I accidentally formatted my portable hard drive when setting it up for time machine. Is there any way for me to get back my lost files?
I have an external hard drive of the brand Western Digital.
Before I got my iMac I moved a lot of my important files from my PC to the hard drive and today I went on and connected it to my iMac to move my files over to it.
When it had connected a window popped up that asked if I wanted to use this hard drive with the program Time Machine and create backups. Without thinking it trough enough and reading the warning properly (I'm stupid I know) I clicked "yes". I then realised how stupid it was and cancelled the formatting of the hard drive. But somehow the program still managed to delete all my important files and can't find any way to get them back. Neither can I connect the hard drive to my PC anymore so I can't check if the files are still there (which I doubt they are since I can't see them on my iMac either).
And now I wonder: is there any way for me to get back my lost files or are they lost forever?
Thank you in advance!
//Gina
A data recovery specialist or some data recovery programs should be able to help. Most format simply rewrite the directory tree saying no files are on this disk. The bits that represent the files are still flipped appropreiately so they still exists, you just don't have the location info to get at them. Secure formats and erases rewrite each bit to a zero or 1 or random so the data is then truely gone. This type of format takes a long time to complete.
I'm not making a recomendation of a particular program but here is one company that does what you ask:
http://www.remosoftware.com/mac-recovery The cost is pretty high but I'm sure they don't sell many copies and need to cover their development costs.
Good luck and don't write anything on the freshly formatted disk until you decide what to do.
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