files remain if the Mac did not do the deleting.... I hope for your sake that is not the case but it is possible.
I'd try the mac and see if through some strange permissions issue the files become magically visible.
Another thing you can do before resorting to specialized or recovery software... is use Windows to display the Properties of the disk and show how much space is used. Do some math to calculate how much is taken up by the . files and see if there are lots of other space.... It could be the data is still there but the File Allocation Table (FAT for short - get it?) that lists file names, locations, and sizes has been lost or damaged.
If you start up the mac and do not find anything there..... I strongly suggest you stop and make a complete clone of the HDD before attempting anything that further damages the file structure on the drive. If possible, make two clones to known-good storage media. Treat Clone A as initial-state backup and do not touch, attempt recovery on the clone B, and leave the old HDD unplugged and dormant. If you try a repair on Clone B and it doesn't work, you can delete it, and make a new Clone B form Clone A and start again.
As a last last resort you can ship that hard drive to a professional recovery company and see what they can do.
Two mac clone programs:
Carbon Copy Cloner has 30 day free trial - could be enough to get this done
https://bombich.com/
Super Duper!
https://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
has a free mode that makes complete clones - some features disabled. SuperDuper has saved my butt many times. You can also clone to virtual drives or disk images that can save you on getting two more external HDD's to use for this recovery project. Search the help for how to create a disk image as destination for the clone.
After clones are made I would google repair disk for mac and go down that road for a bit.
posted by sol at 8:25 AM on December 23, 2020 [5 favorites]
I think vitout is right about the ._ files being resource forks, and I would expect that if you scroll down you'll run into files that don't start with ._ and I would expect those to open normally.
Also I would definitely try to copy everything off the drive before doing any more stuff with it.
posted by implied_otter at 8:37 AM on December 23, 2020 [1 favorite]
Also I would definitely try to copy everything off the drive before doing any more stuff with it.
posted by implied_otter at 8:37 AM on December 23, 2020 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Thanks all!
>I would expect that if you scroll down you'll run into files that don't start with ._ and I would expect those to open normally.
As I sheepishly hang my head for not doing so, there are indeed openable files after all the resource ._ files. (Oh yeah! "Make MacOS 7.3 your own with ResEDIT!"). (In my defense, it's a long list of files!)
posted by GPF at 9:08 AM on December 23, 2020 [6 favorites]
>I would expect that if you scroll down you'll run into files that don't start with ._ and I would expect those to open normally.
As I sheepishly hang my head for not doing so, there are indeed openable files after all the resource ._ files. (Oh yeah! "Make MacOS 7.3 your own with ResEDIT!"). (In my defense, it's a long list of files!)
posted by GPF at 9:08 AM on December 23, 2020 [6 favorites]
This thread is closed to new comments.
The question shifts now from "How do I read the drive?" to "How do I read the files?".
What file extension(s) are in the filenames on the drive?
posted by vitout at 5:48 AM on December 23, 2020