Data recovery or directory repair?

Hi Everybody,
I quick formated the wrong external firewire hard drive the other day. I've been trying to find the lost data with limited success.
I've tried Stellar Phoenix, Data Rescue II and TechTool Pro 4.
Have I been approaching this in the right way, or have I been using the wrong tools? Is this a situation where something like DiskWarrior or Drive Genius would help, or is the directory damaged beyond repair?
I would greatly appreciate any advice you can offer. Thanks very much.
- Rory

Question may have been answered but it didnt solve your problem.
go to http://www.subrosasoft.com/ from there get a demo verison of
MacForensicsLab
If you have only done a quick format and not overwritten the data then you should be able to recover it all.
Its a free trial, and ive used it to recover data no problem, depending on the disk size it may take some time, but if you havent over written it then it should be no problem at all,
Forget the other tools this is the pro recovery tool

Similar Messages

Data recovery! Rebuilding Home Directory without Reformatting

I have an WD external hard drive failure. Very recently, I started using this drive as default for iPhoto so now cannot access any of my photos. (I have a 5-year-old son so you can imagine how devastating this is.) To make matters worse, it is also my Time Machine backup drive so I cannot access the last backup prior to the iPhoto drive switch.
Here is a timeline of events:
(I know this is long. I am hoping someone who is familiar with this issue will understand my plight and be patient to read thru.)
04/01/10 iPhoto default drive was transfered from internal drive to WD external drive to accommodate space on the internal drive due to errors in running Virtual Machine due to internal drive being too full.
04/15/10 last upload to iPhoto.
04/18/10 last time I accessed iPhoto. It was left open and went to a "Not Responding" status. I believe I noticed this and did a "Force Quit" on 04/22/10.
04/22/10-04/23/10 Time Machine backup failed overnight and now the computer is unable to read the drive. It is a 500GB drive that is now reading as a 2TB drive and not able to see anything on the disk. I am unable to see when we had the last successful Time Machine backup as Time Machine also backed up to this drive.
We tried connecting the drive to my Mac laptop; same read error (2TB drive when it's 500GB). We also tried hooking it up to the Windows Virtual Machine on the Mac. It gave all the indicators that the drive was installed and working properly however it never showed up in My Computer. When clicking to Unplug Safely, the drive was listed as a USB Mass Storage Device.
04/24/10 Called Apple support. Tech led me thru unplugging drive and computer and doing a reset by pressing and holding power button while unplugged. I then plugged back in and pressed a series of four keys. The system now reads the correct size of the drive but still will not mount on the desktop.
When he could no longer help me, he told me to go here and find applications relating to "Rebuilding Home Directory without Reformatting." I was unable to find anything so I am posting... He did indicate that this normally refers to the internal drive but "a hard drive is a hard drive." He could not tell me an exact name of the utility as it is not Apple-recommended.
Can anyone offer any help before we go down the data recovery road?

The tech was most likely referring to Disk Warrior. However, DW does not repair the Home folder, it repairs the disk's entire directory by rebuilding the directory. The drive is not erased. But this may not fix your problem. If you have damaged system files then the system will not boot. You would need to reinstall OS X. You may be able to do that as follows:
How to Perform an Archive and Install
An Archive and Install will NOT erase your hard drive, but you must have sufficient free space for a second OS X installation which could be from 3-9 GBs depending upon the version of OS X and selected installation options. The free space requirement is over and above normal free space requirements which should be at least 6-10 GBs. Read all the linked references carefully before proceeding.
1. Be sure to use Disk Utility first to repair the disk before performing the Archive and Install.
Repairing the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger.) After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported, then quit DU and return to the installer.
2. Do not proceed with an Archive and Install if DU reports errors it cannot fix. In that case use Disk Warrior and/or TechTool Pro to repair the hard drive. If neither can repair the drive, then you will have to erase the drive and reinstall from scratch.
3. Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When you reach the screen to select a destination drive click once on the destination drive then click on the Option button. Select the Archive and Install option. You have an option to preserve users and network preferences. Only select this option if you are sure you have no corrupted files in your user accounts. Otherwise leave this option unchecked. Click on the OK button and continue with the OS X Installation.
4. Upon completion of the Archive and Install you will have a Previous System Folder in the root directory. You should retain the PSF until you are sure you do not need to manually transfer any items from the PSF to your newly installed system.
5. After moving any items you want to keep from the PSF you should delete it. You can back it up if you prefer, but you must delete it from the hard drive.
6. You can now download a Combo Updater directly from Apple's download site to update your new system to the desired version as well as install any security or other updates. You can also do this using Software Update.

