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External Harddrive to Install OS - Now all my files are gone

J

johnnyindia

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 4, 2010
106
0
Help please,

My roomate used my external harddrive to install snow leopard on his old Macbook Pro. He gave me back the harddrive and I can't find any of my files. It just shows me 2 partitions, "install" and "snow leopard"

How can I get things back to just my harddrive with all of my files? Please don't tell me they are lost, there are tons of things on there I can't afford to lose.

Thanks
 
johnnyindia said:
Help please,

My roomate used my external harddrive to install snow leopard on his old Macbook Pro. He gave me back the harddrive and I can't find any of my files. It just shows me 2 partitions, "install" and "snow leopard"

How can I get things back to just my harddrive with all of my files? Please don't tell me they are lost, there are tons of things on there I can't afford to lose.

Thanks
Click to expand...

If it wasn't partitioned like that when you gave it to him, then partitioning it would indeed delete everything from the drive. (Unless it was formatted as Mac OS journaled, and it was partitioned correctly... I'm not sure about this though).

The way to get your stuff is through 3rd party apps that basically reads the whole disk and tries to put stuff back together.

Sorry about that. Good luck!
 
Many here use Disk Warrior, but it sounds to me like you may have accidentally wiped that drive. I hope I'm wrong, but if it has been erased as I suspect, your only chance is a third party data recovery company and they cost $$$

Have you no backups from Time Machine etc?
 
this is awful, since roomate just took my harddrive and did this without asking.

there must be some way since he cannot afford $$$ and I cannot afford to lose all this data.

how much are we talking about to recover this data?
 
johnnyindia said:
this is awful, since roomate just took my harddrive and did this without asking.

there must be some way since he cannot afford $$$ and I cannot afford to lose all this data.

how much are we talking about to recover this data?
Click to expand...

There is no guarantee but places like this:

http://www.fields-data-recovery.co.uk/?gclid=CJXE_rCN3bMCFe7MtAod-hMAaw

Do at least offer a no fix no fee option....Your roommate has almost certainly wiped the drive...Only low level diagnostics MIGHT recover your data...Good luck, but next time remember that you should ALWAYS have backups.
 
that palce is quoting me over $500 USD. There has to be a cheaper option. This is crazy. I can't believe he just took my HD and did this without consulting me, and now can't afford to pay for the fix.
 
johnnyindia said:
that palce is quoting me over $500 USD. There has to be a cheaper option. This is crazy. I can't believe he just took my HD and did this without consulting me, and now can't afford to pay for the fix.
Click to expand...

If he did a simple partition and erase to make your external hard drive essentially become a Snow Leopard disc, everything he has not "written over" should still be on the disk. Deleting files only deletes the index that tells the drive where they are, they're still there until something writes itself over where they were.

There are a few software solutions that may be able to retrieve the files, such as the aforementioned DiscWarrior, but I would not expect miracles.

I'd tell your roomie to invest in a nice dental insurance plan, because personally, I'd bash his teeth in for doing something so utterly stupid.
 
And yet another thread from someone who did not have a proper backup strategy. Hard drives fail or get wiped by stupid roommates; have at least two backups of all important data.

The disk recovery programs will never get everything back.

If the stuff is so important why did you not have backups?
 
lesson learned. i have backups of the most important docs, but lost a ton of recent stuff that was only backed up once.

so no chance of fixing this one without spending $500?
 
not yet. i don't want to spend $100 if it's not going to work...is there a way to get a free trial of one of these utilities to see if it will work, before committing to the $100?
 
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