After data recovery, HD is a mess

I recently had my hard drive die on my powermac G5 and my Clickfree external backup hard drive also failed. Sob!
I sent the dead drive to a data recovery service and they say they restored everything. Send back my restored data on an external hard drive for $1,700. Meantime, I installed a used HD from my husband's former powermac G5 and moved the restored data onto it. Now, my HD is a mess and I still can't find all my files.
For example, I have several user files, each with a documents folder in it. Probably because it was formerly in my husband's computer, with its own pictures, documents, etc.
I also can't find all my iphoto library in the restored data. Some of this is probably an issue for the data recovery folks, but I thought I would ask if there is a document somewhere on how the HD should be organized, so I can start cleaning up and maybe find my missing files. And where should the iphoto library reside?

Still working through all my stuff. Occasionally I find something else.
Many of my restored files lost their file extension and came through as a "unix executable file." I have successfully reattached the correct extensions and been able to reopen the files.
I have even found most of my iphotos. They are in my pictures folder, buried in deep within several iterations of "iphoto library" folders and they're in 2 folders titled "originals" and "modified." Can I just drag those folders into the first iphoto library folder?
I would also love to find my Safari and Firefox favorites. Where should I look for those?

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Time Machine Recovery (after data recovery)

Several months ago, Disk2 and Disk3 in my 2007 MacPro 1,1 (OSX 10.7.5) became unreadable by the computer. To make matters worse, the Time Machine external backup became equally as unreadable. All at the same time! Drive 1, with the operating system, seems to be unaffected. The two unreadable drives showed up as "media" in disk utility, but didn't show up in Disk Warrior or any other similar programs (partition repairing) using the "terminal." I sent the Time Machine drive (WD Mybook Essential 3Tb) to DataRecovery.com and they found no phyical issues with the drive. There was, however,"Data Corruption in the file tables and data area" (according to the evaluation report). This was corrected and the TM drive was supposedly completely recovered.
Upon receiving the external drive (now replaced by a newer 3Tb Mybook), I replaced disk2 and disk3 with new 1TB drives (formatted with a single partition) and tried to perform a restore for these two drives. No such luck.....The drive was readable by the computer but would not actually enter into "Time Machine." I examined the actual drive and found an inordinate amount of Unix executable files, especially when going into the individual backups. The drive does show that they recovered 870Gb of information, but nothing seems to be readable much less recoverable.
I'm wondering if there is a workaround for any of this or whether I should contact the data recovery people to resolve this. I appreciate any help on this as it's become expensive and a bit deflating.......I still hold out some hope, though. Thanks. The drives were most likely corrupted by a generator that kicks on once a week (automatic maintenance) and temporarily cuts power long enough to turn the computer off...I've since gotten a UPS.

A general look at backup files......

FCP files will not open after data recovery

We have a TV tech lab in our high school of 15 Apple editing workstations and we archive the completed projects to external firewire drives. Well, wouldn't you know it, one of the drives crashed with all of the previous school years senior projects. The drive would mount, but none of the files were accessible. I sent the drive to a data recovery company and they were successful to a point. They were able to recover the entire drive (about 140 GB). The QT files work fine, but the FCP files are a different story. When I attempt to open an FCP file, I get the error "wrong file type". All of the files do have the correct file extension. Is there anyone out there that has experienced this? Were you able to resolve the problem? Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Jay in WI

Milwaukee, eh? My mom grew up in La Crosse...
Can you zip one or more of these files and email it to me? I'll take a crack at it.
Patrick

Quicktime Mov File size reduce after Data Recovery

Following a Data Recovery from Apple Care, most of my video files have been reduced to 120x90 pixels making them unwatchable. The Format is Apple Photo-JPEG, 120x90, Millions 16-bit Integer (Big Endian), Stereo, 48000 kHz with a Data Size of 15.16 MB. Other QT mov files bring up the following message "The movie could not be opened" "A necessary data reference could not be resolved"
Is there any way I can get the Dimensions back to 640x480 and can the necessary data reference be resolved.
My Quicktime Player is Version 7.6.4 (518.35)

Is there any way I can get the Dimensions back to 640x480 and can the necessary data reference be resolved.
Assuming the original data is in tact, the normal work flow would be to either reset/resize the movie's "Current Size" setting and re-save the file store the new setting using QT Pro or use QT Pro, an alternative QT application, or a third-part application to re-compress the file to the proper dimensions but this approach, depending on settings, can degrade the video. As to the missing "references," depending on the required "references," it might be possible to re-link/restore things if you know enough about the file structure (which I don't).

Time Machine drive files after data recovery.....permissions problem?

