Did stupid thing - accidentally erased external hard drive

Accidentally erased an external hard drive today in preparation for doing some major backups and other hard drive changes.
I haven't written any data to the nearly departed, recently erased hard drive.
Is there a simple way to "unerase" a Mac OS X Journaled hard drive?
Not sure that I'd pay tons of money to have it "recovered" but a simple freeware / shareware utility would be good. Even a low cost commercial package would be ok I think.

+that's simply wrong+
I believe the link you provided mentions "Data Recovery Software" and I said:
+unless you pay for recovery services+
Unless you want to split hairs re. software vs. services, recovery is recovery and it costs money. Trial versions usually only let you try a small portion; in this case, it is 1 MB:
+Boomerang will recover your data faster and easier than any other data recovery software, and we'll prove it! *We’ll let you recover up to 1MB of data for free with no strings attached!* Simply fill out this form and we’ll send you a link with to get your 1MB activation key. What are you waiting for? Sign up now!.+

Similar Messages

  • I had a windows laptop, and I save files like photos, documents, videos and other things on an external hard drive, and now I want to move those files to the Mac book Pro, and then move those files again to another external hard drive 1T. My question is:

    I had a windows laptop, and I save files like photos,documents, videos and other things on an external hard drive, and now I want tomove those files to the Mac book Pro, and then move those files again toanother external hard drive 1T. My question is: Is it possible? Doing this willnot affect the files that I had in windows? No information is lost? or how cani do it?

    Connect the external drive to your Mac and drag the files from it to your Mac's internal drive. Then dismount and disconnect the external drive, connect the 1TB external drive, and drag the files from the internal drive onto the external. Nothing will have been deleted from any of the drives up to this point; the files will only have been copied. Verify that the files are readable. There's no reason they shouldn't be; this is just a precaution.
    Now if you wish to delete the files from any of the drives, drag them to the Trash, and Empty the Trash while the drive from which they came is still connected. If you disconnect the drive before emptying the Trash, the files you were trying to remove from it won't be deleted. They'll remain in the Trash and continue to take up space on the drive.
    Note that if your external drives are in NTFS format, you won't be able to write anything to them or delete anything from them, though you will be able to read and copy the files they contain. The NTFS disk format is read-only to the Mac OS, unless you have a third-party NTFS driver installed. To make your drives cross-platform readable and writable, you must reformat them in the FAT32 or ExFAT format.

  • Unable to erase external hard drive with Disk Utility

    Macbook Pro (mid 2010) running 10.9
    Hello
    Recently, my Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1 TB external hard drive has not been showing up on my desktop or in finder.  The light is on when connected, and in the Disk Utility it appears. 
    1.  It was naturally created with a partition on it (all of the 1TB allocated to it) and it appears in the Disk Utility as well; however, it is grayed out. 
    2.  I clicked the actual drive in DU and it was verified as being ok.  I clicked on the partition next to verify and it said "Error disk needs repaired"
    3.  So I clicked repair, "Disk Utility cannot repair the disk..restore as many as your backed-up files...etc."
    4.  No problem (the data on the hard drive is used for my Time Machine back ups and my current internal hard drive is working fine with all the data intact)
    5.  Ok, so I click the erase tab on the entire external hard drive...erase..."Disk cannot be unmounted"
    6.  Ok, I try to erase the invidual partition..."Could not open disk"
    It seems every time I try to erase this drive completely im hitting blocks.  I even tried this method from the OS X Recovery menu (Command+R on startup).  I would greatly appreciate any help to just get this whole thing external hard drive erased and start anew.  How else would I go about this?
    (pictures for reference)
    Thank you all

    If this is your only backup device, you need to start a new backup on another drive immediately. Don't erase (or try to erase) your only backup.
    After you have the other backup, boot into Recovery and try again to erase the volume. You will have to unlock it before you can do anything with it, because it's encrypted.
    If you still can't erase it, the drive has failed.

  • I can't delete things off my external hard drive

    MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2009) (Verified)
      MacBook Pro - model: MacBookPro5,5
      1 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU: 2-core
    I bought a Seagate 2TB external hard drive. i can get stuff on it no problem but I can't delete certain things from my trash. When I try to delete some, not all, things off it a box appears that says:
    "the operation can't be completed because ..... is in use."
    It's not, I have all the applications closed. I have tried the normal delete, the secure delete, I have tried turning the laptop off and then trying to delete again when its on and it's not working, I have tried putting the file back on the Hard drive and then moving it to the trash again (this has worked for me before with other drives) and deleting, that is also not working.

