External harddrive wiped clean. HELP

[alyson87]

I purchased an external harddrive to back up my entire student drive. The drive had to be formatted to be compatible with a Mac, and I did this with the customer support over the phone. Used basic copy and paste methods to put my information on the ehd. I triple checked to make sure it stayed there, by properly ejecting drive and plugging it back in.
Had my mbPro wiped clean entirely, reloaded Leopard, and am now left with just basic applications and files.
Plug in the ehd, and it shares the exact same information as my current wiped-clean drive. I made it as an exact replica of my information filled mac, and it is now an exact replica of my empty mac. All documents, music, photos, applications, etc. GONE. This information was valuable to me beyond words, and I need it back.
Does TimeMachine have anything to do with this? I have never used this application, but upon plugging in my ehd, it asked for SOMETHING (which I don't remember).
I will answer any questions to the best of my abilities, but it is my first year owning this hardware, and I fell in love with it until now.

 

[halprin]

I have never used this application, but upon plugging in my ehd, it asked for SOMETHING (which I don't remember).

Did you use Time Machine to backup your files originally to the external hard drive? I'm assuming no since you "never used this application". What you were asked could of been if you wanted to use this external hard drive as a Time Machine backup. Does anyone know if Time Machine decides to wipe the hard drive if you tell it to be used?

From the sound of it, the deed as been done and your data is "gone". Even though you don't see your files though, the data is still on the hard drive. Do NOT add any new files to that external hard drive! You will overwrite your files. In fact, I would advise to not plug in that external hard drive until you are absolutely ready to recover your files.
To recover your files, I would highly recommend Data Rescue. It does a great job! It does cost $99 but it's worth it if you really do need your files back. What is great though is that you can use it in demo mode and see if it can even recover your files.

Hope this helps!

 

[snaky69]

The external HD has no business erasing itself, you probably messed up somewhere pal, unless you found some kind of a way for the external HD to mirror your internal one(which would be quite pointless). Your data is most likely recoverable, but it's going to cost you.