Data recovery / disc repair help

can anyone recommend the best data recovery and repair program to use with ext hard drives ?
thanks

Check out File Salvage
Regards
TD

Finding parts to repair drive for data recovery

I have had a hard drive on a Powerbook 12" go down. I bought it in 2004, and it seems that the data recovery company I have sent it to are having problems sourcing another drive so they use parts to repair it and recover the data. They seem top have gone to lengths to try and source what they need, but I thought the discussion forum here might have some experience with this. The disk is Fujitsu Model mht2060at, the original 60Gb disk that was in the laptop. It now lives(?) outside of the laptop which has had a replacement disk fitted...
...Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Well, as far as they have said, they need to find comparable donor parts to repair the disk in order to recover the data, and so far they have not, in spite of an extensive search.
Also, they were not quoting cheap either. They have given me the option of simply having the drive returned, which I am inclined to accept, or else go and collect it in person. They have after all had 2 months. I think my real problem has been that at the start I was really hesitant in choosing a company as I could verify the quality or value of any of them: I took quite a while to pick one, and I picked this one finally after asking around, and finding there wasn't really anyone who had a better idea than myself.
Now I am in the position of potentially being back where I started, 1 down, all the rest to go, with a carriage fee every time I send it back out, and with the prospect of losing the disk in transit, or stumbling across a completely rogue operation.
Here I am therefore, needing to find a company with an established reputation...
... if there are some testimonials for the company you suggest from other apple users, I would really app[reciate them. I know it isn't cheap. I need to be convinced on the next choice though before I part with another bean, and I would appreciate anyone with advice on what process may take place, and what I should reasonably expect to pay...

Filevault repair failed, need advice on data recovery options.

As you may have seen from my previous posting, my main user Filevault account was corrupted and every attempt to repair it has failed. Since the repair was a failure, I would like some advice on what the best data recovery software would be. Since I don't feel like paying money for anything I would prefer you to give advice on software I can get for free. However if its absolutely necessary to use a purchased software to get best results then feel free to tell me. Often I hear that a lot of the Linux software have a great reputation in data recovery ability. I am able to get Linux on my Mac because I have a Knoppix CD and a Qemu emulator that would enable it to work so be sure to mention any of those options. Just try to tell me what the best way to recover the data would be. Thanks.

Internal SATA drives, preferably in a RAID configuration. You can fit up to 4 in a macpro, including the system drive. They're cheap and reliable, and you could easily fit the capacity you currently have with your externals into the three spare slots.
If you can't get enough capacity this way then you need to look into an external RAID like the G-RAID.
A firewire daisy chain is far from the ideal storage solution for HD.

Help! (Data Recovery best practices question)

Recently my fiancé's Macbook (first White model that used an Intel chipset) running 10.6.2 began to behave strange (slow response time, hanging while applications launch, etc). I decided to take an old external USB HD I had lying around and format it on my MBP in order to time machine her photo's and itunes library. Time machine would not complete a backup and I could not get any of the folders to copy through finder(various file corrupt errors). I assumed it could be a permission issue so I inadvertantly fired up my 10.5 disk and did a permission repair. Afterwards the disk was even more flaky (which I believe was self inflicted when I repaired with 10.5).
I've since created a 10.6.2 bootable flash key and went out and bought Disk Warrior (4.2). I ran a directory repair and several disk util repairs but was still unable to get the machine to behave properly (and unable to get time machine to complete). Attempting to run permission repairs while booted to USB or the Snow Leopard install disk resulted in it hanging at the '1 minute remaining' for well over an hour. My next step was to re-install Snow Leopard but the install keeps failing after the progress bar completes.
As it stands now the volume on the internal HD is not bootable and I'm running off my usb key boot drive using 'CP -R *' in terminal to copy her user folder onto the external USB hard drive. It seems to be working, but it's painfully slow (somewhere along the lines of maybe 10 meg per half an hour with 30gb to copy) I'm guessing this speed has to do with my boot volume running off a flash drive.
I'm thinking of running out and grabbing a firewire cable and doing a target boot from my MBP hoping that that would be a lot faster than what I'm experiencing now. My question is, would that be the wisest way to go? My plan of action was to grab her pictures and music then erase and reformat the drive. Is it possible that I could try something else with Disk Warrior? I've heard a lot of good things about it but I fear that I did a number on it when I accidently ran 10.5 permission repair on the volume.
Any additional help would be appreciated as she has years of pictures on there that I'd hate to see her loose.

