How to retrieve data accidentally overwritten by a time machine backup? Ugent!

[mudisemail]

Hi, I connected my windows removable disk to my colleague's mac to transfer some data. Accidentally her system started a time machine backup on my removable disk. Although we stopped it during middle of the process, now my disk is no longer recognizable in windows and all I can see under a mac system is her backup file.

The process took a very short time. I wonder if it has deleted everything. Is there any chance I can get the overwritten data back? They are very important to me.

Besides, is it a common problem of time machine backup? It is too dangerous for the removable disks.

 

[eddietr]

Accidentally? She would have had to actually reformat the drive to use it with time machine.

Assuming your drive wasn't already HFS+ (which I'm sure it wasn't), then unfortunately your drive has been reformatted.

Maybe talk to a professional recovery firm? I don't know if that is even possible, but it's worth at least asking a company like that.