Help with External HDD

[johnny2373]

OK I am very very new to mac...I have a 2TB USB Western Digital My Book Elite Drive that has about 1.5TB of data on it from a PC ...

This is where I was stupid..I went into Time Machine to make a backup from my iMAC which has about 390GB used of a 1 TB HDD. When I selected the drive to use as the backup drive, my kid was talking to me and I wasn't paying attention...It began to "reformat" my drive?? Well I panked and disconnected the drive from the Mac...now when I reconnect it...It doesnt see anything but the WD partition...

What possibilities do I ahve to repairing this and making it usable? I do ahve crazy important videos on there that I can't get again...

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

To retrieve files, that have been deleted and also been emptied from the Trash or are on unrecognisable partitions or HDDs or on accidentally formatted partitions or HDDs, you can use

• Data Rescue 3 - trial lets you scan for free, but recovery needs a purchase (99 USD)
• Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery - trial lets you scan for free, but recovery needs a purchase (99 USD)
• FileSalvage - trial lets you scan for free, but recovery needs a purchase (99 USD)
• DiskDrill - trial lets you scan for free, but recovery needs a purchase (79 USD)
• Nice To Recover - trial lets you scan for free, but recovery needs a purchase (69.95 USD)

 

[johnny2373]

thanks for the list of software which one do you think works better than another or do you have personal preferences?,

so did that process starting just wipe the drive assignments? This is ridiculously stressful ugghhh

 

[simsaladimbamba]

thanks for the list of software which one do you think works better than another or do you have personal preferences?,

so did that process starting just wipe the drive assignments? This is ridiculously stressful ugghhh

I prefer Data Rescue, it helped me twice already (though it once took over a week to find less than 30 GB if data on a failing HDD). As for the data on your HDD, it is not gone, only the partition table and the table of contents (where what file is and how its name is) are gone, thus the data recovery software. Don't expect it to be simple though, as you will get files like "file0001.mov" and so on, not files with their original file names.