DiskWarrior Preview Help

What to Look For in the DiskWarrior Report...

After the rebuild has been completed, DiskWarrior will show you a DiskWarrior Report. When DiskWarrior displays the DiskWarrior Report, it shows a summary of the results of the comparison, all the problems found and repaired, and DiskWarrior’s recommendation to you. If you wish to see more detail regarding the problems found and repaired, you can see the Details section for this information. This will also list all the files and folders that were affected by directory damage in red. You should pay particular attention to these files and folders while inspecting the Preview disk.

What to Look for During Preview...

When DiskWarrior presents the Preview disk, you have the opportunity to check and test the disk as it will appear after it is rebuilt. You can see if files and folders that you lost have been recovered. You can also inspect the files and folders listed in the DiskWarrior Report.

Clicking Preview will cause the DiskWarrior Preview to open. If your original disk was mounted, then the left pane of the DiskWarrior Preview will show the contents of your disk in its original state. The right pane of the DiskWarrior Preview will show the contents of the Preview disk. If your original disk was not mounted, then only the Preview disk will be shown in the DiskWarrior Preview Window.

Figure 5-1 The Default DiskWarrior Preview Disk Icon:

Figure 5-2 The DiskWarrior Preview window:

The lower section of each pane will show the icon, kind, size, creation date and modified date of the selected item in that pane. To check for differences in specific items between your original disk and the Preview disk, select the “Navigate both disks simultaneously” check box in the right pane.

DiskWarrior may create special folders at the root level of the disk. You should pay particular attention to the files and folders that DiskWarrior places in these folders. The folder called “Rescued Items” contains files and folders whose enclosing folder could not be found and files that had an entry in an inaccessible portion of the directory. If any of the files or folders whose enclosing folder could not be found are part of a software package, you may need to create enclosing folders with the correct names and locations after you have rebuilt your disk so that the software that uses these files works correctly, or you may need to reinstall the software package. The files that had an entry in an inaccessible portion of the directory may have been lost or thrown away. You must inspect these files to determine the extent of any damage. You must also determine whether these files should be discarded.

Inside of the Rescued Items folder you may find folders named “Missing Folder” that are followed by a number. These are files for which the enclosing folder could not be recovered.

If DiskWarrior creates a folder titled “Damaged Items,” then this folder contains files that were recovered but may have problems. For instance, these files may have been truncated because blocks were missing from the file. Once the rebuild is complete, you will need to determine if these files can be salvaged.

Note: In the event critical items you wish to recover remain missing from the Preview disk, it is recommended that you do not replace the directory. Since the directory information for the missing items was overwritten or deleted DiskWarrior could not recover these items. If this occurs, do not Replace the directory. Simply copy the recovered files, to a new disk. You will need to send your disk to a professional recovery service to recover your lost files.

If you are still missing files while the Preview disk is mounted, you can use the search capability of the DiskWarrior Preview to search the Preview drive. Remember that you may need to look for items that are “invisible” in the Finder.

While in the DiskWarrior Preview Window, you should copy as many items from your disk as possible to another hard disk, removable media, etc. Select the disk to which you wish to copy from the Disk drop-down menu in the left pane. Then select the files you wish to copy and click the Copy button in the right pane. You can also drag and drop files from the Preview to the destination disk.

You may need to copy the original files to several disks, depending upon the amount and size of the files on the source and the size of the disks to which you are copying the files. Another option is to copy only the files that you absolutely need, such as those that have changed since your last backup, or only your data files if you are planning to reinstall your system and applications. In either case, it is possible that you will not be able to copy all of the files you select. If an error dialogue is displayed, select “Continue” to continue copying the remainder of the files you selected. When the copy operation is complete, you may want to attempt to copy the skipped files again in case the error is intermittent and the copy operation can be performed for those files. This will minimize the number of items the recovery service will need to recover for you. If you wish to copy file

from the preview disk to another media source (such as another hard disk or other removable media), select the media source from the Disk drop-down menu in the left pane. Then select the files you wish to copy and click the Copy button in the right pane to copy the files onto your media. When you have finished copying files, you can eject the disk by clicking the Eject icon next to the Disk drop-down menu or by ejecting the disk via Finder.

When you have finished with the DiskWarrior Preview Window, return to the DiskWarrior Report window and choose either Replace or Cancel.