That sounds like a sensible solution, although you need not replace the original drive. Install OS X on the external drive, boot from it and copy her data. Then erase her drive and use Disk Utility's Restore option to clone the external drive to the internal drive. If that works then she should continue using the external drive as a backup so the next time this happens she can restore from the backup.
For next time: Repairing permissions is not a troubleshooting tool. It's rarely of any use and it does not repair permissions in a Home folder. If a system is becoming unresponsive or just slower then there's other things you should do. See the following:
Kappy's Personal Suggestions for OS X Maintenance
For disk repairs use Disk Utility. For situations DU cannot handle the best third-party utilities are: Disk Warrior; DW only fixes problems with the disk directory, but most disk problems are caused by directory corruption; Disk Warrior 4.x is now Intel Mac compatible. TechTool Pro provides additional repair options including file repair and recovery, system diagnostics, and disk defragmentation. TechTool Pro 4.5.1 or higher are Intel Mac compatible; Drive Genius is similar to TechTool Pro in terms of the various repair services provided. Versions 1.5.1 or later are Intel Mac compatible.
OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are scheduled to occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. The maintenance scripts run in the early AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep.) If this isn't the case, then an excellent solution is to download and install a shareware utility such as Macaroni, JAW PseudoAnacron, or Anacron that will automate the maintenance activity regardless of whether the computer is turned off or asleep. Dependence upon third-party utilities to run the periodic maintenance scripts had been significantly reduced in Tiger and Leopard. These utilities have limited or no functionality with Snow Leopard and should not be installed.
OS X automatically defrags files less than 20 MBs in size, so unless you have a disk full of very large files there's little need for defragmenting the hard drive. As for virus protection there are few if any such animals affecting OS X. You can protect the computer easily using the freeware Open Source virus protection software ClamXAV. Personally I would avoid most commercial anti-virus software because of their potential for causing problems.
I would also recommend downloading the shareware utility TinkerTool System that you can use for periodic maintenance such as removing old logfiles and archives, clearing caches, etc. Other utilities are also available such as Onyx, Leopard Cache Cleaner, CockTail, and Xupport, for example.
For emergency repairs install the freeware utility Applejack (not compatible with Snow Leopard.) If you cannot start up in OS X, you may be able to start in single-user mode from which you can run Applejack to do a whole set of repair and maintenance routines from the commandline. Note that AppleJack 1.5 is required for Leopard. AppleJack is not compatible with Snow Leopard.
When you install any new system software or updates be sure to repair the hard drive and permissions beforehand. I also recommend booting into safe mode before doing system software updates.
Get an external Firewire drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial - not yet universal binary)
2. Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
3. Synk (Backup, Standard, or Pro)
4. Deja Vu (Shareware)
5. Carbon Copy Cloner (Donationware)
6. SuperDuper! (Commercial)
7. Intego Personal Backup (Commercial)
8. Data Backup (Commercial)
9. SilverKeeper 2.0 (Freeware)
10. MimMac (Commercial)
11. Tri-Backup (Commercial)
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQs on maintenance, optimization, virus protection, and backup and restore.
Additional suggestions will be found in Mac Maintenance Quick Assist.
Referenced software can be found at www.versiontracker.com and www.macupdate.com.

Data recovery from corrupt boot partition

The boot partition on my MacBook running 10.7.6 has a corrupt volume structure and will not mount, much less boot. The recovery partition boots but really doesn't let me do anything. Disk Utility can't repair nor even complete verification. I have lots of images which I need to recover, so am looking for a utility which might help.
Everything was apparently ok until the failure and the drive hardware checked out ok, so I'm hopeful my files are recoverable. A week or so ago I optimized the volume with TechTool Pro and the directory with DiskWarrior, and last night attempted to sync 1Password on my iPad with 1Password for Mac. This did no t work, probably because of my unfamiliarity with the procedure, but seemed to do no damage. When I ran TTPro last night from its eDrive partition it reported a volume structure problem on the partition which I started to fix with the program but then cancelled the analysis and decided to use disk utility instead. Disk utility also reported a problem but stopped the verification with the instruction to do a repair which it again could not complete. When I rebooted the system partition would again not boot but this time I got grey screen with a message that the debugger had loaded and <panic>. A message box said power down and restart, but that only repeats the process.
I'm thinking of attempting to install a system on an external boot drive and accessing the corrupt partition with a data recovery utility. Any insights, ideas or shared experiences appreciated. Thanks in advance for any desperately needed help.

