[koskela]

I'm trying to help a friend (running OS X 10.3) recover files that she accidentially deleted from an external Firewire hard drive. She noticed her mistake at once, and we immediately disconnected the drive.

But I'm not sure where to proceed. The last time I dealt with this sort of problem was under OS 9 - sometimes Norton worked, sometimes it didn't. However, I don't know the new OS X landscape, either what tools are available or how well they work.

ProSoft, who make DataRescue, say that *no* tools can recover files from OS X:
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue_info.php

Now that's not absolutely true, as forensic drive tools certainly can pull back files, but is it true for people with only access to regular drive utilities? What's my best bet in this situation?

Thanks,
David

[leperkuhn]

A similar situation happened to me a few months ago. I tried to recover a few "home movies" that the x-gf made me delete..

anyway, nothing i tried worked, and i regret not making backups.

moral of the story: make backups.

[TETENAL]

I'm rather surprised that Data Rescue says that files are overwritten in OS X when deleted. This would take time and I never noticed longer hard disk activity when deleting files. They offer a trial version so you could try to see yourself whether it can recover something or not. Since you immediately stopped using the drives chances might still be there.

[Old Toad]

You can try VirtualLab . It will let you run it in trial mode to see what files it sees and can recover for you. I believe it's kind of like a service deal, you go to their web site, give info on the drive, size and no. of files to recover and you get a price. Then you do it online, I think. Not sure. But it's the only method I've found that can do it after the deletion. Most other software has the requirement that it needs to be installed before the deletion.

Hope this has been of some help. Good luck.

[h00ligan]

That's awesome.. i feel your pain and have been the victim of forced deletion of "home movies"

So damn if i didn't get a NAS and back it up to another hard drive in Linux server..

you'll never get those vids back again.. soo hazaa.. backup many many times.. and label the dvd/cd's annoying names like

c345769 backup

That way when the fit hits the shan you got many cd's and dvds to go thru.. you can label a blank something like.. our special movies..

Originally posted by leperkuhn:
A similar situation happened to me a few months ago. I tried to recover a few "home movies" that the x-gf made me delete..

anyway, nothing i tried worked, and i regret not making backups.

moral of the story: make backups.

[osxrules]

Originally posted by koskela:
ProSoft, who make DataRescue, say that *no* tools can recover files from OS X:
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue_info.php

Now that's not absolutely true, as forensic drive tools certainly can pull back files, but is it true for people with only access to regular drive utilities? What's my best bet in this situation?

Thanks,
David [/B]

I think that it might mean files that are on an OS X drive. OS X uses a lot of virtual memory so as soon as you delete a file, it can be overwritten. I don't think it's true that OS X overwrites the files straight away because they wouldn't have included a secure delete function in the system.

On OS9 I always used Norton for file recovery but version 7 sucked very badly. Not sure about version 8 though. Just remember to recover the drive to your internal hard drive so it won't overwrite the contents of the firewire one.

[Mafia]

Originally posted by leperkuhn:
I tried to recover a few "home movies" that the x-gf made me delete..

sorry no useful information but had to respond to that one