There is one kind of product a tech reviewer almost never gets to test when he wants, and that is software intended to rescue a damaged or crashed hard disk.
Normally, if it has come to that, it is already too late. In my case, I was rather lucky. Well, almost. I began hearing odd noises from my internal 80-gigabyte hard disk on my PowerBook a few months ago.
I have always backed up important data because I did not want to have the disk crash on me. I bought a second 80GB disk to act as a backup.
But three weeks after that, disaster struck. The internal disk died. I had a system that was a few weeks old and all my important files were on an external disk.
I went out and immediately bought Data Rescue II, built by Prosoft Engineering for the Macintosh platform. I thought if I could rescue most of my data, I might be able to pick up where I left off. Well, that was exactly what happened and I am still somewhat gobsmacked by the experience.
First, I booted the PowerBook using the start-up CD-Rom that comes with the software. Then I made a clone of the internal disk on another disk of the same size. It took a little while, but it made the clone. When I examined it, it had all the folders and files of my original.
