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Lost all precious home movie files during hard drive erase, FFFUUU. Help!

1

156457

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 28, 2008
456
0
UK
Hi,

I recently reinstalled Snow Leopard from fresh on my iMac, erasing my hard drive completely having backed up my important files, however I overlooked my 'Movies' folder as I have all my 'Hollywood' movie in iTunes, and completely forgot about all my home movies.

My system has been running about a month since I freshly installed SL, and has 350GB free on a 500GB drive, is there any chance of me recovering these files which were erased during a hard drive wipe?

Any help would be much appreciated!

(I imagine this is a question often asked but whenever I google anything like it I just get results for shabby windows software)
 
Sky Blue said:
You could always try software like Data Rescue II.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure how thoroughly Data Rescue II will scan the disk surface. However, Stellar Phoenix Mac will perform a thorough scan of the disk surface. The most robust product I use is Nucleus Kernel Mac but it requires a Windows computer to operate. You should be aware that it may no longer detect the folder hierarchy and just place the files in large folders full of files. So after recovery there will be a lot of sifting to do.
 
imutter said:
my laptop went in to a repair shop and they fogot to save my pics I am so mad. I wish I wasn't so busy then I would have done it myself. I still am so mad I could cry !
Click to expand...

I think that the form Apple has you sign when you drop off you computer even says that by signing this you agree to them possibly formating the HDD and that they are not responsible for any lost data.
 
I hope those who have lost data in this thread have learnt their lesson and now have a multiply redundant backup system/regime in place.
 
imutter said:
my laptop went in to a repair shop and they fogot to save my pics I am so mad. I wish I wasn't so busy then I would have done it myself. I still am so mad I could cry !
Click to expand...

That should read "I forgot". It's not a repair shops job to back up your files, unless you specifically ask and pay for that service.
 
velocityg4 said:
I'm not sure how thoroughly Data Rescue II will scan the disk surface. However, Stellar Phoenix Mac will perform a thorough scan of the disk surface. The most robust product I use is Nucleus Kernel Mac but it requires a Windows computer to operate. You should be aware that it may no longer detect the folder hierarchy and just place the files in large folders full of files. So after recovery there will be a lot of sifting to do.
Click to expand...
Thanks very much for your suggestions, looks like it's going to be much harder than I imagined.

Oh well, you live and you learn. The irony is I've always kept time machine backups, but wiped my external HD clean and copied over only essential files I needed to keep for my fresh install and used the clean external to use Time Machine again.

Cheers guys.
 
I hope this has taught you a lesson to keep backups. It's a hard lesson to learn and having been victim of my irresponsibility before, I now keep multiple backups of everything important.
 
You could invest in Tech Tool Pro and see if it will recover the lost files via its Data Recovery feature. Basically it looks for files that haven't been overwritten; if not, there's a chance they could be recovered. I've had some success with that, but your chances are greatly improved if you have not used the disk a lot since the mistake happened...but it looks like you have.

It's still worth checking out though.

rob
 
Nick. said:
Thanks very much for your suggestions, looks like it's going to be much harder than I imagined.

Oh well, you live and you learn. The irony is I've always kept time machine backups, but wiped my external HD clean and copied over only essential files I needed to keep for my fresh install and used the clean external to use Time Machine again.

Cheers guys.
Click to expand...

I lost my hard drive once, without any backup. Very hard lesson to live with for a long time afterwards. Lots of good memories and information. Now I have Time Machine on a separate external HD and SuperDuper on another external HD. Hard drives are cheap, why not. Hopefully, it is lesson learned that I never repeat. Sorry about the loss of your pictures.
 
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