Long story short, I accidentally deleted my entire music library, roughly 25k songs. I've been doing quite a bit of research in terms of recovering files, and I've even tried two programs, but when the scanning is over, it asks me to pay for the program. Ridiculous. Anyway, does anyone know how to recover these music files for free? I'd really appreciate it!!
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Recovering Deleted files
- Thread starter BedlamGoliath
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Something similar to this happened to me a while back... I don't know of any freeware that will help you in this regard... may have to pay to get the songs back... sorry.
For free? Nah. Maybe if you were doing FAT or NTFS then you might be able to find some freeware tools, but not for HFS+ (not that I know of). Data recovery is srsbzns, why do you expect it to be free? Backups are cheaper.
Because free is better...
Yeah no doubt but still...
Data Rescue 3 is 84.88 from Amazon w/ no tax and free ship. I'd stop using the drive and save my lunch money to buy up this solution (if the trial indicates it can recover your files). It's worth it for 25K songs.
edit: here's some I found but I can't attest to their abilities
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
http://www.cleverfiles.com/
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Hmmm, I'll consider it. Is there a certain time frame you have to act in in order to recover the files? I might have to wait til my birthday because I can't afford it right now.
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As I understand it, deleted isn't exactly deleted until that space is needed for new stuff. which means that if you go out and download a buncha movies it'll overwrite the space where your old songs were. don't quote me on this though.
Most OSes (unless configured differently) only delete the reference of the data on the hard drive; it doesn't actually overwrite the blocks used by that data. That's how the data recovery tools work; they scan the sectors and allow you to extract the data.
How much time you have? //shrug
Any time your computer is on you are at risk for overwriting those blocks. If OS X runs out of ram and starts paging out, if you download some files, create new ones etc, all of those will cause problems.
That's why you the disk needs to be made inactive as soon as the data loss is evident which will give you the best chance for recovery.
How much time you have? //shrug
Any time your computer is on you are at risk for overwriting those blocks. If OS X runs out of ram and starts paging out, if you download some files, create new ones etc, all of those will cause problems.
That's why you the disk needs to be made inactive as soon as the data loss is evident which will give you the best chance for recovery.
http://www.cleverfiles.com/mac-data-recovery.html
Disk Drill is free for now. It's not a time frame that matters. It's the amount of data being written to the drive. The reason you can ever recover lost data is because when you "delete" something, those blocks on the drive are simply marked as usable. The data is still there unless new data overwrites it. Hence, the less you keep using your drive, the more chance you have of getting your data back.
stop using the drive and use disk drill. like now.
Disk Drill is free for now. It's not a time frame that matters. It's the amount of data being written to the drive. The reason you can ever recover lost data is because when you "delete" something, those blocks on the drive are simply marked as usable. The data is still there unless new data overwrites it. Hence, the less you keep using your drive, the more chance you have of getting your data back.
stop using the drive and use disk drill. like now.
"http://www.cleverfiles.com/mac-data-recovery.html
stop using the drive and use disk drill. like now."
I'll second axu539's post.
Get DiskDrill and get it TODAY.
DO NOT use the drive in question any more UNTIL you run data recovery software on it.
IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT
You cannot "recover" files to the same drive.
You MUST have a SECOND "scratch" drive to which to recover the data.
If you don't have a second "clean" drive to serve as your scratch drive, here's what you need to buy, and buy it TODAY:
First, get one of these:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=usb+sata+dock&x=0&y=0
(various items shown, just pick the one that you like best)
Second, get a "bare" drive of the same (or greater) capacity than the drive from which you're trying to recover the files. I recommend newegg.com as a reliable vendor and I recommend Seagate as the drive of choice.
And third, download the DiskDrill software as well.
More "important" stuff...
Do you currently have a second, bootable drive?
If YOU DO have one, put DiskDrill onto that and use it as your "platform" from which to do file recovery. Otherwise, once you have the above materials, you need to do this:
- Hook up the usb/sata dock, put the bare drive into it, get out your original OS X installation DVD, boot up from the DVD.
- From the DVD, launch Disk Utility and "aim it" at the new drive in the dock.
- Initialize the bare drive, then partition it into TWO partitions (could be more if you wish, but you'll need at least two). The first partition needs to be about 20+ gigs in size (it will contain a bootable copy of the System). It can be larger if you wish. The next partition can be whatever space is left on the drive -- this will serve as your "scratch space".
- Now install a clean copy of the System onto the new "boot partition".
- When that's done, boot from the new boot partition (press restart, hold down the option key and keep holding it down until the startup manager appears, then use the arrow keys to select the drive you wish to boot from)
- Create a new account. I STRONGLY SUGGEST that you use THE SAME username and password as you use on your "regular" drive.
- Use software update to download the "combo" 10.6.6 update, and then run it on the new boot partition. This will result in a new, clean, and up-to-date copy of the system.
- Now, launch DiskDrill, aim it at the problem drive, and see what options it offers you.
Yes, you MUST get a separate drive for file recovery.
And yes, it DOES take A LOT of effort and a good deal of learning to get the files back.
One more thought:
Next time, if you have files that are important to you, KEEP A BACKUP.
stop using the drive and use disk drill. like now."
I'll second axu539's post.
Get DiskDrill and get it TODAY.
DO NOT use the drive in question any more UNTIL you run data recovery software on it.
IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT
You cannot "recover" files to the same drive.
You MUST have a SECOND "scratch" drive to which to recover the data.
If you don't have a second "clean" drive to serve as your scratch drive, here's what you need to buy, and buy it TODAY:
First, get one of these:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=usb+sata+dock&x=0&y=0
(various items shown, just pick the one that you like best)
Second, get a "bare" drive of the same (or greater) capacity than the drive from which you're trying to recover the files. I recommend newegg.com as a reliable vendor and I recommend Seagate as the drive of choice.
And third, download the DiskDrill software as well.
More "important" stuff...
Do you currently have a second, bootable drive?
If YOU DO have one, put DiskDrill onto that and use it as your "platform" from which to do file recovery. Otherwise, once you have the above materials, you need to do this:
- Hook up the usb/sata dock, put the bare drive into it, get out your original OS X installation DVD, boot up from the DVD.
- From the DVD, launch Disk Utility and "aim it" at the new drive in the dock.
- Initialize the bare drive, then partition it into TWO partitions (could be more if you wish, but you'll need at least two). The first partition needs to be about 20+ gigs in size (it will contain a bootable copy of the System). It can be larger if you wish. The next partition can be whatever space is left on the drive -- this will serve as your "scratch space".
- Now install a clean copy of the System onto the new "boot partition".
- When that's done, boot from the new boot partition (press restart, hold down the option key and keep holding it down until the startup manager appears, then use the arrow keys to select the drive you wish to boot from)
- Create a new account. I STRONGLY SUGGEST that you use THE SAME username and password as you use on your "regular" drive.
- Use software update to download the "combo" 10.6.6 update, and then run it on the new boot partition. This will result in a new, clean, and up-to-date copy of the system.
- Now, launch DiskDrill, aim it at the problem drive, and see what options it offers you.
Yes, you MUST get a separate drive for file recovery.
And yes, it DOES take A LOT of effort and a good deal of learning to get the files back.
One more thought:
Next time, if you have files that are important to you, KEEP A BACKUP.
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
I've used Data Rescue II (on PowerPCs) and it works pretty well.
The first thing you should do though, is STOP using your computer. I hope you don't have an SSD, or you might really be out of luck.
The more you use your computer, the me likely you are to overwrite data where the songs are stored.. that would make them unrecoverable.
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