The safest thing to do here is to install a new disk in the system and do a clean install of OS X. From there, you can put your corrupted volume in an external USB enclosure and mount the file system to try and recover as much data as you can.
It's likely obvious now, but it's REALLY worth investing in a large-capacity external storage or Time Capsure to use with Time Machine. Backups are essential. Hardware always eventually dies. We all need an effective strategy to deal with that.
A long time ago, I was backing my Linux system up to 4mm DAT. When the inevitable HDD crash came, I thought I was ready. Unfortunately, I hadn't tested recovery from tape and I ended up losing everything. Which is to say, until you know you can restore, you don't even have a backup. I lost thousands upon thousands of photos of my kids growing up.
BTW, if it is essential that you recover as much as possible, consider taking the disk to a data recovery service. Be warned: It's expensive.

Data Recovery Software for MBP

Apparently I have trashed the directory on my FW 160GB Maxtor External drive. "Unable to read disk". (It is a drag since it happened just as I was getting my brand new MBP system up! Oh well!)
My research has not uncovered a suitable disk repair/data recovery solution for the new iMac (Intel-based). Does anybody know of one? The best one?

Other than Disk Utility (Utilities folder) there are two commercial products: TechTool Pro 4.5.2 (www.micromat.com) and Drive Genius 1.5.1 (www.prosofteng.com.)
Try DU, it's pretty good unless the directory is too badly trashed to be repaired.
For data recovery there's Data Rescue II (www.prosofteng.com) and File Salvage (www.subrosasoft.com.)
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Help with Mac Mini data recovery from damaged harddrive

So I've recently had a hard drive failure with my Mac. This is the second time it's happened with the first instance being my fault as I overloaded the fan with too much ram and it kept overheating. This time I got it home turned it on and got the icon that has a folder with a question mark. So I rebooted it while holding alt and performed an internet recovery. I tried a repair but it was greyed out, so I contacted apple and they said I should have it checked and attempt a data recovery providing the drive is not badly damaged.
I have been on the phone to a repair service and they said they can perform a recovery for a minimum of £100 to a max of £200. I'm aware there are places that provide services on badly damaged drives for extortionate prices so I won't be giving them a try. The turn around time is also a maximum of a week. The hard drive is over a year old so I would like to keep the files i have on it as I need them for work.
Is this a good price for data recovery, or is it possible to get it cheaper at other shops? And is there anyway I could do the same at home for cheaper? If anyone has any places they could recommend that can do the same for a better price that would be great as I'm currently living in London.
Thanks

It depends on the nature of the problem what the best solution will be. However in a case where I had a hard drive with a physical problem (rather than corruption), I was able to recover the data using Disk Warrior. Disk Warrior can not only rebuild the hard disk directory (in the even of corruption), but if the hard drive has a physical problem it can build a hard drive catalog in memory and with that create a virtual drive on your desktop from which you can recover files.
It depends on how sick the drive is but if it is 'merely' terminally ill rather than completely dead it can get you out of a hole. If you hear the drive repeatedly clicking then this is usually a sign of a terminally ill drive. I recovered several hundred GB this way.

Power Mac G4 MDD data recovery ftom corrupted hard drive

After my previous post on 4/7, my mac started new symptoms. When I press the power button, the mac starts up with the familiar chime showing the Apple Logo. The daisy spins and spins for a long time, and then the screen goes black and it sounds the chime again and repeats the same thing. It seems the hard drive can't be found. I'm thinking of replacing the hard drive hoping this will solve the problem.
Regretably I don't have a backup copy of recent photos. Is there anyway I can recover data from this diseased hard drive? Can commercial disk repair softwares normaly do this? Has anyone successfully recovered data this way? Any suggestion? Please let me know.