    This is concerned in particular with backups.. but what is relevant is the command to empty the trash.
    http://pondini.org/TM/E6.html
    Doing stuff from terminal as you know .. be very careful.
    I would do a permissions fix beforehand. Just open the disk the disk utility and run the repair.
    Or again you can do it from terminal.
    http://osxdaily.com/2010/08/10/repair-disk-permissions-from-the-command-line/
    Depending on what nasty changes there are in Yosemite.

  • Storing files on erased external hard drive

    I'm an amateur at using external hard drives,so the first time I used one( Seagate Backup Plus 1T),I partitioned it so that way I could use half for Time Machine and the other half for storage.When I first partitioned it, I used the "erase" button" for the partition side that I was going to use for storing (even though it was a brand new exHD).My question is is it still okay to use, cuz I want to store my itunes library in it?

    Many people do that, alas....but if the HD fails,....you lose EVERYTHING...  putting a backup AND your files all on ONE drive is making a choke point of major failure.
    Anytime some of the pros hear the words..... "all my files.........on my new "X" hard drive" they wince.
    Thats ok as long as there is yet another HD exactly like it somewhere!

  • Why did lion stopped reading my external hard drives?

    I have a MBP which used to work fine with snow leopard, had also Paragon's NTFS software to allow reading my external hard drives (Western Digital's My Passport and Passport Essential with about 2.5 TB worth of data, music, photos, etc.) I decided to upgrade to Lion and after that... poof! my hard drives will show grayed on the disk utility with the "not mounted" message and my MBP will not read the data, even though it can access them, run the WD utility, unlock the drive but... nothing.
    Any ideas on how to fix? I event spent the morning yesterda wit the Geniuses at the Apple store and they were clueless too. I did show them on a couple of snow leopard machines my data but they could not understand how to explain he issue. I loaded the WD's drivers for Mac (OS  X Lion support as advertised on their website) but nothing happens.
    Fortunately I can still read my data on any other computer (my kids MB's, my office Windows, etc) but it is truly dissapointing that Lion has brought down all the good stuff Mac / Apple had been known about.
    Any takers to this one?

    Has the connection changed e.g. a different usb port?
    You may need to allocate a permanent drive letter to the external hard drive.
    See if this linked thread helps:
    https://forums.adobe.com/message/3431036#3431036

  • Can't get things off my external hard drive

    When I purchased my Macbook, it had OS X 10.4.11. I upgraded to Leopard, and started backing up my files using Time Machine. My hard drive crashed, and when they fixed it, they but OS X back on my computer. I really want to get all of my files and settings from my external hard drive back onto my computer, but I don't know how. Help?

    try...
    Apple.com > Support > Discussions > Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard > Time Machine
    http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1227

  • How to get things working after External Hard Drive Died

    I had all of my iMovie videos (about 800 GB) on an external drive that died.  Fortunately it was backed up to another external drive using Time Machine.  I bought a new drive and couldn't figure out how to restore using Time Machine so i transfered the files manually using Finder.  The transfer was successful, but now the movies do not appear in the iMovie event library.  How do I get iMovie to work with the new external hard drive.  The drive itself appears in the Event Library window, but none of the movies do.  Then I also need to figure out how to back up the movies again to Time Machine.  When it looks to do it now, it wants to duplicate the moveis which exceeds the Time Machine hard drive capacity (2TB).  Thanks!!

    For you to see them in iMovie, the Events need to be in a folder called iMovie Events. This folder must be at the top level of the drive.
    Move it there and restart iMovie, and you should see them.

