Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Recovering files on 10.4

Silly John Fatty

Silly John Fatty

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Nov 6, 2012
1,818
523
Hello guys,


this is a terrible situation right now. Many of you probably know it. I have a presentation on Friday, where I have to present a project, for which I have shot over 600 photos. I have accidentally lost over 400 of them. It appears I deleted them.

They were all on my eMac, I think the system should be 10.4.8 or something like that. I see that there's some recovery apps out there, but they are damn expensive. Also those I've checked out don't support an OS below 10.6.

I immediately put my eMac in sleep and I am writing from another Mac now.
Does anyone know a cheap solution, and one that is supporting 10.4?


This is a catastrophe otherwise…

Thank you so much…
 
Jardins de Vin said:
Hello guys,


this is a terrible situation right now. Many of you probably know it. I have a presentation on Friday, where I have to present a project, for which I have shot over 600 photos. I have accidentally lost over 400 of them. It appears I deleted them.

They were all on my eMac, I think the system should be 10.4.8 or something like that. I see that there's some recovery apps out there, but they are damn expensive. Also those I've checked out don't support an OS below 10.6.

I immediately put my eMac in sleep and I am writing from another Mac now.
Does anyone know a cheap solution, and one that is supporting 10.4?


This is a catastrophe otherwise…

Thank you so much…
Click to expand...

If you shot 600 photos, wouldn't it be on the camera's internal memory or an SD card. Usually if I move photos from a SD Card or something, it doesn't actually move them but copy them.

Maybe a old version of FileSalvage could be of use?

Sorry, I am not too much of a expert on this subject, all I know is that files aren't actually deleted but overwritten in time.
 
I checked the SD card but I deleted the photos sadly. They were on my desktop already, in a folder. I had imported them and I always delete them straight away from the card to avoid confusion later.

FileSalvage looks expensive as well… I wish I had that money to spend. Is there no way to manually find the files?
 
Jardins de Vin said:
Hello guys,


this is a terrible situation right now. Many of you probably know it. I have a presentation on Friday, where I have to present a project, for which I have shot over 600 photos. I have accidentally lost over 400 of them. It appears I deleted them.

They were all on my eMac, I think the system should be 10.4.8 or something like that. I see that there's some recovery apps out there, but they are damn expensive. Also those I've checked out don't support an OS below 10.6.

I immediately put my eMac in sleep and I am writing from another Mac now.
Does anyone know a cheap solution, and one that is supporting 10.4?


This is a catastrophe otherwise…

Thank you so much…
Click to expand...

HEYHEY do not write any new files to the machine where deleted files were.
2. Go to www.cgsecurity.org
3. Use TESTDISK for data or PHOTOREC for photo files. Both are free (OS X PPC and INTEL)
4. Do it asap because these apps could recover all deleted files but it requires much time to check every hdd sector.
What is the capacity of hdd?
 
Last edited:
Hey guys,

thanks for suggesting Photorec! I will definitely have a try. The computer is turned off at the moment, I haven't done anything else on it since I deleted the files. Well, except going through folders to search for the deleted folder (before I realised I put it to the bin and emptied the bin) and then I put the computer in sleep for some time and finally turned it off.

I will download the app on my Mac Pro and open it/install it from a USB flash drive on my eMac.

The question is just, if this is compatible with 10.4? It's 10.4.8 if I recall correctly. I'm scared of installing this app and writing files and then realising it's not compatible with my OS. The page only says it's compatible with Mac OS.

Thanks a lot!!
 
Jardins de Vin said:
Hey guys,

thanks for suggesting Photorec! I will definitely have a try. The computer is turned off at the moment, I haven't done anything else on it since I deleted the files. Well, except going through folders to search for the deleted folder (before I realised I put it to the bin and emptied the bin) and then I put the computer in sleep for some time and finally turned it off.

I will download the app on my Mac Pro and open it/install it from a USB flash drive on my eMac.

The question is just, if this is compatible with 10.4? It's 10.4.8 if I recall correctly. I'm scared of installing this app and writing files and then realising it's not compatible with my OS. The page only says it's compatible with Mac OS.

