oops, corrupted file system on my picture drive!!

[stevey500]

... okay, I have a windows XP installation cd that I wanted to copy over to my thumbdrive for easier installation on my home PC's...

I was using disk utility and made an image of my XP install CD...

I accidently began to recover(copy to the drive) the image file of the XP cd to the WRONG DRIVE in the disk utility list!!. i meant to recover it to my Thumbdrive's partition but clicked on the partition of my 100gb external hard drive which has over 75,000 photos!!! ... I seen the activity light come on on my external and instantly thought "OH NO!" ... I canceled immediately.

the system will no longer mount my external drive... but i know that it couldn't have over-wrote that much of my hard drive's data in just a few seconds; mostly everything SHOULD still be there... the system just cannot see it and won't mount the parition. The image that I was restoring to the drive is probably only 200mb versus the size of the whole hard drive at 100gb

Right now I am using Data Rescue II to do a thorough scan to recover any files if possible.. it's just going to take quite a while..


any suggestions. I'm trying not to be too shaky and trying not to freak out..

this is thousands upon thousands of photos throughout all of my highschool and 2 years of junior high memories along with my favorite and Top portraits and landscape photography..

this is a true bummer if I can't get this recovered ... two whole GIANT iphoto libraries ...

yikes.

 

[sushi]

Be sure to recover to another drive and not the one with the issue.

If you have a PC handy, you might try SpinRite. It works very well.

DiskWarrior can recover files as well, a version of which comes on your Apple Care disk.

 

[stevey500]

I'm just going to let Data Rescue scan the drive ...

for now... i need to go do something to get my mind off of my stupidity.
and hope that someone will come along and make my day...

crap.

 

[sushi]

Best to remain as calm as you can so you don't make things worse.

Just take it a step at a time.

 

[stevey500]

Be sure to recover to another drive and not the one with the issue.

If you have a PC handy, you might try SpinRite. It works very well.

DiskWarrior can recover files as well, a version of which comes on your Apple Care disk.

Okay, when Data Rescue is done and if I have bad results... ill try it.

thank you!

 

[MacDawg]

Best to remain as calm as you can so you don't make things worse.

Just take it a step at a time.

Excellent advice!
The worst thing you can do right now is panic and do things rashly

Your first tendency is to act fast, but it isn't going to spoil or melt
Whatever is done has been done, but you can keep from making it worse

EDIT: And definitely check back and tell us how things go!



Woof, Woof - Dawg

 

[stevey500]

lol, that is quite true. thanks guys..

well Data Rescue found 243,000 JPEGs
im guessing thats probably due to all of the thumbnails and all from iphoto's database.

lets hope re-importing everything works out!

 

[stevey500]

Everything is just kind of scattered, i think i've recovered mostly Everything, ... to another external drive. It's just that... of two Separate iphoto libraries there's THOUSANDS of jpg files in the "recovered jpg" folder... i'm wondering if iPhoto is going to arrange these by EXIF information or by the date the file is created (which is today) so that my iphoto will be organized.

I mean, im real happy i have all my photos back, yes! but heck, i sure hope that iphoto arranges them by exif date..

Think it would be possible to clone the drive and the clone be readable?

 

[sushi]

If the tags are real important to you, please give SpinRite a try.

You'll need to be able to connect your HD to a PC to use SpinRite. While I cannot guarantee that SpinRite will recover your photos with all info, it's definitely worth a try.

Personally, SpinRite has saved my bacon on more than a few times. It's really awesome!

 

[merl1n]

...DiskWarrior can recover files as well, a version of which comes on your Apple Care disk.

Since when did Apple start including Disk Warrior on the AppleCare disc? They have always included an OEM version of Techtool Delux as far as I know. Have they changed this? When?

 

[sushi]

Since when did Apple start including Disk Warrior on the AppleCare disc? They have always included an OEM version of Techtool Delux as far as I know. Have they changed this? When?

My bad. Thanks for the catch.

It is TechTool Deluxe and not Disk Warrior on the current AppleCare discs.

Still my vote still goes to SpinRite if I only had one tool.