Your hard drive may have hardware and/or electronic problems or it may have a corrupted directory. Can you hear it spinning? If it has a malfunctioning component, software solutions won't be able to repair it. Professional data recovery is an option for dead hard drives, but it's very expensive. If the drive has a badly corrupted directory, a utility like Alsoft's "DiskWarrior" would be worth a try. Prosoft's utility "DataRescue" may also be worth checking out.

Mac Pro Backup - Data Recovery

So the power went out in my dorm and my Mac Pro wont start up in OS X. I put in the install disk and windows 7 works fine. I went to Disk utility and found that I cannot verify or repair the disk. I do not however have a back up of my disk and was wondering how I could recover my data...
I have two hard disks a 250GB seagate (that has a partition with win7 on it and about a 100 GB free)
My primary OSX disk is a WD Green Caviar (1.5 tb, Which has all the files I need to recover) Is there any way I could Time machine it?
Thanks
Message was edited by: mikhail90

Basics of File Recovery
Files in Trash
If you simply put files in the Trash you can restore them by opening the Trash (left-click on the Trash icon) and drag the files from the Trash to your Desktop or other desired location. OS X also provides a short-cut to undo the last item moved to the Trash -press COMMAND-Z.
If you empty the Trash the files are gone. If a program does an immediate delete rather than moving files to the Trash, then the files are gone. Recovery is possible but you must not allow any additional writes to the hard drive - shut it down. When files are deleted only the directory entries, not the files themselves, is modified. The space occupied by the files has been returned to the system as available for storage, but the files are still on the drive. Writing to the drive will then eventually overwrite the space once occupied by the deleted files in which case the files are lost permanently. Also if you save a file over an existing file of the same name, then the old file is overwritten and cannot be recovered.
General File Recovery
If you stop using the drive it's possible to recover deleted files that have not been overwritten by using recovery software such as Data Rescue II, File Salvage or TechTool Pro. Each of the preceding come on bootable CDs to enable usage without risk of writing more data to the hard drive.
The longer the hard drive remains in use and data are written to it, the greater the risk your deleted files will be overwritten.
Also visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Data Recovery.

Data Recovery from Partitioned and formatted Bit Locker Encrypted Drive

Recently because of some issues in windows 7 installation from windows 8 installed OS. it was giving as the disc is dynamic windows can not be installed on it. so at last after struggling hard no other solution i partitioned and formatted my whole
drive so all data gone included the drive which was encrypted by bit lockers.
For recovery i used many software such as ontrack easy recover, get data back, recovery my files professional edition but still i couldnt able to recover my data from that drive. then i found some suggestion Using CMD to decrypt my data first
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee523219(WS.10).aspx
where it shows it successfully decrypt my data at that moment my drives were in RAW format excluding on which windows is installed and then in CMD i check Chdsk which also shows no problem found. but now problem is still i coudnt able to recover
my data then i format the drive D and again tried to recover data using above software after decryption still no result.
Now i need assistance how i can recover my encrypted drive as it was partitioned and also formatted but decrypted also as i have its recovery key too. thanks

Hi ,
I am afraid that we cannot get the data back if the drive has been formatted even if use the
BitLocker Repair Tool.
You’d better contact your local data recovery center to try to get data back.
Tracy Cai
TechNet Community Support

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......

Using Bitlocker Data Recovery Agent (DRA) on Surface Pro 3

We currently have the Data Recovery Agent (DRA) configured in our Bitlocker Policy for our Windows 7 Systems, and it works fine. In situations where the Recovery Key for the computer object was not backed up to AD correctly for whatever reason or the computer
object was deleted, our HelpDesk can connect the encrypted drive to another system, and then use the certificate for the DRA to unlock the drive.
I'm wondering if the BitLocker DRA Certificate unlock method will work for Surface Pro 3 devices, in the case that that their computer object and normal BitLocker recovery key is deleted or missing in AD for whatever reason. Seeing as how our helpdesk can't
easily remove the internal HD from a Surface Pro 3 (I think only MS can do this?), I'm wondering if this BitLocker recovery option is still an option for Surface Pro 3's and if it is not then if there is another recommended option for Surface Pro 3's and/or
other Windows 8.1 Tablets used in an enterprise environment.

