The best recovery software for OS-deleted data

[flashofthedark]

So my son accidentally deleted my account and selected to delete the data in the account. It's not saved in the Deleted Users folder. So I jumped on it after he had moved around about 300mb of data on the hard drive and started running recovery programs. So far I'm getting filenames for mp3s, but what I'm most concerned about is getting my Adobe Premiere projects, and if I can't get the full filenames of these project files it's going to be a mess!

What recovery software and settings would you try for something like this?

 

[velocityg4]

Stellar Phoenix. Also don't boot off that drive log files and virtual memory can destroy all the data. Replace the drive and connect it as an external or mount it on another Mac.

If you don't have another Mac but do have a Windows PC use Nucleus Kernel Mac.

Also you will need another larger blank drive to restore all the data onto.

 

[flashofthedark]

Stellar Phoenix. Also don't boot off that drive log files and virtual memory can destroy all the data. Replace the drive and connect it as an external or mount it on another Mac.

If you don't have another Mac but do have a Windows PC use Nucleus Kernel Mac.

Also you will need another larger blank drive to restore all the data onto.

Wow, good advice. The system has rebooted 2 times so that must be why the files are damaged already. I will put it into target and connect it to another Mac and run Stellar Phoenix. Is there any options you recommend I should choose? Can I come back and ask what option you think is best after I get it installed and running?

 

[velocityg4]

Try the quick scan first. Then the deep scan if that doesn't work. Ask away.

 

[flashofthedark]

Try the quick scan first. Then the deep scan if that doesn't work. Ask away.

This took a long time. I used Stellar quick and deep but the filenames could not be retained. I used Disk Drill and Data Rescue as well; Disk Drillmanaged to keep just the MP3 filenames, but strangely enough all other file signatures had no original filename. I'm chalking it up to bad luck as very little was done to the system before I started recovery; only 15 minutes of activity, including 113mb copied onto the affected hard drive and two reboots. But I'm glad I got a lot of it back. To anyone reading I would highly recommend you try more than one recovery program; analysis procedures within different programs vary greatly in results, much more than I would've thought before this. Thankfully the beforementioned companies all offer trials to review results.

Thanks for your help velocity.