Data recovery troubles! A spiritual trial

[eyezac]

Hello universe

I use my Macbook Pro for music production. I installed a SSD into the HD slot and removed the superdrive to make way for the HD. OS and software runs on SSD, I use the HD for storage.

While screwing around with partitions during a windows installation I accidentally wiped the HD. Luckily I made a backup onto my WD 1tb external.

While dragging the files back onto the HD I encountered a Finder error:

The Finder can't complete the operation because some data in "harmonic1.wav" can't be read or written. (Error code -36)

After some research i found that this is a slightly tricky error. I think it is due to incompatibility bug between drives of different formats. The external is HFS+. I've used a few data recovery programs and have successfully recovered the files, but that's only half of the problem solved, as they don't retain the directories they were originally stored in.

It's important that they do because these files are all retrieved from their directories in Ableton Live when i am making music. Otherwise I would have to manually find and restore every file in my works-in-progress.

I guess I am posting here to ask if there are any programs for Mac that can recover data from a corrupt HD while retaining the folder structures. Or if there are any alternative methods.

I am running Version 10.7.3


I would greatly appreciate any assistance. It is a strange and uncomfortable experience to have your creative life trapped in a little box

Also I apologise in advance if this is the wrong board to post in, or if this has been covered before.

Thanks

 

[Fishrrman]

"I've used a few data recovery programs and have successfully recovered the files, but that's only half of the problem solved, as they don't retain the directories they were originally stored in."

"I guess I am posting here to ask if there are any programs for Mac that can recover data from a corrupt HD while retaining the folder structures. Or if there are any alternative methods."

This is normal and it's the way data recovery software works. Quite often, you can recover the data, but often file names and folder hierarchies will be lost, because they are a product of the drive's directory (which is often munged or destroyed, and that's why you have to resort to data recovery software to get the -data- itself back).

The simple answer is you have the data back, but you will have to manually "sort everything out", having to rename individual files and figure out where they belong.

Probably no way around this.
The consolation is, that you got the data back. That's what counts!