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Formatted Hard Drive by mistake :(
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madgreek
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May 21, 2005, 05:59 PM
 
I just acidentially formatted my hard drive by mistake. It wasn't a low level format nor did I zero the date. What is the easist way to recover this drive?
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James41
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May 21, 2005, 06:24 PM
 
Originally Posted by madgreek
I just acidentially formatted my hard drive by mistake. It wasn't a low level format nor did I zero the date. What is the easist way to recover this drive?
If you have the original install disk, just do a reinstall new and go on. Unless you have some extremely important data it is just to darn expensive to have it recovered. Might as well mark it up to one of those things to NOT DO AGAIN and go on.
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madgreek  (op)
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May 21, 2005, 06:44 PM
 
The data is very important so reinstalling isn't an option unfortunately. At present, I am running TechTool Pro and trying their Recovery option.
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Angus_D
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May 21, 2005, 07:00 PM
 
If the data is important to you, STOP IMMEDIATELY and TAKE IT TO PROFESSIONALS.

Oh, and be more careful when doing destructive operations (they warn you for a reason).
     
Millennium
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May 21, 2005, 07:21 PM
 
Originally Posted by madgreek
The data is very important so reinstalling isn't an option unfortunately. At present, I am running TechTool Pro and trying their Recovery option.
Step one: don't do anything more with the drive. The less you've done with it since the format, the more data can be recovered.
Step two: since you can't afford to lose the data, you're going to need to send it to professionals. DriveSavers is very reputable, they've been around for many years, and they've been working with Macs since the time of the first Mac hard drives (ah, HD20, how I mourn for thee...). They're not cheap, but if anyone can get your data back, they're more likely than anyone else (short of a governmental intelligence agency) to be able to do it.
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jdogg99
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May 22, 2005, 10:03 AM
 
I've actually have good luck with the program Data Rescue. Check it out on versiontracker.com. It should work (I had to do the "content" scan before anything would show up), unless you've written anything to the drive.
     
tooki
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May 22, 2005, 11:17 AM
 
Agreed. Data Rescue works so long as the data hasn't been overwritten. Just know that Data Rescue takes forever to scan, so don't be alarmed if it's still busy 8-24 hours after you started the scan. There is a demo version that lets you do the scan and see what is recoverable, but will only let you recover one file. You can use it to decide whether or not to pony up $80 for the program.

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madgreek  (op)
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May 22, 2005, 11:50 AM
 
Funny you should mention Data Rescue, purchased it this morning and am now in the process of doing a Thorough Scan as they suggested in their FAQ when someone else accidentially initialized their hard drive.


Will post my results here later.
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CatOne
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May 22, 2005, 05:24 PM
 
Originally Posted by madgreek
I just acidentially formatted my hard drive by mistake. It wasn't a low level format nor did I zero the date. What is the easist way to recover this drive?
So are you going to learn from this and keep backups from now on?
     
OreoCookie
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May 22, 2005, 05:33 PM
 
If it's really important data, go to professionals. Pricey, but worth their money. Don't touch the harddrive with anything.

If they are just `important personal' files, you can try recover yourself. I hope you'll keep backups next time.
( Last edited by OreoCookie; May 22, 2005 at 06:29 PM. )
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alphasubzero949
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May 23, 2005, 03:40 AM
 
BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP.

Just this evening a friend called one of my colleagues and was upset that her Wintel box suddenly crashed and would no longer boot. She was working on a final term paper and never made a single backup of anything on her drive.

They turned to me, the lab "guru" for advice. First thing I asked, "Did she at least have a backup of her stuff?" Nope.

Oh well.

When TTP4 wiped out my PowerBook's HD, it only took me a few hours to get everything back. Fortunately I made a backup of my home directory the week before. I only lost a few e-mails and songs, but no big deal.

It may be "inconvenient" to burn CDs or DVDs of files every week (or at least once a month), but the time spent burning your files far outweighs the inconvenience of losing everything.
     
d.fine
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May 23, 2005, 05:21 AM
 
Originally Posted by alphasubzero949
It may be "inconvenient" to burn CDs or DVDs of files every week (or at least once a month), but the time spent burning your files far outweighs the inconvenience of losing everything.
So true. I always try to keep my backups up to date, but it isn't always easy. Sometimes I fotget. But it is indeed much better than losing everything... Happened once with me former Wintel box, now I've learned from my mistakes and have an external HD for backups, and try to make one every week...

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CatOne
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May 23, 2005, 10:22 AM
 
Originally Posted by d.fine
So true. I always try to keep my backups up to date, but it isn't always easy. Sometimes I fotget. But it is indeed much better than losing everything... Happened once with me former Wintel box, now I've learned from my mistakes and have an external HD for backups, and try to make one every week...
That's pretty difficult and relies on user intervention, which means you may get fairly out of date.

