Accidentally partitioned my external drive that had my footage on it...lost EVERYTHING

Okay, so here the the deal...
I have a 6TB External G-RAID Hard Drive that I use to house ALL of my footage, projects, etc. I wanted to back this drive up, so I purchased a G-SAFE. I was following the instructions to partition the G-SAFE and i accidentally partitioned my G-RAID...3 times. I have run Disk Drill and Data Rescue 3 on the drive, and it seems to be able to find everything....but there is a bit of a problem:
It's only completely recovering the video files that I had deleted from the drive at some point in the past. It is finding the movie files that were partitioned, but the files are VERY small, (KB's, when they are actually MB/GB's), and are not playable.
I am far from savvy with Hard Drive recovery/lingo, but I was wondering if any of you could help me out.
I am working on a documentary at the moment and have hours of priceless footage that I can't access....so you can understand my panic...

The consumer level file recovery programs will not save you.
Stop using the drive.
As Nick already pointed out, the next step is to call a data recovery service. Once you have talked with them, you will no longer think of your material as "priceless". You'll have a very large number to think about and with no real guarantee of success.
I second the "start re-acquiring" suggestion.
Good luck.
x

Similar Messages

  • Can i partition an external drive that im using for time machine? its not an actual apple TM....

    I'd like to partition my drive to make a separate place just for itunes music , is this possible? if so, how ?
    thanks!

    tamckellar wrote:
    im just trying to make a separate area on the ex drive that i use for tm, to store just my itunes library .
    Not a good idea...If that drive fails (and they All do at some point in time) you will lose both your TM and iTunes Backups.
    Invest in another EHD for iTunes.
    Moving iTunes >  http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1751
    Also...
    Have a look at these 2 Videos...
    http://macmost.com/moving-your-itunes-library.html
    http://macmost.com/moving-your-itunes-media-to-an-external-drive.html

  • Please help me! My MacBook was stolen along with an external hard drive that had all my photos of my children on them. I hadn't backed to iCloud or backed anywhere else. I am distraught. No find my mac either...help...please...

    Please help me! My MacBook was stolen along with an external hard drive that had all my photos of my children on them. I hadn't backed to iCloud or backed anywhere else. I am distraught. No find my mac either...help...please... Some programmes are still running like drop of and Skype... Is it all over?!?

    Yes, the Old Master file has a folder for each year where I find all photos from that specific year. I am attaching a screen shot of the file.
    In the meantime i have managed to download all photos (it did not download any video files though in mpg, avi, 3gp, m4v,mp4 and mov format) to a new iphoto library. Unfortunately the photos are quite mixed and often doubled up. I ma considering to purchase iphoto library which checks all duplicates in iphoto. this will save me a lot of time. What do you think?

  • I recently moved and had to disconnect my WD My Pro Edition II 2TB external drive I had been using for backup.  Its been several months and now when i try to reconnect the external dire (Use a firewire cable) it does not recognize the drive is there.  I a

    I recently moved and had to disconnect my WD My Pro Edition II 2TB external drive I had been using for backup. 
    Its been several months (many upgrades to the iMac software during this time), and now when I try to reconnect the external dire (Use a firewire cable) it does not recognize the drive is there.  I also tried "reloading" software from the Western Digital site, but after following all the instructions, it looks like my iMac doesn't support this software (I can't even locate it after I follow all the instructions.
    Thnaks,  for anyones ideas on how I can get this working again.....

    First of all, you do not really want to use their software; if you want a bootable clone, use either Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper. If you simply want to drag and drop some files, you don't need software to do that. The important thing on any external drive is that you format/partition it correctly (Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and using GUID partition scheme). 
    Unfortunately, I don't know anything about WD drives or their software, so I don't have any idea what kind of backup you did. Having said that, it should still recognize the external even if it's outdated. Have you tried mounting it manually in Disk Utility? If you can get it to mount, you could (worst case scenario) just drag your stuff off onto your internal and then reformat the external.

  • Windows and OS-X partitions on external drive

    Has anyone had any experience/problems with partitioning an external drive for OS-X and Windows?
    How about 3 partitons: HFS+, FAT32, NTFS. Or is that pushing my luck too far?
    I just received a new LaCie, primarily for backing up Vista Ult 64-bit, but if I can also use it for XP and OS-X that would be great.
    Any information will be most appreciated.
    Message was edited by: nerowolfe