Client had a hard drive crash, and then turned out her Time Machine drive was bad. We ran a data recovery on the Time Machine drive, which produced about 40GB of disk images...12 in all. There is a very promising image which shows the user folders, and we can click on hers and see her folders. BUT...when we try to open Documents, we get a message that
"Item "Documents" is in use by Mac OS X and cannot be opened"
Would there be an override of permissions or some such available to take a peek inside and hopefully pull files?
Thanks to all in advance.

A general look at backup files......

Restore iTunes after data recovery

I accidentally partitioned my external HD that contained all of my iTunes content (songs, movies, etc.). I was able to recover all the data fortunately using VirtualLabs Recovery. I didn't lose my library.xml file, either.
How do now I restore my library so that iTunes knows where to find the music again (I updated that setting in Preferences), and actually find the music? Right now all of my iTunes items have the exclamation mark next to them because it thinks they are missing. I have tried locating individual items to see what happens. Some stuff I'm able to find, others I'm not even when I use Spotlight.
Is there a script or tool I can use that will revise the locations of all my files? If some of the files truly bit the dust, at least I'll know which ones they were and can manually restore them from other sources.
Can do I a mass find-and-replace in the library.xml file to update the path for where all the songs are? The folder structure of the recovered iTunes database remains the same. That is, I have the "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" option turned on (checked).

But it only works with Operating System: Windows Vista / XP / 2003 / 2000 / 9X and this is the iTunes for Mac Forum
Regards,
Colin R.

Missing index file after data recovery

Hello
I accidently deleted some pages files from my trash. I recovered them using Filesalvage. Now when I try to open them I get the message
"Unable to open xxxxx.pages because the document is invalid. The index.xml file is missing."
So I suppose the recovery program hasn't recovered that part of the file package.
Is there anyway to rebuild or recover the data?
Thanks
Dion

I have the exact same issue, of course this occurred before time machine came along. Have you been able to recover any of your deleted pages documents. I learned later to make sure that the suffix .pages is turned on and that creates a .pdf wrapper that can be recovered if accidently deleted.
Let me know if you have any luck with your situation and I will do the same.
Sincerely,
David

Rebuilding iphoto library after data recovery

Recently lost my HD with 500G of photos. Luckily, I had a few means of recovering these files.
Data was recovered via 3 sources:
(1) Time Machine backup for most of it
(2) Online backup service (CrashPlan)
(3) CF cards
Good news is I recovered probably 99% of the photos and videos and just a very small amount that still being backed up through the online service could not be recovered.
The question is: what is the optimal way to re-integrate the CrashPlan files into iPhoto since they are primarily Master and Preview files of some of my most recent uploads? Also, there are many Preview files that do not have a corresponding matching Master file, probably because the HD crashed before CrashPlan could back up the Master counterpart.
(Recognizing a total library restore is an option, I opted not to fully restore the CrashPlan backup from the iPhoto library level in the file structure due to the extensive amount of time it would take and the fact that at least 90% of the underlying data is duplicative of the Time Machine backup.)
I am wary of just doing a bulk import of the thousands of Master and Preview files, many of which have identical file names, seemingly a product of the way iPhoto likely breaks down imported images into files under various folders for various reasons. I was considering importing the files by first bringing in the Master files and then only importing those non-duplicative files under Previews - but figured I'd check the board for better ideas or downsides to doing it this way.
On a separate note, my MOV files pretty much universally fail to upload as an unrecognized file format for whatever reason.
15" MBP 2009, OS X 10.9.4, iPhoto 9.5.1, 8G RAM, 256G SSD, 1T HD,

the answer is to restore the latest TM backup and it will have everything in it - why are you messing with the other sources?
the only way to "reintegrate" any photos into iPhoto is to import them into a good, working iPhoto library using iphoto to import them - importing selecting ignore duplicates is pretty good but not perfect
And it it good to import in small batches - small depends on many things including available HD space and free RAM - generally batches to 500 or smaller is good
CrashPlan is not a good backup - it it (as you found) far too slow to restore and even then tests have shown that the iPhoto library does not restore well from any Cloud backup
LN

