How to secure both a failing Mac volume & data inside?

I am clear on this; Permissions on Mac are predefined and associated with each and every single files/folders. To perform a read-write operation, the permissions should be clearly stated for users to execute without a halt. Any errors on Disk Utility would show up only after the permissions are either damaged or redefined for OS X to understand. Such a case would invite logical disaster either in no time or will slowly crawl the Mac to the ultimate logical failure. Since permission errors are reported on time still they could malfunction the Mac OS X, it is the need of time to repair the corruption with the help of an alternative solution.  

“Had it been basic volume errors, Disk Utility must have fixed it.”

Further, the damaged hard drive (volumes) is at high risk of resulting in no mountable file systems, ceasing the user to access the data stored on the partition. This is a highly unfavorable situation where the drive along-with the data becomes prone to failure. The disk utility would let you know about the unmounted hard drive from the left panel by diminishing the hard drive icon. In this case, one can make attempts to at-least ensures the data recovery from unmounted drive with the help of an OS X file recovery program. Consider the below snapshot of a file recovery software that successfully scans an unmounted hard drive & previews the list of data to the user for recovery. If this attempt utilizes then trust this, user can feel bit relieved with securing the data from an unmounted hard drive. Otherwise, the integrity of the Mac hard drive is still in question which might demand for logical or physical repair. 

Video:How to recovered unmounted data on Mountain Lion

Logical Repair at the user's end is made through a volume repair utility which offers the user to back-up the data before moving ahead with the repair. Utility replaces damaged permissions & directory structures through building new ones. Further, it can also fix up 'Invalid Node Structure', 'Catalog files' and rest 'cryptic errors'.

An important point to be noted is, the volume repair utility would be only helpful in fixing out the logical damage done to the hard drive. Sadly, talking of a physical damage, no software would be of help other than the repair services. However, there are certain instances of hard drives which had bad sectors on their surfaces but with the help of Imaging, the data stored on the drive was successfully recovered although the drive still be required a helping hand.  

Fig (3): - Fig (1) errors sorted out

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Replicating a Mac hard drive for another Mac machine

On times when you have an old Mac consisting all of the OS X, important documents, system applications, non-Apple software etc. and you are prepared to bring a new Mac at home, then you might look after several techniques to copy the entire hard drive of the old Mac onto the new Mac OS X. Creating a copy of the old Mac hard drive will definitely save great amount of time rather installing those applications on the new Mac. What foremost is required to organize the best way of doing so? Let's us look upon the best possible options available that can create a Xerox copy of the drive including OS X, system software and third-party utilities. 

1. Sync the two Macs: - Looks best to synchronize two Macs and allow copying of files and folders from one to another. However, doing this sounds simple but in actual comprises of several limitations like â€" the sync may stretch for many hours, even more than 10 hours when copying entire hard drive. The time taken by the sync may lead to more time when data transfer is done manually. Other than time consuming task, the sync also contributes to the poor performance of the Mac and is error-prone. For effective transfer of data using the Migration Assistance the Ethernet or the Wi-Fi need to be faster than average speed.  


2. Target Disk Mode and cloning: Follow the below steps to transfer the data between two Macs with much ease:  

With the fire-wire cable by your side connects both the Macs to make one of them as a source drive while other as destination drives. 

When connections are done, press 'T' key of the new Mac OS X to initiate the Target Disk Mode. 

On the new machine, install a clone Mac utility which will replicate the old hard drive completely holding the boot information, system, and third-party applications. The cloned copy becomes ready to use copy on the new Mac. If you wish not to copy the entire OS X then with the options like 'Copy Minimal System' select only the required information to boot the Mac rather than copying all the system files. The minimal system feature of the drive clone software is especially made for occasions when the Mac fails to boot due to lack of any important OS X file. The minimal system then fulfills this requirement by copying the missing file back to the drive to begin the Mac's functioning. Cloning a Mac hard drive is most helpful in cases when the user doesn't have the Installation Disk.  

Some flaws in the above steps: -

The above steps will certainly of great help of the hardware specs of both the machine are either similar or doesn't have huge difference. Although cloning an old machine for a completely re-designed hardware would create whole lots of troubles for the new Mac to operate on old Mac's cloned copy. In most cases the cloning of the old machine would not even facilitate for the new hardware.  

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