    Moonlight Mac wrote:
    I've used an external USB2 drive to boot XP, but it is a very dicy process, and not really worth it in the end. You can slipstream USB boot support into the XP installer, but when you are done, you won't have virtual memory support (no pagefile). It also requires that the internal drive be removed during installation (if XP sees an internal drive, it will insist on attempting to use it for a pagefile.)
    I've done the same with a 4GB flash memory card... but booting was hit or miss.
    I've partitioned my internal into 2 HFS and 1 NTFS partition, and that works very well when combined with MacDrive on the PC side. I'd stick with using the external as just a backup device or for OSX (works best with firewire.)
    I am not looking to boot XP although that would be nice, but simply to create a backup on the drive. I use Norton Ghost, which does allow a boot, or sorts, into the backup in order to restore a system.
    But more, I was interested in an NTSF partition for Vista on this MBP. I have not used Vista's built-in backup program so I don't know how it works, but my thoughts were to partition the 500GB into multiple partitions and use them for XP, Leopard and Vista and a CCC clone of my two Leopard OSs.
    Say, 3 HFS partitions for clones and storage, 1 FAT32 for XP and 1 NTFS for Vista, making 5 in all.
    The 2 HFS partitions are probably easy. It was the other two, FAT32 and NTFS that I was concerned with.
    I guess I will plug it in and use DU and see what happens. I have never used DU for NTFS or FAT32 on an external drive.
    As long as the drive is empty, I have nothing to lose and lots of experience to gain, right?

  • Backing up external drives that aren't always connected?

    I've got external hard drives for each of my clients. I'll connect them to my machine for a few days, then remove them and it might be months before they're connected again.
    Will TM backup these externals (assuming I don't exclude them) and then keep that backup even if they're not connected for a long time? Or will it delete that backup after a period of time if the drive hasn't been reconnected?
    Thanks!

    TM only keeps hourly backups for 24 hours and daily backups for 30 days. Beyond that, TM keeps a weekly snapshot for as far back as you have disk space available. So depending on when you have the external drive connected, you could get no backup if connected less than 1 hour; a backup for no more than 24 hours if the external is not connected for the first backup of the day (between midnight and 1 AM); or a backup for no more than 30 days if the external is not connected for the first backup (between midnight and 1 AM) of the seventh day. Put another way, to guarantee a weekly backup, an external drive would have to be connected for a full seven (24 hour) days.
    There may be further complications. TM needs to recognize a reconnected external drive as the same unit that was previously backed up or it is going to rebackup the entire external drive. This will very rapidly eat up your available TM backup disk space. I had two same model external drives that are only occasionally connected. I found that, for reasons I could not figure out, one of these was recognized by TM as having been previously backed up; the other was not.
    Since I use these externals to store video files that change very infrequently, I gave up using TM to back them up and repartitioned my backup disk to have separate partitions for each external with the remainder for TM. I back up the externals with SuperDuper! as necessary and let TM backup just my internal drive. I don't think this will work for you since it seems you are dealing with many different client drives.

  • Is there a way to "force-mount" an external drive that doesn't show up on it's own when plugged in with firewire?

    Hi, is there a way to "force-mount" an external drive that doesn't show up on the desktop? I have a new Hitachi SATA III 2 TB Ultrastar that won't show up like all the other drives when plugged in. So I can't partition, repair, format etc with Disk Utility, Disk Drill, Tech Tools etc. How do I make it visible?
    I use the FW 400 to 800 adapter and a FW hub.
    Thanks,
    W.

    ok, I did find the log in Diskutil of what happened, I just can't figure out why it happened and how to start over:
    2014-04-20 13:42:08 -0400: Disk Utility started.
    2014-04-20 13:44:30 -0400: Preparing to erase : “Terra 8”
    2014-04-20 13:44:30 -0400:           Partition Scheme: GUID Partition Table
    2014-04-20 13:44:30 -0400:           1 volume will be created
    2014-04-20 13:44:30 -0400:                     Name                    : “Terra 8”
    2014-04-20 13:44:30 -0400:                     Size                    : 2 TB
    2014-04-20 13:44:30 -0400:                     File system          : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
    2014-04-20 13:44:30 -0400: Unmounting disk
    2014-04-20 13:45:00 -0400: Creating the partition map
    2014-04-20 13:45:01 -0400: Waiting for the disks to reappear
    2014-04-20 13:45:01 -0400: Formatting disk2s2 as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with name Terra 8
    2014-04-20 13:45:26 -0400: Initialized /dev/rdisk2s2 as a 2 TB case-insensitive HFS Plus volume with a 155648k journal
    2014-04-20 13:45:26 -0400: Mounting disk
    2014-04-20 13:45:29 -0400: Erase complete.
    2014-04-20 13:45:29 -0400:
    - That was it, gone.....

  • I have a Seagate Freeagent 1TB external drive that ejects it's self in the middle of the time machine backup, then disappears and can't be found unless I turn it off and back on again

    I have a Seagate Freeagent 1TB external drive that ejects it's self in the middle of the time machine backup, then disappears and can't be found unless I turn it off and back on again. Any ideas?