Disconnected managed images after data recovery

First of all, hello to all of you willing to help me,
I am on a trip around the globe with limited internet access and only my mac, a camera and now three external hdd (and my wife G). Hence, not many options to deal with technical problems. Further more am I a fairly new, meaning un-experinced aperture user.
The problem:
After b-tree header error, DiskWarrior usage, relocation of aperture library (and all other restorable data) to new external hdd is aperture not willing to identify the current location of most of the pix I once had in the library (10.000+). The pictures in one "project" and all sub folders/albums are connected and usable as ever. The rest shows a little badge in the right hand corner with a red line crossing a square from the bottom left to the upper right corner.
Before the b-tree header error, I had all "masters" as "managed images".
Now most images are still physically in the library when I control-click on the library and take a look into the package.
I tried to reconnect the pictures within aperture. But this is not do able. If I select more then one image and follow the instructions from the manual it wont give me the option to reconnect the pix. If I choose one image - it works. But searching through the directories for 10.000+ pictures by hand can't be the final solution.
Moreover, the repair library option does not start when I try it with alt-cmd-dbl click.
What shall I do? Any solutions?
Thanks for any help in advance!
P.S.
if I did not use the correct terms in english forgive me please. I work on a german language setting.

First of all it means you have had your masters Referenced, and now connection has been lost, for now.
Did you think they were Managed? Sounds like you need to reconnect to the source drive for your masters, either one or more?
Ernie

Music library after data recovery - ID3 tags all over the place

Hi,
For a short time there i was using my external drive as my music library, while i sorted enough space ot run it from C:
However, that didn't last long and i was asked if i wanted to reformat the drive.
Using Easeus I was able to recover the mp3s. But they're all over the place i.e songs labelled as one thing will be something else, about 70% of the time. Also some songs randomly chnage to others.
Is there any method i can use to resolve any of this, without re-doing my entire collection?
thanks for any suggestions
matt

The best option is to recover from backup, but I guess you don't have one. You can also recover from an iPod if you have one:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=9990366#9990366
Failing that, are you certain that the tags are wrong in the actual files, the tags are part of the file, so I am surprised if they were changed if you were able to recover the files successfully. It is hard to see how they could be messed up if the file is OK unless something else messed with them.
I am afraid you have a lot of work ahead of you. You might be able to use a tag editor to get tags from the internet - MP3 tag is an example, but I think the tracks need to be arranged into CDs for this to work.
There is also something called PicardTagger which is supposed to use the audio footprint of the file to identify it, but I have no experience with it myself.
http://musicbrainz.org/doc/PicardTagger

Unable to open excel f ile after data recovery

My hard drive was accidentally formatted , i tried Recover my files
and get almost all my files but i have problem now
i am unable to open all files from excel 2010. when tried these files show error.
i have already tried
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/excel/thread/51bde1c2-ab35-4716-afa9-8e3207b2d7f5
and all possible solution given on that page
I really need my files. please help me in regard.

Yes, agree with Oskar. Try to repair Office.
Referring to the following link:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2528682
Jaynet Zhang
TechNet Community Support

ITUNES DOES NOT PLAY ALL MUSIC FILES AFTER DATA RECOVERY

My external Iomega Firewire 160gig HD, all of a sudden, changed the drive letter from H to F with unknown format.
I recovered music files ( Using Stellar Phoenix FAT)and files/folders are in iTunes but only 20-30 play (out of over 6,000)
I can play CD and rip new music in iTunes, though.
Any suggestions how to get my music play all library files??
Dell Windows XP Media center

WiseBird,
There might be several causes for that kind of erratic behaviour:
1st use Disk Utility to check your internal disk as well as the external one.
2nd Your Library database might be damaged
- Quit iTunes
- Goto ./Users/YourUserName/Music/iTunes
There will 2 files named something "Library" - move them to your desktop
- Launch iTunes
As you're now starting from scratch, iTunes will offer to search for audio tracks - Don't let it.
- Your iTunes should be "clean"
- in iTunes Preferences - Advanced - General:
Point the Music Folder Location to the appropriate folder on your ext hd
Disable "Copy Files to iTunes music folder....."
- Quit Preferences
- From iTunes Menu - File choose "Add to library..." + select that folder on your ext hd that contains all your tracks.
- All your tracks should be back by now in iTunes Library.
- To get your playlists back: From iTunes Menu - File choose "Import" and open that .xml file that you moved to your desktop (might work but need not).

After data recovery my iWeb will not run. How do I get iWeb?

My hard drive crashed recently without backup (unbeknown to me). I got about 90% of everything back from Dataquest but iWeb and onbe or two other apps won't launch. How do I get a repalcement- can't find anything that isn't just an upgrade on Apple Store?

As, Roddy has mentioned. You will need to install iWeb from an iLife DVD either iLife '09 or iLife '11 (both have the same version of iWeb & iDVD).
Installation of iWeb

Data Recovery After Hard Drive Failure!