  • Cannot repair or erase external hard drive

    I recently purchased a Transcend 1TB harddrive and partitioned it in two. One of those partitions can no longer be mounted. I cannot repair the disk or erase it. I would be happy if I could completely erase the whole hard drive and start from scratch. Can anyone offer any suggestions? The output from diskutil verifyVolume is
    Started file system verification on disk4 James_TM
    Checking storage system
    Checking volume
    disk3s2: Scan for Volume Headers
    disk3s2: Scan for Disk Labels
    Logical Volume Group 02004E72-5803-4B70-9E9C-63F6A68AEAA0 on 1 device
    disk3s2: Scan for Metadata Volume
    Logical Volume Group has a 16 MB Metadata Volume with double redundancy
    Start scanning metadata for a valid checkpoint
    Load and verify Segment Headers
    Load and verify Checkpoint Payload
    Load and verify Transaction Segment
    Incorporate 0 newer non-checkpoint transactions
    Load and verify Virtual Address Table
    Load and verify Segment Usage Table
    Load and verify Metadata Superblock
    Load and verify Logical Volumes B-Trees
    Logical Volume Group contains 1 Logical Volume
    Load and verify 606252CC-9C2B-4006-BFE4-494D5CA8E592
    Load and verify B379F48C-BD07-4702-AE92-D4E36BC031E7
    Load and verify Freespace Summary
    Load and verify Block Accounting
    Load and verify Live Virtual Addresses
    Newest transaction commit checkpoint is valid
    Load and verify Segment Cleaning
    The volume 02004E72-5803-4B70-9E9C-63F6A68AEAA0 appears to be OK
    Checking file system
    Error: -69845: File system verify or repair failed
    Underlying error: 8: POSIX reports: Exec format error

    ]/dev/disk0
       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
       0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *64.0 GB    disk0
       1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
       2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         63.2 GB    disk0s2
       3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
    /dev/disk1
       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
       0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *750.2 GB   disk1
       1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
       2:                  Apple_HFS Mac HD                  749.8 GB   disk1s2
    /dev/disk2
       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
       0:                  Apple_HFS Mac SSD                *62.8 GB    disk2
    /dev/disk3
       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
       0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk3
       1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk3s1
       2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         667.0 GB   disk3s2
       3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk3s3
       4:          Apple_CoreStorage                         332.7 GB   disk3s4
       5:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk3s5
    /dev/disk4
       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
       0:                  Apple_HFS Sonam_TM               *332.4 GB   disk4
    /dev/disk5
       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
       0:                  Apple_HFS James_TM               *666.7 GB   disk5

  • Need help recovering .dmg files from an accidentally reformatted external hard drive

    Help?
    I went to make a copy of an important drive and accidentally re-formatted it (re-formatted mac journaled, originally mac journaled).  The drive contained a bunch of important disk image files which I need to retrieve whole. I'm fairly confident that the files are still there and only the  table information got overwritten, as the re-format took about 30 seconds.  None of the  recovery software I've seen however, can retrieve .dmg files, or such large files (these are up to 32 gb each in size).
    Any suggestions on how I can retrieve these disk image files?
    -F

    Here is a selection of some data recovery products, in case it includes one you have not yet researched:
    http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php
    http://www.macintosh-data-recovery.com/
    http://subrosasoft.com/software/filesalvage

  • My husband bought an imac for the first time.  We backed up our separate itunes libraries on external hard drive but when it was retrieved, the 2 libraries had merged and they only appear in my husbands area.  How do we split them back up again?

    Really need some help here.  We got the guys at PC World to back up our old computer onto and external hard drive, but our libraries merged.  I've tried retrieving the whole thing from the external hard drive but can't seem to identify any files to retrieve.  If I could copy the whole thing into my area, we could both just erase the things from each others' libraries that we didn't want.  We are imac virgins, and need some advice!

    if it's content purchased from the iTunes store we're talking about, the following script will help to tell the files apart:
    Track Down Purchases 
    This script will examine each track in a selection of tracks or a selected playlist to determine if it was purchased from the iTunes Store and then copies it to a discrete playlist named for the person who purchased it, eg: "Steve Ballmer's Purchased Music". Recognizes song, video, and audiobook purchases. Purchaser information is gleaned by examining the track's file, which, depending on file location and access speed, can take as long a second per track.
    for content you added manually (i.e. CD rips), i don't know of any easy way once the libraries were merged.

