[davidhildreth]

I was importing some photos off of a memory card, it had just finished and I told it to delete the imported photos off my card.

I then plugged in an express card for my eSATA hard drive, but the drive was accidentally already powered on and that (at least for me) will completely lock up my MBP.
I don't know why it does that, it's not good practice to plug in a running drive anyway, so I try not to.

My music stopped and the mouse quit moving, I waited a couple of minutes and then held down the power button to do a hard boot.

When I started back up the photos I had just imported to iPhoto were gone, not just from my library but also had already been deleted from my memory card.

Anyone have any ideas on how I could get them back? I don't run Leopard so any sort of time-machine related posts need not reply.

[peeb]

I've used PhotoRescue Expert to get photos back from an erased card - I think they have a free trial.

[Veltliner]

For future use:

When you import photos, immediately put a copy to your external hard drive.

Then check if they are there.

Only then erase card.

---
I had once an import problem, and, for a while, did not import from the card into the Lightroom database, but just copied the photos into an Import folder.

From there I imported into the database.

I went back to importing directly from the card, but the copying to the import folder is possibly the safest.

----

I don't know about iPhoto, as I never used it, but there is the slight chance that the photos might be somewhere on your hard drive, only they don't show up in iPHoto. A slight chance. After all, iPhoto is a database, not the actual storage.

Try to find the folder, where iPHoto actually stores the images. Check if they are there.

[MacosNerd]

Another vote for photorescue That program has an uncanny ability to recover images off a memory card.

[TETENAL]

Control-click the iPhoto Library and select "Show Package Contents". There navigate into the folder Originals and then 2008 and see whether you find your pictures there.

[davidhildreth]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

Control-click the iPhoto Library and select "Show Package Contents". There navigate into the folder Originals and then 2008 and see whether you find your pictures there.

This is exactly the type of tip I was looking for, thanks!

[skybolt]

Just don't do anything to/with them if you find them there. Any manipulation in the library in finder can/will result in havoc. If you find your photos there, open iPhoto and tell it to import those photos.

[Grace Cohen]

what do you mean by control click iPhoto library ?

[Thorzdad]

Hold down the Control button on your keyboard and click on the iPhoto Library with your mouse.

[DavidDonald]

U can use data recovery software for Mac OS X