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beholder121

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 5, 2012
5
0
Hello guys,

This is a tough one.
I have had an external HDD I've used back before I had my mac. When I got the mac, I used the HDD for Time Machine, which formatted my HDD (I know, I was stupid.) I want to retrieve this information... is it possible?

I can SEE the old folders still there, but not the files in them, they are all empty. Is there a way to restore the HDD back to the old "windows formatting" and save these files somehow? I think part of the issue is that it's formatted for the Mac.

Any help?
 
A screnshot of what exactly? what I see are folders, but they are empty. that's all..
 
Are you seeing them in Finder, are the exactly as before, etc.

If you format a disk (which TimeMachine would have made you do) you shouldn't be seeing folders in Finder.
 
Do you recall whether you were prompted to format it when you setup TimeMachine?

I cannot think of a situation in which you wouldn't have been prompted, and as such I cannot think of a situation in which your files wouldn't be beyond recovery. How critical are those files?
 
Hmmm that was around october of last year. Yep, a while. I was prompt to format it and I think I did... folders are there.

I would really like the files but I'm not willing to pay a fortunate for them, I'll live.
 
You could try software that just reads the data off the disk and tries to detect files by their header/signature like Data Rescue 3 from Micromat. Disk drill, and Remo Recover are two others of a similar type. I own DR3, but there might be a trial of one of those apps you could try.
 
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