External Hard Drive Data Recovery - URGENT

[ohada]

Hi,

Was trying to make my hard drive be able to play on the ps3 so opened disk utility and changed it to MS-DOS FAT didnt realise it would delete everything and then put it back to Mac OS Extended (Journalised).

Is there any free way to get my files back please? It's got all of my uni work on it and I'm totally gutted about losing everything.

I did try pressing repair and it said "Error: Could not unmount disk".

Hope someone can help!

 

[simsaladimbamba]

To retrieve files, that have been deleted and also been emptied from the Trash or from a formatted HDD, you can use

Data Rescue 3 (trial lets you scan the HDD and see, if data is recoverable, but to actually recover files, you need to buy the full version for 99 USD) or
FileSalvage (trial lets you scan the HDD and see, if data is recoverable, but to actually recover files, you need to buy the full version for 89.95 USD).
DiskDrill - lets you recover data from HFS/HFS+, FAT, NTFS & other file systems right on your Mac, for free.​

Also know, that you should immediately stop any writing processes to the actual HDD. If it is the same HDD as the one your operating system (OS) resides on, it is better to use an external HDD with Mac OS X on to boot from and install Data Rescue or FileSalvage onto to scan the HDD from which the data has been accidentally deleted.

 

[ohada]

disk drill

Disk drill recognised that there is something to recover but wouldn't recover it without me paying for the PRO version! Thanks for the advice though.

 

[Sirolway]

Yes, so yo uneed *another* disk with more free space than the one you're trying to recover, so for example you might have ..

a. Your Mac, with its startup disk. Install Disk Drill or other dta recovery utility onto this
b. The external disk that you've changed to MS-DOS & back again. You don't want to write anything to this until you've recovered all the data off it
c. Another disk with more free space than the capacity of (b)

Fire up the data recovery utility, tell it to recover data from disk b & write it to disk c

Don't worry - it's not the end of the world & you should get all / almost all your data back. What matters now is what you do next & that you do nothing else to stuff the data on disk b

 

[ohada]

I might just be being an idiot but

I have finally managed to find the data that is lost with Disk Drill, its still scanning right now but how to I recover it without paying for PRO? There is enough space on the Mac I'm currently using to recover everything on to here. It's not my Mac it's my brothers as I am home for Christmas.

 

[blueroom]

I guess it depends on whether or not your files are worth $89.

 

[ohada]

Also - recovered files

If I do manage to recover it, the files that I'm finding have all got uniform names and not what I named them. will that mean that they are changed? particularly the final cut pro files.

 

[niksimpsons]

First of all try to see how much of data you got recovered and is it worth working or not. Secondly you must recover that into an another drive or an external drive preferable because if you could not recover properly it will just overwrite and the chances of data recovery becomes less for an another chance.

 

[Fishrrman]

"the files that I'm finding have all got uniform names and not what I named them. will that mean that they are changed? particularly the final cut pro files."

This is "standard operating procedure" for the data recovery apps. There is a very good chance that you may lose filenames and folder hierarchies, even if the data files themselves get recovered.

This is because originally the files were "lost" due to corruption/loss of the drive's _directory_ (and not "damage" to the files themselves).

Data-recovery software "goes around" a corrupted directory, and goes "right to the platters", to scavenge and then re-construct the file data.

Thus, you "get the files back", but because the directory (again, which contains the "names" of the files) is bypassed, the files _may not_ have their original names.

Not much to do about that, other than be thankful that you actually got the files back....