Ok, basically, I've got a 2 1/2 year old iBook G4 with a bombed hard drive, and unfortunately, the last time I backed up was around 3 months ago. Here's what happened right before the crash: some applications like Widgets and Safari were acting fluky, and it wouldn't let me open Word documents, so I restarted, because I thought it might have something to do with the fact that i had downloaded the new version of itunes not that long ago and hadn't restarted since. well, when i restarted, the gray screen with the wheel and the apple symbol went on for a really long time, and then the blue screen came up with the cursor, but nothing else happened, and the blue screen just stayed there. as far as i know, the hard drive wasn't making any unusual noises, just the usual occasional soft sounds that my hard drive has always made (there are usual sounds, right?) a piece of information that might be useful is that the hard drive was almost full (it only had about 5 GB left, which i understand is how much you should leave) could this have caused the failure maybe? anyway, i tried using the hard drive as a target and tried getting another computer to recognize it and pull the files off, but that didn't work. so, i brought it into the apple store, and they got it to boot up but using some external hard drive, i think. they tried disk utility, but that didn't see my hard drive. then the tried disk warrior, and that saw it and repaired it or something, but then it couldn't get the drive to mount. so, i'm assuming that because disk warrior didn't work and couldn't get it to mount, then other software like data rescue, etc... won't either. like all computer users, i've got some REALLY REALLY important data on there, and all the data recovery places i've gotten quotes from are pretty pricey. if the drive doesn't require physical data recovery, only non-physical, as i hope, the cheapest is still $350. even so, the person on the phone there didn't seem to know nearly as much as the people at the more pricier places. so, are there any other options besides expensive data recovery? i read something about using dd - a unix thing, but i don't know the first thing about it (http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050302225659382) so i'm not sure i want to risk messing it up even more. and, if worse comes to worst, then i'll use a data recovery place... but can anyone tell me if they've used any of the data recovery companies below, and which ones are good?
(first three do evaluation for free, and then you decide if you want to continue based on more accurate price idea)
MacintoshDataRecovery.com
$500 non physical
$1100-1600 physical
Heroic Efforts
http://www.heroicdata.com/data_recovery
$350 non physical
ships to another (very expensive) place if physical
ACS Data Recovery
http://www.acsdata.com/index.htm
$600-700 non physical
DriveSavers.com
(recommended by Apple, probably the best, but the most steep, too)
could cost anywhere from $500-$2700 and $200 evaluation fee even if data is unrecoverable
Since this is our fourth hard drive failure in four different iBooks in 2 1/2 years, i am starting to become seriously disillusioned about the quality of the hardware Apple uses...not that i would ever get a dell or anything, but still....
THANK YOU in advance for any tips you might be able to offer, and also for reading this extremely long post!
katie
iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.3)
iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

I have read good reports concerning Data Rescue although I have not used it myself.
Once you get your data back, focus on a regular (even daily) backup routine, because as you know only so well, the question is not if a drive will fail, it's when.
My condolences, by the way.

Data recovery after hard drive crash.

I've been using Palm Desktop Software 4.1.4 basically as a great Index Card app. My hard drive died but I recovered my DAT files from backups. On a new computer (Windows 7 x64) I reinstalled PDF 4.1.4 and added my .DAT files, but the software doesn't recognize them--nor will it allow me to use the User Names from the original installation. I tried re-installation x3 with no success--I repeated the process with the 6xx version of PDF, again with no success.
Is there any way I can retrieve my data and avoid having to re-type all of them?
Thanks. Haddox Sothoron
Post relates to: HP TouchPad (WiFi)

1.
If you can boot, try using a linux liveCD like systemrescue. Use a flash drive to copy everything to the flash drive.
2.
If you can't boot, then you can try connecting the drive from another computer - not sure how that works, but it has
been done before.
Here's some links from my website,
http://shengchieh.50webs.com/tuxslinks.html
http://www.sysresccd.org/ (non-commercial; SystemRescueCd)
http://www.mondorescue.org/ (non-commercial; Mondo)
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk (non-commercial; TestDisk)
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec (non-commercial; PhotoRec)
https://grc.com/ (commercial; SpinRite)
These links are for linux systems, but some may be applicable for your machine.
http://www.antrix.net/journal/techtalk/reiserfs_data_recovery_howto.html (ReiserFS)
http://linuxshellaccount.blogspot.com/2008/08/recovering-deleted-files-by-inode.html (Recovering Deleted Files By Inode Number In Linux And Unix)
http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/397719-repair-a-linux-file-system-and-reclaim-deleted-files (Reclaim Deleted Files and Repair Filesystems on Linux; 1/25/11)
If you need more, do a search for "data recovery".
Regardless, look at system rescue link first. And ask questions in their forum if you still have questions after reading
their docs, et.al.
Sheng-Chieh

After data recovery, HD is a mess

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