Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

LeicaM8

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 29, 2012
97
6
West Michigan
Ooops!
I formated the Wrong Drive!
Situation is, after archiving drive A to a new, tested replacement drive I carefully and incorrectly formated drive B which WASN'T on a new drive yet!
Nothing mission critical, but a TB+ of personal e-books, audiobooks, movies, and dvd.img files are pooft.
I haven't written anything to the drive I formated and I turned off spotlighting it (fwiw).

A Data Rescue 3 is in progress. 13hr estimated Scan.
A Demo of Stellar Phoenix found some stuff, and had file names, it essentially was a nominal quantity of useless misc files.

Any Advice or Input people might have would be appreciated.
If I can rescue the original file names &/or file structure would be the Golden Ticket at this point.
Richard in Michigan
 

ActionableMango

macrumors G3
Sep 21, 2010
9,612
6,907
I have no personal experience with recovery software, but I see other people recommend Disk Warrior.

What I DO KNOW is that you should immediately stop using the drive except for the recovery process. Any writing happening to the drive now is undoubtedly destroying data.

If you originally used HFS Journaled, you are probably in pretty good shape for recovery. Journaled file systems are much better at recovery.
 

LeicaM8

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 29, 2012
97
6
West Michigan
I turned off spotlight and havent written a thing to the drive, I hope that's enough.
I didnt see Disk Warrior in my searches of the forum.
I 'think' it was HFS Journaled, but am unsure at this point.
13 more hours and I'll see what Data Rescue finds.
RW
I have no personal experience with recovery software, but I see other people recommend Disk Warrior.

What I DO KNOW is that you should immediately stop using the drive except for the recovery process. Any writing happening to the drive now is undoubtedly destroying data.

If you originally used HFS Journaled, you are probably in pretty good shape for recovery. Journaled file systems are much better at recovery.
 

LeicaM8

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 29, 2012
97
6
West Michigan
Thanks for the input.
Query: any idea whether I'm gonna get a sea of nameless files organized by type -or- files with real names, maybe with original file organization?

I retrieved files from a dying drive a number of years ago and ended up with 300gig of anonymity. Took 40man hours before I finally gave up naming files. :)

Richard

1. Data Rescue 3
2. Disk Drill

Either one in deep scan mode.
 

ActionableMango

macrumors G3
Sep 21, 2010
9,612
6,907
This is the second time you've lost your data?

Might want to consider a backup solution. :D

Sorry, I know you don't want to hear this right now.
 

LeicaM8

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 29, 2012
97
6
West Michigan
Actually, the 'Hyper Critical' stuff is duped on two drives, the second of which isn't co-located with the computer and only plugged in for scheduled copying. :)
My boot drive also has a clone. I learned something the last time. CCC is my friend.

In fact, I was implementing a backup strategy for the less important stuff when I brain farted and formated the wrong effing drive!

RW

This is the second time you've lost your data?

Might want to consider a backup solution. :D

Sorry, I know you don't want to hear this right now.


----------

With a TB+ worth of data, I can't believe you didn't have a back up.
I was implementing a backup actually when I lost it! Sigh... Still sucks though. I was finishing some testing my main data drive when I formatted the secondary drive. About 75% of what's on the formatted drive exists on opticals, but who wants to go through 7-800 gigs of CD's and DVDs reacquiring the files - which is why I bought another drive to back it up :)

Peace
RW
 

SDAVE

macrumors 68040
Jun 16, 2007
3,574
601
Nowhere
This has happened to me as well. It was late at night and I was tired and accidentally erased my OS drive when I wanted to erase the secondary drive from the Lion bootup menu.

You're in luck, your data is not lost.

I used StellarPhoenix and got the data back.
 

ActionableMango

macrumors G3
Sep 21, 2010
9,612
6,907
In fact, I was implementing a backup strategy for the less important stuff when I brain farted and formated the wrong effing drive!

I bet this has happened to lots of people. It would be nice if OS X has just one extra warning box when you are about to format the very drive you booted up with:

"Hey, this is the boot drive, you understand that, right?"

(Of course, for all I know, maybe it does. I've never tried to format the boot drive.)

On a different note, how is the recovery going? Going well, I hope.
 

LeicaM8

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 29, 2012
97
6
West Michigan
It goes poorly. Very poorly in my opinion.
Found that a large folder of semi important files was on the formatted drive I thiught was on another. Bleech.
Drive Rescue has found all the files, but the only ones with names are the utterly irrelevant ones. Ugh. What is use of 1300 audiobook mp3s with no file names? Same for 100s of movie files.
Giving that Star Phoenix demo another shot.

I wonder how much Drive Drill costs?

I think I would have still been screwed with second warning box. I literally put finger on screen to pick which drive to format, then for warning box I paused & thought it thru and still formatted wrong effing drive. Sigh.

Dear Santa, I want a 20tb Time Machine Drive. Thx, richard
I bet this has happened to lots of people. It would be nice if OS X has just one extra warning box when you are about to format the very drive you booted up with:

"Hey, this is the boot drive, you understand that, right?"

(Of course, for all I know, maybe it does. I've never tried to format the boot drive.)

On a different note, how is the recovery going? Going well, I hope.
 

LeicaM8

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 29, 2012
97
6
West Michigan
Stellar Phoenix Demo is confusing Me!

This Stellar Phoenix Demo is confusing me!
I formatted a drive accidently and drive is unused since, but which option might save the original file structure?
It appears the app is 100% capable of restoring the drive, but HOW!
The suggested raw deep scan found a cabillion files (unsurprisingly), but it appears it will put them in 11,000, yes eleven thousand, different numbered folders with an utterly random distribution of the files amongst them.
I won't plunk my money down just to buy the herculean task of sifting through 11,000 Folders in an impossible effort to make the files within be arranged in a useful manner.
Do i 'recover' something using the 'deleted volumes' option?

Any help would be appreciated. Links, guides, books, ebooks, etc.

Thanks, RW

p.s. Stellar Genius company seemed maybe willing to maybe help me maybe recover the file structure but definitely not without my 100.00. (A reasonable position on their part, but unhelpful as to whether to pay the 100.)
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.