recovering files from hard disk

[JohnMF]

Hi

I recently had to format and reinstall snow leopard on my macbook pro. Luckily most of my stuff was backed up on to an external HD, but there are a few files that weren't and I'd really like to recover them. I bought diskWarrior thinking this would be able to do it, but it seems more aimed at recovering an entire failed/failing hardrive, rather than retrieving a few individual files.

I've had a look around on the internet and can't find an answer.

Any ideas how i can do this?

thanks

 

[SpeedTrap]

For the most part if you did a Drive format it is less likely to recover the files without a great deal of time and effort.

You may need to sent the drive to a recovery specialist and I know the prices can be very high.

 

[JohnMF]

when i was doing the format, It gave me a 'quick format' option which said it made the files easier to recover with recovery software afterwards (as oppose to a hi security format which covers previous data with random code to make it difficult to retrieve). Unfortunately it didn't give me any names of recovery software i would need.

 

[clarinetJWD]

I did the same thing, and used a program called "GetDataBack", recovered 99% of my files after the quick format.

The interface is a bit impenetrable (at least it was back when I used it), but it was really effective.

Highly recommended, though I don't know if it works on Mac.

 

[JohnMF]

nice one clarinet, sounds like what I need, I will check that out.

 

[dkapdan]

I`ve had the same problem. I couldn’t open photos, which I made by my old camera in computer, because they were damaged. After this I try to recover photos with special programs, but mostly of them didn`t see cameras flash driver. To recover photos I can advise you to use program hetman repair. You can find it here Data Recovery Software to Recover Files Deleted from Hard Drive, Memory Card, USB flash drive ? HetmanRecovery.com
Besides this check your camera. May be reason in it.

 

[Light Guru]

If you ever want to try and recover files from a drive that has been formated you ABSOLUTELY should not copy any files onto that drive before attempting recovery. Reinstalling your operating system onto the drive may have overwritten the location of where the file was stored.

To under stand why you need to understand how a hard drive knows where files are. When a drive is formatted a partition map is created. This partition map is like an index of what files are on the drive and where on the drive they are located. A quick format of a drive just gets rid of the old partition map and creates a new one. The old files are still there but they are just not indexed on the new partition map. When a new file needs to be written to the drive it will be written over old files becasue the new partion map just looks at that space on the drive as empty.

You can try a program like Data Rescue
Mac File Recovery Software | Prosofteng

I had to recover some files on a drive that was formatted by mistake and because of the formatting the there were no recognizable names on any of the files the software found, just what looked like random numbers and letters.

If you want to try and get any files back STOP using the computer immediately. Any file save, or writing of a cache or temp file on the hard drive may overwrite the file you want. Install the software on another mac and put yours into target disk mode.

So like I said the files you have put back onto the drive (operating system, any other files you moved back from your backup etc.) easily may have written over the location of the files you wanted to recover. If that is the case then you will not get them back.