I use ChronoSync, which backs up new files/changes/etc (but it doesn't delete files off a backup!). to an external HD every day at 6:00 PM, automatically. Very easy to set this up.
     
cgc
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May 23, 2005, 10:29 AM
 
Since we're on the subject, what does everyone use to back-up their important files? I use a combination of DejaVu and YouSynchronize.
     
tooki
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May 23, 2005, 10:51 AM
 
Originally Posted by OreoCookie
If it's really important data, go to professionals. Pricey, but worth their money. Don't touch the harddrive with anything.
If you were talking about mechanical failure, I'd agree with you. But this is simple reformatting, so any utility that is read-only (like DiskWarrior's preview, and Data Rescue) cannot do any damage -- it just reads the contents of the disk and tries to reconstruct. Since it's read-only, the worst-case scenario is that the utility can't do it, and then you send it off to DriveSavers.

(Data Rescue does not write to the source disk, ever, and will not repair it. The only option it offers is to recover the data to a separate disk.)

tooki
     
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May 23, 2005, 11:28 AM
 
Originally Posted by cgc
Since we're on the subject, what does everyone use to back-up their important files? I use a combination of DejaVu and YouSynchronize.
I use my own iPodBackup. I have it set to run every time I plug in my iPod.
     
mattyd
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May 23, 2005, 11:45 AM
 
I use Apple's Backup for quick back ups of stuff like bookmarks, stickies, contacts, calendars, playlists, keychains, etc.

Also, about every other week, I drag my entire home directory to an external hard drive. About once a month or so, I burn one of these back ups to DVD.

I keep my music in the shared users folder so that my roommate, who I share an iMac with, also has access. So I also copy all my music to DVDs every few months.
     
OreoCookie
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May 23, 2005, 11:59 AM
 
Originally Posted by tooki
If you were talking about mechanical failure, I'd agree with you. But this is simple reformatting, so any utility that is read-only (like DiskWarrior's preview, and Data Rescue) cannot do any damage -- it just reads the contents of the disk and tries to reconstruct. Since it's read-only, the worst-case scenario is that the utility can't do it, and then you send it off to DriveSavers.

(Data Rescue does not write to the source disk, ever, and will not repair it. The only option it offers is to recover the data to a separate disk.)

tooki
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turtle777
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May 23, 2005, 05:12 PM
 
Originally Posted by cgc
Since we're on the subject, what does everyone use to back-up their important files? I use a combination of DejaVu and YouSynchronize.
I use YouSynchronize as well. Unfortunately, YouSynchronize does a lousy job with backing up data on WebDAV mounts...

-t
     
FireWire
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May 24, 2005, 05:15 PM
 
Just this evening a friend called one of my colleagues and was upset that her Wintel box suddenly crashed and would no longer boot. She was working on a final term paper and never made a single backup of anything on her drive.
then it was like "Bleep bleep bleep". It DEVOURED her paper!!
(sorry for her loss, thou)
     
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May 24, 2005, 05:32 PM
 
just make sure you run Data rescue of another drive and don't install an OS on top of the formatted drive. If you take it to a pro service they will charge you hundreds of dollars.

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madgreek  (op)
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May 24, 2005, 06:34 PM
 
I appreciate all the information and assistance from the Mac community!

Looks like I won't have to send my drive to DriveSavers after all, as today I was able to recover everything from my drive, using Data Rescue...YEAH!!!

As soon as I found out Data Rescue does not write to the drive at all, I knew it was safe to try all it's various options. It does take a while, but it's worth it.

As far as backups are concerned; we don't have the extra drives needed to backup here at work (Military), but I went out and bought my own drives after this fiasco and will have two drives dedicated to backing up. Of course at home I have a tri-backup system -- backing up to three different drives with one off-site in safety deposit box ;-)
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tooki
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May 24, 2005, 07:17 PM
 
Glad to hear it worked as well as you'd hoped.

tooki
     
eggman
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May 24, 2005, 09:10 PM
 
Why am I filled with sadness and despair about hearing how this military facility doesn't have the equipment needed to SECURE their precious data, but the user - at home - had a massively redundant backup system...

Please, madgreek, please tell me that you are, in fact, in Greece... and not describing the military that I'm paying for... and counting on.
     
madgreek  (op)
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May 24, 2005, 09:24 PM
 
I hate to burst your bubble, but I am talking U.S. Air Force. I should first state that we are a Multimedia section with still photography, video and graphics. In the grand scheme of things we are not considered crucial in the fact that we're not dropping bombs or physically protecting our nation, but just let the general's official portait get trashed by a hard drive failure and you'd think we committed treason!
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smeger
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May 24, 2005, 10:30 PM
 
Originally Posted by madgreek
As far as backups are concerned; we don't have the extra drives needed to backup here at work (Military), but I went out and bought my own drives after this fiasco and will have two drives dedicated to backing up. Of course at home I have a tri-backup system -- backing up to three different drives with one off-site in safety deposit box ;-)
You need to power up drives every few months or they can die. I think the deal is that the write-head floats on a little pool of oil and if you don't spin the disk every once in awhile, the oil dries out or something.

