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Help! Data Recovery With Folders Structure / Names - Deleted Folder & Emptied Trash

PeteJames

PeteJames

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 11, 2010
133
0
England
The most worlds most annoying thing just happened to me :mad:

I was just in the process of backing up a large music folder from one external drive onto another external drive and somehow it ended up in the trash bin and I seem to empty the trash bin on autopilot.

I haven't written over the drive they got deleted from and all the files seem to be found amongst thousands of files I actually intended to delete.

Are there any data recovery softwares that actually recover the folder structure and original file names so I can just scan - see the folder I want and restore it as it was in a few clicks without having files with no / improper names and having to sort through everything I deleted in the last few weeks or months. I could have a time the recovered files were deleted that could help me separate the ones I didn't mean to delete.

Any ideas?

I have Data Rescue 3 which finds the files - some have names - but there is about 30gb of music data and the folder I deleted had about 5gb in it.

Also tried Easeus Mac Undelete - same problem

I'm trying Stellar Phoenix 5 to see if that recovers with folders and names intact but it seems to be taking forever with no indication when it will stop.

Other options I have found and could try are:
Disk Drill
Wondershare Data Recovery

Please help,
Thanks
 
Last edited:
Fishrrman

Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Feb 20, 2009
28,343
12,461
See post #2 in this thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1351095/

Chances are, even if you get the -files- back, you probably won't get the fileNAMES or folders back, because that's how "data recovery" works.

You pretty much just get the DATA back.

And if you do, be VERY happy that you got that what you got.

Like you, I had a disk partition "go south" on me, that had a large number of mp3 files on it.

I was able to use Data Rescue to recover the files, but they were all a jumble of files, with no names or folder hierarchy.

My solution was to work with a separate drive with a fresh system on it.
I opened iTunes and imported the entire group of recovered files.
Even though most of the files did not have "names", they still had their "metadata", so iTunes used the metadata to "assemble" the files into a certain order, with artist and title names, etc.

I can then slowly (and painfully) pick -each- file in iTunes (I think you want to use a command "reveal in finder", or something along that line), and rename it manually.

Yes, it's slow.
Yes, it's a BIG job.
But after a catastrophe, you do what you have to do to get back into business.
 
S

samh

macrumors 6502
Oct 29, 2009
317
3
Fishrrman said:
I can then slowly (and painfully) pick -each- file in iTunes (I think you want to use a command "reveal in finder", or something along that line), and rename it manually.

Yes, it's slow.
Yes, it's a BIG job.
But after a catastrophe, you do what you have to do to get back into business.
Click to expand...

There is software available that will rename/reorganize files based on metadata.
 
Fishrrman

Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Feb 20, 2009
28,343
12,461
"There is software available that will rename/reorganize files based on metadata."

Can you "point the way" to such software?
 
PeteJames

PeteJames

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 11, 2010
133
0
England
Fishrrman said:
"There is software available that will rename/reorganize files based on metadata."

Can you "point the way" to such software?
Click to expand...

I recommend musicbrainz pickard for renaming files based on tags in batch. It's quality and free.

I did get my tracks recovered and in their original folders - the track names I got back but the folder names are random. I just had to search through everything it recovered and try and remember what I lost and what I already have or deliberately deleted. Having folders show up made it much easier though - used disk drill.

All backed up now. Stayed up all night sorting it! I really need to get out of the habit of auto deleting my trash without realising. Can't believe it happened as I was trying to back up lol. Cheers
 
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