    Hmmm.. sorry to jump in but...
    I Wish I had seen this before I got mine.
    Mine has been doing this auto eject stuff too.
    I think I just plugged it in and TM let me select it but is it possible
    I should have reformatted it with DU first, like with all the WD drive problems ?
    Is it too late for that ?
    Or just try to return it or get rid of it ?
    TIA

  • Use a partition on external drive for windows support software

    Hello
    I am trying to install Windows 7 on my MacBook AIR  13" 8GB.  I have an external drive that i created a partition for the Windows Support software but when I choose to proceed in Boot Camp Assistant to download the windows support software it says the entire drive has to be one partition formatted to MS DOS.
    Any way around this..I have the Windows disc and would like to avoid having to buy another 8 GB or greater size external disc drive
    Thanks

    I do not want to install Windows on the external drive.
    An external drive is needed to download the windows support software as stated in Boot Camp.  It seems I cannot use a partition on the external drive to download the support software.. Wondering if there is a work around this..

  • How to transfer iTunes Music stored in an External Drive that I use for my Windows PC and use it in iTunes on Mac?

    Hi just bought my first Mac (a 2013 13' MacBook Air). Before I owned this computer I used (and still use) a Windows Desktop. My Windows Desktop (which runs Windows 8.1) has a 1TB Hard Drive that was getting pretty full so I moved all of my iTunes Music, Movies, and TV Shows onto a 2TB external hard drive. This meant that iTunes would open/work even if the external hdd was not plugged in, but only when the external HDD is plugged in do I see all of my downloaded/ripped music/movies/tv shows. Now that I own a Mac I would like to do the same thing - have all of my media on an external drive that is plugged in via USB. So my question is (A) how do I make my itunes media stored on this external HDD accesible to the iTunes on my MacBook, (B) do I need to partition the external HDD to do this, and (C) because I fully intend to keep using the drive with my Windows PC (it stores a complete backup as well as a ton of Steam videogames), will I need to totally erase the drive in order to create such a partition?

    Before we can help you, you must tell us how you are backing up your data.
    Allan

  • Basic Question:  How to partition an external drive and then set up TM?

    Hi. I am going to be using an external hard drive (Western Digital - 640GB) on my MacBook for the first time and I think that I'd like to partition it so that part of it is for Time Machine and part of it can be used to just manually drag and drop my files (like any other USB external drive).
    1. How to I partition the external drive for Mac?
    2. If I insert my drive (not yet partitioned) in my MacBook for the first time and the MacBook automatically asks me if I want to use it for Time Machine, I'm assuming that I need to say "no" so that I can first partition it, right? If yes, then after partitioning it how do I set up the one partition for Time Machine?
    3. If I have 640 GB external hard drive space and my MacBook has about 100GB of space, how much of the 640 should I allocate for Time Machine?
    Thanks! Happy New Year!

    coffeecoffee wrote:
    Hi. I am going to be using an external hard drive (Western Digital - 640GB) on my MacBook for the first time and I think that I'd like to partition it so that part of it is for Time Machine and part of it can be used to just manually drag and drop my files (like any other USB external drive).
    1. How to I partition the external drive for Mac?
    select the whole drive (the model, not the name) in disk utility and click on the partition tab. set the number of partitions. set the partition scheme to GUID in options. set the format to mac os extended journaled. hit apply.
    2. If I insert my drive (not yet partitioned) in my MacBook for the first time and the MacBook automatically asks me if I want to use it for Time Machine, I'm assuming that I need to say "no" so that I can first partition it, right? If yes, then after partitioning it how do I set up the one partition for Time Machine?
    in system preferences->Time machine.
    also see TM 101 for basic usage instructions.
    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
    3. If I have 640 GB external hard drive space and my MacBook has about 100GB of space, how much of the 640 should I allocate for Time Machine?
    it depends on your computing habits but it's generally recommended to have TM drive to be at least 2-3 times bigger than the total amount of data you are backing up.
    Thanks! Happy New Year!

  • Should I create a partition on external drive for iTunes music?

    ...or will it create it's own space outwith my backup stuff?
    (Secondary question: would moving my iTunes music from internal to external drive noticably improve performance of my Mac? I'm using about 135GB of a 250GB drive, 60GB of which is in iTunes Music folder)

    Should I create a partition on external drive for iTunes music? or will it create it's own space outwith my backup stuff?
    I see no good reason to create a separate partition unless you're backing up with Time Machine. TM prefers to have it's own volume, so in that case partitioning would probably be a good idea.
    would moving my iTunes music from internal to external drive noticably improve performance of my Mac? I'm using about 135GB of a 250GB drive, 60GB of which is in iTunes Music folder.
    No, probably not. As long as you're not getting the drive too full - opinions vary but about 20GB remaining should be plenty for most uses - you probably won't see any overall change in performance just from moving the iTunes content.
    Message was edited by: Dave Sawyer

  • How to best partition an external drive for my purposes?