Thanks a lot!!
Click to expand...

The PhotoRec website lists "Mac OS X", so there is a good chance. Just to be clear you don't need / want to install anything on your Mac, simply run it from the USB flash drive.
 
Alright, I'll give it a try. :)

The HDD is 80 GB I believe. So not very big for todays standards.
[doublepost=1455121559][/doublepost]So, I started the program, selected the file types I wanted it to search, and now it asked me this:

To recover lost files, PhotoRec needs to know the filesystem type where the files were stored:
• [ext2/ext3] ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem
• [Other] FAT/NTSF/HFS+/ReiserFS/.…
​
Anyone know which one I need to select if I want to get back JPGs, PNGs and one or two PDFs?
[doublepost=1455121753][/doublepost]PS: According to "About this Mac", my hard drive is HFS+. Should I choose the second option then?
 
Jardins de Vin said:
Alright, I'll give it a try. :)

The HDD is 80 GB I believe. So not very big for todays standards.
[doublepost=1455121559][/doublepost]So, I started the program, selected the file types I wanted it to search, and now it asked me this:

To recover lost files, PhotoRec needs to know the filesystem type where the files were stored:
• [ext2/ext3] ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem
• [Other] FAT/NTSF/HFS+/ReiserFS/.…
​
Anyone know which one I need to select if I want to get back JPGs, PNGs and one or two PDFs?
[doublepost=1455121753][/doublepost]PS: According to "About this Mac", my hard drive is HFS+. Should I choose the second option then?
Click to expand...

That's the one. The first file system listed is used in Linux, Android, and various other *nixes...
 
Great, thanks. :)

It's running now but it looks like it will take ages. 49 hours left…
Is there a way to limit the time when it searches, for example last week only or so? Or any other method to make it faster?

I already removed all file types I don't need from the search. I only selected .jpg, .png and .pdf.
Thanks!
 
Jardins de Vin said:
Great, thanks. :)

It's running now but it looks like it will take ages. 49 hours left…
Is there a way to limit the time when it searches, for example last week only or so? Or any other method to make it faster?

I already removed all file types I don't need from the search. I only selected .jpg, .png and .pdf.
Thanks!
Click to expand...

Not certain how that would work, the program needs to search the disk looking for deleted files. That is what takes all the time. Those boxes you checked (or un-checked) simply controls the deleted files that are displayed for recovery.
 
Hmm I see… what happens if I cancel the process? Are the files lost forever? Or what are the consequences. Is it possible to pause it also and continue at a later point?
 
Jardins de Vin said:
Hmm I see… what happens if I cancel the process? Are the files lost forever? Or what are the consequences. Is it possible to pause it also and continue at a later point?
Click to expand...

Doubt there is a way to pause the search - also don't think there is a way to resume because the list of discovered files is only in RAM. Stopping the search shouldn't hurt anything because right now its just reading the disk looking for deleted files.
 
The search took less time than it announced, but sadly it said it couldn't find any files.

Maybe I searched the wrong volume? I searched my Macintosh HD partition (it's only one, just the default partition) but perhaps I should have searched the whole volume.

Or maybe I did something else wrong. I don't understand how it couldn't find anything, I haven't done anything on the mac since that happened, I just stopped doing anything.
 
Jardins de Vin said:
The search took less time than it announced, but sadly it said it couldn't find any files.

Maybe I searched the wrong volume? I searched my Macintosh HD partition (it's only one, just the default partition) but perhaps I should have searched the whole volume.

Or maybe I did something else wrong. I don't understand how it couldn't find anything, I haven't done anything on the mac since that happened, I just stopped doing anything.
Click to expand...
I PMed you.
 
Jardins de Vin said:
The question is just, if this is compatible with 10.4? It's 10.4.8 if I recall correctly
Click to expand...

You really should physically remove the drive from the eMac and use an external drive adapter to mount the drive on a more modern Mac OS. Even using the eMac at this point could overwrite files. Yes, there is a cost involved in purchasing a drive adapter but they are cheap and can be used thereafter for making backup clones of your drives or even TC backups in the future.