noctlos wrote:
Using linux-3.18 and -3.19 kernels, with wayland/weston v. 1.7. In its own tty, i try to run weston, and I get the following stderr:
Could anyone help me to figure this out? Thanks.
Seems that the problem lies in libinput. Maybe you can report that upstream. I suggest you recompile libinput with debug info and do not strip the binaries to obtain better backtraces.
Edit:
I have also tried running `swc-launch -- velox`, and get the following error:
Running on /dev/tty2
velox: error while loading shared libraries: libinput.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Server exited with status 127
Restoring VT to original state
So, perhaps I am having some libinput trouble. Does this seem correct?
Well, that's a different problem. libinput has several soname bumps because of API and ABI incompatibility. You have to rebuild swc against the newest libinput. (Although I'm not sure if swc developer updated the code to new API)
Edit 2:
Just to tack this on here for `gnome-session --session=gnome-wayland --debug`
I'm not expert on this, it may be related to libinput problem. If you don't include GDK_BACKEND=wayland environment variable when launching gnome-wayland.
Last edited by jdbrown (2015-03-01 08:04:39)

Data recovery - HELP!

Hi there
I have done the stupidest thing EVER! I back up my entire MacBook on an external hard drive - so far, so sensible. Only I've updated what I've backed up by replacing folders with newer versions and I've only just realised. I've lost four years' worth of digital photos and I'm praying there's some way of recovering them. Please help me! I'll name my future children after you and put you in my will!
Here's what I've done in full:
- I upload all my photos to iPhoto, edit them and then save them into a folder within a folder on my desktop
- I started getting very low on operating memory so I got an external hard drive with a fire wire and began backing everything up. I took all my photos in the Photos folder off my desktop altogether and trashed them, so I had more operating memory.
- I did this in May/June
- I also had photos from 2004/2005/2006 on there which were from before I had a Mac and uploaded to iPhoto
- I've since overwritten this folder with a new (thus virtually empty with only a few recent photos) version and I think I've done it twice since I originally backed everything up, but I've only just realised I've been overwriting everything.
- I've looked in that iPhoto library in Pictures that I have and I can recover some photos, but there appears to be a lot missing and because I'm a keen photographer who is anal about editing and organising (the irony!) my photos, they're all mixed up - which is why I had them in separate folders in the first place
Is there ANYTHING I can do?
Can they be recovered from the hard drive itself?
Is there software that can be downloaded free or paid for to do this?
I've googled it a bit and it looks like there's stuff you can download for a PC. I have access to a PC, so I can have a go on that if that's what it takes.
If they can't be salvaged from the hard drive, will I perhaps be able to find them in a secret place on my MacBook from the time I trashed the original folders a couple of months ago? 'Secret place' is about as technical as I get!
I can't get an appointment at the Genius Bar for a while. Any help on this would be much appreciated. I know I'm an idiot - but I was half way to being a non-idiot by backing up in the first place...so small victories...!
Thanks,
Rachael

Basics of File Recovery
If you simply put files in the Trash you can restore them by opening the Trash (left-click on the Trash icon) and drag the files from the Trash to your Desktop or other desired location. OS X also provides a short-cut to undo the last item moved to the Trash -press COMMAND-Z.
If you empty the Trash the files are gone. If a program does an immediate delete rather than moving files to the Trash, then the files are gone. Recovery is possible but you must not allow any additional writes to the hard drive - shut it down. When files are deleted only the directory entries, not the files themselves, is modified. The space occupied by the files has been returned to the system as available for storage, but the files are still on the drive. Writing to the drive will then eventually overwrite the space once occupied by the deleted files in which case the files are lost permanently. Also if you save a file over an existing file of the same name, then the old file is overwritten and cannot be recovered.
If you stop using the drive it's possible to recover deleted files that have not been overwritten by using recovery software such as Data Rescue II, File Salvage or TechTool Pro. Each of the preceding come on bootable CDs to enable usage without risk of writing more data to the hard drive.
The longer the hard drive remains in use and data are written to it, the greater the risk your deleted files will be overwritten.
Also visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Data Recovery.
Since it sounds like you overwrote files and folders then the data that were overwritten are gone for good and can not be recovered.
In the future you should make multiple backups including an archival backup on DVD media that can be stored away safely. It's good that you have some backups, but your backup plan is obviously inadequate.

Data recovery or directory repair?

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