Automated Software Restoring Content

[svtguy08]

Hey Macrumors!

I took on the project of recovering the data from a MacBook suffering a failing Hard Drive. I was able to make a clone using Data Rescue 3. After opening the .dmg file of the clone in DR3, I have access to the files and folders.

My question is how to automate the recovery of the data back into a MacBook which will contain a new Hard Drive and a fresh Install of Snow Leopard?

These are the items I'm concerned about:
All photos (They have been cataloged in iPhoto according to the customer)
All Music (The customer states he used iTunes for his music purchasing/management)
All Downloaded TV Shows/Movies that were purchased from iTunes
iTunes Backups of iPads and iPhones

I really don't want to have to go through 75GBs of files and folders to retrieve this data and put it on the new installation.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Prosoft Support]

Hi svtguy08-

This is Mike with Prosoft's Technical Support team.

There is no real way to automate this process becasue the files are recovered from directories that are no longer accessible. It sounds like you may have recovered your files from the " reconstructed files" folder ? This folder contains raw files basically, structured by category and then file types.

You will have to rebuild your iPhoto and iTunes libraries after you reinstall your operating system. I have heard there are 3rd party iTunes library rebuilders.

Feel free to contact me if you have any further question/ support@prosofteng.com atten: Mike

Good Luck,

Mike

 

[svtguy08]

Thanks for the help.

So I can extract the data, say iPhoto pictures, reimport them into iPhoto on the fresh install? But if they were categorized by iPhoto I would need to associate the xml/database files with the new Photo?

Same with iTunes, I would need to find the playlist preferences, etc so when the music is imported back into iTunes, it pulls up the original playlist.

 

[Prosoft Support]

Thats going to be the tricky part. More than likely you won't be able to.
The Mac OSX strips the directory of any reference to the original files if the volume was formatted or possibly corrupted and, or if the files were deleted.

For iphoto, you basically want to separate / re-org your images by folder/date.
Data Rescue 3.2 and higher has the ability to detect the EXIF(exchangeable, image, file) data within the images, with this you can sort by date and then group images together per month/year folders. Once done, you can re-import the folders into iPhoto and it will detect the folders as dated events possibly. iTunes may be a little easier potentially.