  • External Hard Drive Not Showing Files

    Hi. I'm really in a panic right now because school starts tomorrow and a problem occurred with my external hard drive today. Before I start, I would like to clarify that I use a Macbook Pro 15" (not Retina Display). Here is what happened:
    Around 6 months ago, I was organizing the contents of my external hard drive into folders (i.e. "Movies" > "Romance," "Action," "Horror," etc.). In the midst of doing so, my laptop kind of froze and before I knew what was happening, the contents of the "Movies" folder was invisible. The "Movies" folder itself was still visible and accessible, but its contents were not. When I double-clicked the "Movies" folder, nothing would be shown. It was as if it was empty. The problem is that something was still taking up space on my external hard disk. When my friends asked to copy some of my movies onto their computers, I agreed and saw that they could access the "Movies" folder on their Mac laptops! This means that it was probably a problem with my Mac laptop. I decided to ignore it because I was still able to access the contents of the folder if I plugged in my external hard drive into my TV (it's an LG TV).
    Today, I decided that I've had enough with the invisible folder. I needed to access movies from the folder and because I couldn't access it, I got very stressed and decided to repair it myself. It was probably one of the worst decisions I've ever made.
    I opened Disk Utilities and clicked "Repair Disk" and then "Verify Disk." I then clicked "Repair Disk" again just to be safe (which was absolutely stupid in hindsight). Hoping it would have solved the problem, I ejected my external hard drive and plugged it back in. Once I plugged it in and opened it, I was faced with this:
    There was absolutely nothing else visible in my external hard drive. The reason I'm still fighting to fix this and not throwing out the hard disk is that when I got the info of my hard drive, a lot of space was still taking up my hard drive. Here is what I did (the name of my external hard drive is "Mines of Moria"):
    Mines of Moria > right-click > Get Info
    Once the info was shown ("Mines of Moria Info"), I saw this:
    Do you see how annoying this is?! It clearly states that there is only 17.78 GB left on the external hard drive meaning that there are a LOT of files on this hard drive considering its capacity is 1 TB, but I can't access or see anything inside the external hard drive! I tried to open my hard drive on my brother's Alienware (Windows 7), but it couldn't open it because its format. I also tried plugging it into my LG TV and the only folder visible is the "found.000" folder and I can't access it.
    Please give me some advice as to what I can do as soon as possible. I am willing to go to a store to fix it, but I would much rather try to do it myself at home. I transferred all my movies from my laptop to this external hard drive because I had no more space on my laptop (yes, almost 90% of the space taken up on my external hard drive is used up by movies and episodes).
    Please help me. I also have school files on here (granted, they are from two years ago, but you never know when you're going to use them). I'm a HUGE movie junkie and I've downloaded so many movies that I don't even remember what I downloaded last week (I just can't keep track of which ones I've downloaded when).
    This is really important to me, so I would be VERY grateful for any and all relevant and helpful tips and advice.

    The problem is caused by the third-party software you installed in order to make NTFS volumes writable. Refer to the developer for support. You might be able to repair the volume in Windows using the CHKDSK program.

  • Being able to 'Read & Write' on an external hard drive on the Mac

    Hi there,
    I can't seem to be able to add things to my external hard drives on my MacBook Pro. I can with my USB stick but not with the larger external hard drives. Could someone help me change the permission settings to allow me to 'Read & Write' rather than just 'Read Only'.
    Thanks
    Nadia

    How is this drive formatted? If it is NTFS then it is read-only. In order to use it on the Mac you will have to repartition and reformat the drive. On the other hand if it is properly partitioned and formatted for the Mac and the drive has become read-only then there is a different solution.
    For the first alternative:
    Drive Preparation
    1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
    2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
    3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
    4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
    5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
    6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
    For the second alternative:
    Fix No Access Permissions on HD.

  • I am trying to move my iphoto and itunes to an external hard drive to free up space on my macbook...i have followed the steps to the change itunes media folder location (chosen external hard drive) but my new folder is greyed out so cant continue ?help?

    I need to free up space on my macbook pro as hard drive is full!! So with 20 000 photos/video clips and itunes I would like to move this to a external hard drive!
    I have followed steps on apple support but when i get to the Change itunes media folder location and chosen external hard drive it will not let me access the new folder option ?? help?

    errrrrrrm!
    Yes external drive shows up in finder on desk top and can change to in the media folder location thing!
    My external hard drive is a WD Elements. I have no idea about permissions to the external? Do i Have to format external hard drive to a mac?
    I am trying to follow the steps on the apple support page to transfer files (consolidate library etc) just cant get further down steps as the new folder option is greyed out!
    Thanks for you help

  • HT1751 I am trying to backup my iTunes to an external hard drive, but it won't let me click and drag or copy and paste into the external drive.

    I am trying to backup my iTunes to an external drive, but my Mac won't let me drag and drop into the external drive or any of its folders.
    Any suggestions?
    Thanks,

    I think I know what I did....my external hard drive has been used to back up my PC.  I was trying to back up my iTunes on my Mac.  I forgot that the formats mattered.  Thanks.

Maybe you are looking for