External HDD: File recovery question

[envious86]

Hey guys I have a big problem. I have 2 external hard drives one with time machine and the other with movies. I was meant to format the time machine but i formatted the one with the movies. can you recover movie files if the hdd was formatted and if so what is the best program on to use?

Thanks

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Data Rescue 3: http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php
And yes, you can recover files from formatted HDDs, unless you securely formatted it (wrote onto it, but it takes a while) or if you have it already being written to again.
As that may not be the case, DR 3 is quite handy and worked for me in several cases.

 

[envious86]

Data Rescue 3: http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php
And yes, you can recover files from formatted HDDs, unless you securely formatted it (wrote onto it, but it takes a while) or if you have it already being written to again.
As that may not be the case, DR 3 is quite handy and worked for me in several cases.

great i'll purchase that then and see if it works. cheers

 

[bmcgonag]

There are a ton of programs out there. You should first turn the drive off and not access it until you are ready to use one to scan.

I prefer the ones that allow you to see what it can recover before you pay for it. You'll normally have to pay to get the files back, but it's probably worth it.

There are multiple suggestions on this site for this type of software...you can search for it via MRoogle.

As long as you stop accessing the drive for now, your chances of recovery are better.

You can start here https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/272078/
and here https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1061877/

Best

 

[Fishrrman]

There is also a newcomer to the data recovery business called "DiskDrill":
http://www.cleverfiles.com/

For a limited time, it's free - no fee that you have to pay to recover your data (as with all the other apps).

It _might_ be worth a try before you pay for DataRescue (which is an EXCELLENT app).

SOMETHING VERY IMPORTANT YOU NEED TO KNOW:
You are likely to need a THIRD hard drive to serve as a "scratch drive" to which the recovery app can write the data as it scavenges and recovers it. So there's a chance you're going to have to buy a third drive.

I would suggest you get one of these as a "caddy" for the scratch drive:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=usb+sata+dock&x=0&y=0
(various items shown, pick the one you like)
Note: check dealmac.com for a decent deal on a USB/SATA dock (as of 1/14/11)

Having said that, it's _possible_ (no promises) that the recovery apps _may_ be able to recover the drive from a "mis-initialization" withOUT the need for a third scratch drive. If this doesn't work, however, you WILL need a third "scratch drive".