This was told to me by someone from an enterprise backup software company who gave a presentation to our local MacGeek group. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find anything on Google that backs it up. But it happened to me not long after he told us about it, so I buy it.
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alphasubzero949
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May 24, 2005, 10:50 PM
 
Originally Posted by FireWire
then it was like "Bleep bleep bleep". It DEVOURED her paper!!
(sorry for her loss, thou)
It was a really good paper, too.
     
madgreek  (op)
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May 25, 2005, 01:43 AM
 
Originally Posted by smeger
You need to power up drives every few months or they can die. I think the deal is that the write-head floats on a little pool of oil and if you don't spin the disk every once in awhile, the oil dries out or something.

This was told to me by someone from an enterprise backup software company who gave a presentation to our local MacGeek group. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find anything on Google that backs it up. But it happened to me not long after he told us about it, so I buy it.

Hmmmm now that's something I haven't heard before. I'll have to check with the drive manufacturers to see how they recommend storing backup drives and for how long they should be stored without use.
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madgreek  (op)
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May 25, 2005, 01:50 AM
 
Originally Posted by CatOne
I use ChronoSync, which backs up new files/changes/etc (but it doesn't delete files off a backup!). to an external HD every day at 6:00 PM, automatically. Very easy to set this up.

Currently I'm just cloning my drives, but was looking at Restrospect, but I don't believe that program would let me boot from a backup. Will ChronoSync let you also boot from the backup drive?
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PER3
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May 25, 2005, 05:18 AM
 
Originally Posted by alphasubzero949
BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP.

Just this evening a friend called one of my colleagues and was upset that her Wintel box suddenly crashed and would no longer boot. She was working on a final term paper and never made a single backup of anything on her drive.

They turned to me, the lab "guru" for advice. First thing I asked, "Did she at least have a backup of her stuff?" Nope.

Oh well.
If you rip out the drive and mount it in an external box, you should be able to read it on another computer and recover her file assuming the disk itself is not damaged too much. Worked for me (Windows disk read on my Mac).
     
CatOne
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May 25, 2005, 04:39 PM
 
Originally Posted by madgreek
Currently I'm just cloning my drives, but was looking at Restrospect, but I don't believe that program would let me boot from a backup. Will ChronoSync let you also boot from the backup drive?
Retrospect sucks. Believe me, it sucks.

Do a full clone of the system (which will then be bootable), and then use ChronoSync to backup your changed data to the new volume. If you ever have an issue and need to boot off the new drive, it will boot fine, and your updated data will be there. There is no need to back up changes to the /System and /Library folders to the backup drive... if you want that, boot over there once every couple months and run Software Update.
     
madgreek  (op)
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May 25, 2005, 06:27 PM
 
Originally Posted by CatOne
Retrospect sucks. Believe me, it sucks.

Do a full clone of the system (which will then be bootable), and then use ChronoSync to backup your changed data to the new volume. If you ever have an issue and need to boot off the new drive, it will boot fine, and your updated data will be there. There is no need to back up changes to the /System and /Library folders to the backup drive... if you want that, boot over there once every couple months and run Software Update.

Thanks for the advice! I just purchased ChronoSync.
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alphasubzero949
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May 25, 2005, 11:33 PM
 
I use Toast for all of my backup needs.
     
badtz
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May 26, 2005, 12:30 AM
 
Originally Posted by madgreek
Looks like I won't have to send my drive to DriveSavers after all, as today I was able to recover everything from my drive, using Data Rescue...YEAH!!!
wow! that is awesome! I will have to look into that program.

I personally don't need to uuse it @ the moment, but there have been times in the past where it was needed.....!

Will it find all data that was previously deleted that haven't been written over by the HD?

how exactly does the software find this info.?
     
madgreek  (op)
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May 26, 2005, 06:25 PM
 
Originally Posted by badtz
wow! that is awesome! I will have to look into that program.

I personally don't need to uuse it @ the moment, but there have been times in the past where it was needed.....!

Will it find all data that was previously deleted that haven't been written over by the HD?

how exactly does the software find this info.?

Yes, it does a great job of getting back deleted files as long as they haven't been over-written. I'm not sure "how" it finds the info, but if you contact their tech support <[email protected]> I'm sure they can explain things in more detail.
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