    Hello, please help,
    I've just bought a Western Digital 'My Passport' 320Gb USB (no firewire) portable external harddrive for backing up my data prior to iMac repair.
    I also plan to totally wipe my PPC iMac and reinstall it with Leopard.
    I erased the external HD, zeroing out the data from it's previous owner, and reformatted it as Mac OS Extended (not journaled).
    Now I realise that it might be even more useful than I'd imagined.
    I'd now like to partition it so I can use Carbon Copy Cloner to create a bootable copy of my entire iMac while using the rest of the drive as a separate partition for just backing up data.
    Ideally I want to be able to use the drive on both Intel and PPC Macs and even PCs, is this possible? How should I format the drive to achieve this?
    I've heard I should format it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) HFS+, what ever that is
    I'm currently running OS 10.4.11 but plan to buy Leopard and install that after the wipe.

    17" 1.9Ghz iMac G5 (iSight)
    I've just bought a Western Digital 'My Passport' 320Gb USB (no firewire)
    I'd now like to partition it so I can use Carbon Copy Cloner to create a bootable copy of my entire iMac while using the rest of the drive as a separate partition for just backing up data.
    Ideally I want to be able to use the drive on both Intel and PPC Macs and even PCs, is this possible? How should I format the drive to achieve this?
    For what you want to do, there is a mismatch between your PPC computer and the external drive that you bought.
    With a few exceptions, a PPC Mac requires a firewire external drive for booting and will not boot from a USB drive, regardless of which OS is installed and regardless of the partition scheme and volume format on the drive. I also have an iMac G5, and mine will not boot from USB.
    If you do exchange your drive for a firewire drive, do not get another Western Digital model to use with your G5 - many external WD firewire drives will not boot a PPC mac. See [this page|http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/stdadp.php?pfaqid=1787]
    If you want to keep your present USB drive, you can still partition it with one partition for a backup clone and another for "other stuff". With respect to immediate use for recovering your stuff after a clean Leopard install on the HD, I think that Migration Assistant will still work, though I haven't tried this. As for the future, the problems with a clone not being bootable are 1) You can't test it to see if it works OK, and 2) If you do need to restore from it you'd need to boot from "somewhere else" - I think you could boot from an install disk and use Disk Utility's Restore feature to clone it back.
    With regard to PC access, a PPC mac normally requires an Apple Partition Map partition scheme on the drive for booting, and such a scheme does not allow for the FAT32 volume format that is readable by PCs. However in this case since your PPC mac can't boot from it anyway, you could partition the drive as GUID. This would allow the main volume to be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for the nonbootable clone, and would allow the extra volume to be formatted as FAT32. If you eventually got an Intel Mac, a clone from it to the main volume would also then be bootable.
    But what I would do, if feasible, is exchange the USB drive and get a non-WD firewire drive instead.
    Message was edited by: jsd2

  • I'm a new MAC user and I'm trying to transfer my iTunes music files to my Mac, however when I attach the external drive that contains the music files, they aren't visible on the MAC (but they are visible on my old PC).  How do I get my music loaded?

    I'm a new MAC user and I'm trying to transfer my iTunes music files to my Mac, however when I attach the external drive that contains the music files, the music files aren't visible on the MAC (but they are visible on my old PC).  How do I get my music transferred?  I have already exported the purchased music from the iTunes library, but I have thousands of songs from my private CD collection that I had previously loaded through iTunes.

    Paragon Software has the most reliable NTFS driver for Mac
    tips on importing and organizing, transferring from Windows etc
    http://www.apple.com/support/itunes
    http://www.ilounge.com

  • External drives that can boot up Intel iMac

    I have just bought an Intel-based iMac.
    My previous computer was an iMac G5 (PowerPC). If I needed to boot up from an external drive, it had to be a Firewire drive.
    Does anyone know if the Intel iMac is the same? If something were to happen to that system and I needed to boot up from an external drive, does the external have to be Firewire, or will USB 2.0 work as well?
    Incidentally, this Intel iMac has one Firewire 800 port. I read a review (although it could have been from last year) that if you have Firewire 400 peripherals, you won't be able to plug them into the FW 800 port unless you have an adapter. Did I read that right? I would have thought that they're simply backward compatible and work just as a USB 1.1 device would if plugged into a USB 2.0 port (the device would just run at the lower 1.1 speed). So where does one get these adapters (if needed)? Does the Apple Store sell them?

    or will USB 2.0 work as well?
    Yes.
    Did I read that right?
    Yes. The ports are physically different.
    So where does one get these adapters (if needed)?
    Click here for an example of what's needed.
    Does the Apple Store sell them?
    Yes. Click here.
    (46152)

Maybe you are looking for