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PLEASE HELP! Time Machine: Did I erase my existing material forever?

L

Logan1135

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 14, 2008
3
0
So about a year ago a got an WD external hard drive and put a lot of music and photos on it and then deleted that material from my iBook. I then tucked the hard drive away and didn't use it again until a few weeks ago when I got a new MacBook pro and was so excited to use time machine that I quickly click click clicked through the set up without really reading the warnings carefully, and Time Machine set itself up but now I can't find any of the material that was existing on the hard drive before.

Did I agree to erase all of my photos and music? The music I don't really care about, but the photos I can't replace--is there any way to get it back if it HAS been erased, if I send the hard drive somewhere for someone to retrieve them? Please help!
 
The HDD should of already been in the format that TM uses, so I can't imagine it'd need to reformat the disk. I keep a load of applications next to my TM backup.

However you should be able to see your old content if it's there. The TM backup will be a ".sparseimage", so do you see any other folders (or files) ?
 
When I plug in my hard drive, it comes up as "Time Machine Backups" and the only folder is Backups.backupdb. and then in that is a folder that says MyName Computer and in that is all of my new computer's backup stuff.

Am I looking in the wrong place? I definitely wasn't reading the prompts very carefully but I can't believe it would erase everything that was already on there!

Thanks for any help you can give me...
 
Did Time Machine erase my hard drive?

I posted before, but I am so bummed at the prospect of having lost my photos forever that I'm re-posting in hopes that someone can help!

About a year ago I bought a WD external hard drive and put a lot of music and photos on it and then deleted that material from my iBook. I then tucked the hard drive away and didn't use it again until a few weeks ago when I got a new MacBook pro and was so excited to use time machine that I quickly click click clicked through the set up without really reading the warnings carefully, and Time Machine set itself up but now I can't find any of the material that was existing on the hard drive before. When I plug in my hard drive now, it comes up as "Time Machine Backups" and the only folder is Backups.backupdb. and then in that is a folder that says MyName Computer and in that is all of my new computer's backup stuff.


Did I agree to erase all of my photos and music? The music I don't really care about, but the photos I can't replace--is there any way to get it back if it HAS been erased, if I send the hard drive somewhere for some super crazy hacker genius to retrieve them? Please help!
 
look at the google ads on the page.. services like them are your best bet. Also, if you want any hope of getting your files back, DON'T USE THE DRIVE AT ALL as it'll write over the deleted files and you'll definitely lose everything forever!
 
im sorry for the situation, yes, do NOT use the HDD, especially in OSX since TM probably will do some writing on it.

Did you try any data recover apps? in windows and osx?
 
Recover.

Logan1135 said:
I posted before, but I am so bummed at the prospect of having lost my photos forever that I'm re-posting in hopes that someone can help!

About a year ago I bought a WD external hard drive and put a lot of music and photos on it and then deleted that material from my iBook. I then tucked the hard drive away and didn't use it again until a few weeks ago when I got a new MacBook pro and was so excited to use time machine that I quickly click click clicked through the set up without really reading the warnings carefully, and Time Machine set itself up but now I can't find any of the material that was existing on the hard drive before. When I plug in my hard drive now, it comes up as "Time Machine Backups" and the only folder is Backups.backupdb. and then in that is a folder that says MyName Computer and in that is all of my new computer's backup stuff.


Did I agree to erase all of my photos and music? The music I don't really care about, but the photos I can't replace--is there any way to get it back if it HAS been erased, if I send the hard drive somewhere for some super crazy hacker genius to retrieve them? Please help!
Click to expand...



Have you been able to recover the lost file? I am in the same predicament. Please advise how to proceed on the recovery of those precious photo. Thanks.
 
:(:(:(:(:(:apple:

The same thing happend to me,
Some one plugged my drive into their laptop and "accidentally" clicked yes on the timemachine crap.

Some one please help me I've lost EVERYTHING. Two years worth of design work.


HELP!
 
I haven't used any of the methods in these links but I keep them for the day when disaster strikes.
Let us know which, if any, works for you.
Link 1
Link 2
 
ladje said:
If this happens, don't worry, you can retrieve your files from your external hard drive.

go to: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/1133

and dowload "data rescue ii" (if it's no longer available here, surely you can find another place to download it for free.
Click to expand...

This is good advice, though giving the serial number is illegal - buy your own copy.

Data Rescue does a few things. Most importantly for you it has a "Deleted Files" scan. I've had success with it (recovered about 80 GB of deleted files). It doesn't restore file names, but creates a JPG folder for all .jpg images it finds, GIF folder for .gif files, Word Documents folder for all .doc files, etc.. The files will be named 001.doc, 002.doc, etc., but beggars can't be choosers. Leopard and Quicklook makes it easy to quickly go through and rename them all.

As mentioned, *stop using the drive immediately,* as the more you use it, the more of the deleted material is written over. Good luck.

-
Michael
 
If you have your data in just one physical location, you don't have it.
Wish you luck with your recovery!
 
I"m a total noob be easy on me

I did the same thing... has anyone had sucess recovering data? Geek squad gave me a quote of 70 to look at it and 260 min to repair. Anyone know of anywhere that's better priced?
 
joeydzzle said:
I did the same thing... has anyone had sucess recovering data? Geek squad gave me a quote of 70 to look at it and 260 min to repair. Anyone know of anywhere that's better priced?
Click to expand...

Well a copy of Data Rescue II is $99 and you would then own it for future problems. Go to the ProSoft website and check it out, then download the demo they have. It will scan your drive and show you a list of the files it would be able to recover if you pay for it and register it- and will allow you to recover 1 file (less than 5Mb) to show you how the registered version would work.

If DR II can't find the files on the drive (usually in the Quick Find mode) then you have a serious problem that may or may not be recoverable by a professional data recovery firm such as OnTrack Data Recovery- with a price tag up to 4 figures (a recent quote for a 320Gb drive for a client was $500-$2200 for instance) for the recovery.

Personally after seeing how badly BestBuy mangled my ex's PC hard drive, I would certainly never consider having them work on an Apple product (or a PC for that matter)- and yes I know they sell them- but selling them versus having the tech expertise to actually successfully repair/recover are two different things in my book.

BTW- A favorite Mac hardware/software supplier (Other World Computing) has Data Rescue II for only $59.99- and has a holiday bundle of it and Prosoft's Drive Genius II together for $109 on this page.
 
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