Time Machine Erased My External Hard Drive

[pitobread]

I started installing Leopard last night before going out. I came back late last night (or early this morning) and sat down to explore the new OS. There was a pop-up about using Time Machine with my external hard drive. I clicked okay. It began loading and running Time Machine before telling me my external hard drive was the wrong format or something. It then gave me the option to delete (which I assumed ment delete the Time Machine files from my external hard drive). I clicked on it.

A few minutes later I realized that it had erased my entire external hard drive, renaming it "Time Machine Backups". I had JUST moved my entire music and movie collection to that hard drive and am wondering if there's any way I can recover those files.

(The irony of having my back up files deleted by Time Machine makes this whole situation extra painful) Any help will be appreciated. I really want those files back.

 

[xUKHCx]

Well you erased the external.

I think you are out of luck but you can check out data rescue II

 

[byakuya]

you could have it recovered professionally...but that's always pricey.

 

[superleccy]

Well yes, that's what Time Machine does. Bad luck.

The irony is not lost on me though. I always stick to a rigorous backup routine. I have only ever lost data twice, and each time the reason was the combination of over-zealous backup applications and be being a bit dim-witted.

Last time it happened to me, I used Disk Warrior. It's not cheap but it's saved my life 3 times now.

SL

EDIT: Don't touch the drive or plug it in to anything until you're ready to attempt a recovery.

 

[pitobread]

Well, I feel completely retarded. I guess I'll take it to a computer place on Monday (if I can't figure out something before hand).

I'm running Data Rescue right now (but I only have the trial version so...)

Anyway, thanks for all the help so far.

Oh and $&$@&!$*(%#@&!

 

[disconap]

While it's a good idea to not use the drive much, non-system drives aren't continually writing to free space, so unlike deleting something from your system volume you're ok to try and access it/recover the files at your own pace. Just don't SAVE anything to it.

Also, a second for Data Rescue II. We bought it a couple years ago and have used it dozens of times. I usually keep a bootable partition, about 5gb, with a barebones install of OSX and various utilities like Disc Warrior and DRII...

 

[Rider]

Pitobread are you by any chance from PEI?

 

[damaya]

Did you recover the data? I occur in the same issue by deleting all my familiy fotos for the last 5 years.