StarTech has many good options for SATA drives but your eMac has PATA so:
http://www.startech.com/HDD/Adapters/USB-3-to-SATA-or-IDE-Hard-Drive-Adapter-Converter~USB3SSATAIDE
 
Recovering the photos from the memory card in the camera is not a bad idea, even though (in this case) I don't believe I could find anything. I haven't done the 600 photos at once, but over several times, and each time when I copied the photos to the Mac I removed the old ones from the memory card to avoid confusion when copying them again after the next "shoot".

I've read the PhotoRec manual if you can call it like that step by step and that looks like what I did, I guess maybe I'm just very unlucky… but that's still weird if you ask me.

So for my eMac hard drive I would need a IDE to USB (or whatever I use to connect it to my Mac Pro) connection, is that correct? I see some cheap adapters that I could buy and pick up from the store today. Only around 16 Euros. Don't know if that's worth anything.
 
Jardins de Vin said:
Recovering the photos from the memory card in the camera is not a bad idea, even though (in this case) I don't believe I could find anything. I haven't done the 600 photos at once, but over several times, and each time when I copied the photos to the Mac I removed the old ones from the memory card to avoid confusion when copying them again after the next "shoot".

I've read the PhotoRec manual if you can call it like that step by step and that looks like what I did, I guess maybe I'm just very unlucky… but that's still weird if you ask me.

So for my eMac hard drive I would need a IDE to USB (or whatever I use to connect it to my Mac Pro) connection, is that correct? I see some cheap adapters that I could buy and pick up from the store today. Only around 16 Euros. Don't know if that's worth anything.
Click to expand...
Ide to USB, but it has to have a Molex to power
 
Adapter? Why not simply buy an external Hard Drive Case that can take IDE drives and has USB or Firewire? They usually come with a power supply ;) or is there something I didn't get about the adapter idea?

There is also Stellar phoenix Mac data recovery (which found my photos, but not videos, since videos are hard to recover anyway). You need a license to actually recover the found files, though.
Actually Stellar phoenix data recovery is the same thing that is behind several other recovery suites/apps where every chinese/indian/pakistani enterprise puts its GUI on top. Could well be, that Stellar phoenix uses the same that is behind photorec.

If Erik can't help out via PN, I would offer the OP something via PN...
 
Cox Orange said:
Adapter? Why not simply buy an external Hard Drive Case that can take IDE drives and has USB or Firewire? They usually come with a power supply ;) or is there something I didn't get about the adapter idea?

There is also Stellar phoenix Mac data recovery (which found my photos, but not videos, since videos are hard to recover anyway). You need a license to actually recover the found files, though.
Actually Stellar phoenix data recovery is the same thing that is behind several other recovery suites/apps where every chinese/indian/pakistani enterprise puts its GUI on top. Could well be, that Stellar phoenix uses the same that is behind photorec.

If Erik can't help out via PN, I would offer the OP something via PN...
Click to expand...
The cases have adapters inside of them
 
MacCubed said:
The cases have adapters inside of them
Click to expand...
Of course external Hard Drive cases have "adapters" (i.e. the I/O board) in them, that is why I mentioned a HDD-case. I was aiming at your statement "but it has to have molex to power", hence the external HDD-case, which would come with its own power source. I forgot, for a moment, that there are these bare IDE-to-USB adapters that have a power supply and those with just a second USB-cable, too. :)
 
Hey guys,


I just wanted to say a big THANK YOU again! I had finally managed to recover all of the photos just half an hour before the meeting. I decided to scan the USB flash drive they were on, and they were there as well. I had found them in one of the scans of the computer as well, but there was so many photos and they weren't in order that it was really harder to find them

At least now I know the story. The were on the computer, I moved them to the flash drive, I deleted them from the computer, and for some reason I deleted them from the flash drive as well. Until now I couldn't figure out what had happened.


I have 10.4.11 by the way!

So I guess this time I won't be needing an external HD case/adapter, but I see why it's useful. :)


Thanks!!!
 
  • Like
Reactions: eyoungren
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back