Hard Drive Woes

[jonias]

Hi,
I did a really stupid thing. My G5 was having some unrelated hardware problems, so I took the hard drive out while I was having it repaired.

Like an idiot, I stuck the drive into a Windows box and it did not show up as a volume drive letter, so I went to administrative services and perfomed right click > Initialize - thinking it would allow me access the drive.

Well, not so. Apparently it has given it a Windows format. The "Initialize" process took the system all of 3 seconds so I really don't believe it formatted or erased the disk. I've tried DiskWarrior on OSX and GetDataBack on PC to no avail. I'm trying to recover some photos of my 5 month old and some Office docs. I'm desperate here. Please, anyone who has similar experience let me know your situation so I can continue to search for solutions.

 

[EricNau]

You're not still using that disk, are you?

Someone may need to correct me, but I believe the term "initialize" is synonymous with format, meaning you did indeed reformat the disk, but that doesn't mean your data is completely lost (yet).

 

[sushi]

First, stop using the HD immediately.

If you did a "Quick" format, which you probably did, you created a NSTF/FAT32 partition and then formated that partition by creating a FAT (File Allocation Table), a backup FAT and some other administrative files.

That means on the HD, the original files exist -- except for those overwritten by the format.

The problem is how to access them.

In simple terms, the Mac cannot find them because Mac formats discs differently than Windows. Likewise for Windows.

If these are files you must really have, then consider professional disc recovery. They should be able to recover the files by going bit by bit through the disk. It will be an expensive option.

Good luck.

 

[jonias]

Thanks

Thanks for the advice. I hooked the drive back up to my PC and ran a program called Get DataBack with no results. I plugged the drive back into the mac and tried Disk Warrior but it wouldn't even access the drive. I got a quote from Disk Savers and the proposal for recovery was a possible 500-2300 bucks. I'm running a program now called FileSalvage and the program "sees" the files (still scanning) I think I can get them back now. Fingers crossed.

I appreciate you guys' quick responce. Great community here.

 

[sushi]

^^ You are very welcome.

Please let us know if the FileSalvage app is successful at recovering your files.

Thanks!