Disk utility recovery of files after deleting from external hard drive?

I had downloaded some files to add to an external hard drive, the hard drive was assigned to a pc before adding these files so it wouldn't let me add files from my MacBook..
Had a look around online and made some changes (well thats what I thought) and I was able to transfer files form my MacBook onto the external hard drive.
What I then figured out was that there was nothing left on the hard drive except for the two file sI just transferred..
It turns out I deleted everyting without noticing.
The stpes I followed was to go to disk utility then select the hard drive and click erase (not knowing this would erase evrything).
So now I have two files on my hard drive and no idea how to recover the 'delted' files.
I tried using Disk Drill, which found the files but then it said I need to buy the full version to recover them.
I am wondering if there is any free methods to recover these files at all, any help is appreciated.

The files are still on the drive, and will remain unless and until you overwrite them with new data. So don't write anything more to the drive in addition to the two files you added after reformatting it, and do download the free trial version(s) of one or more data recovery utilities:
Data Rescue 3: http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php
FileSalvage 7: http://subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id= 1
Each is offered in a free demo version that will show you exactly what the full version could recover before you have to pay for anything. There are others on the market, but these are the ones I'm familiar with.
To recover data using any such utility, you must have another drive available on which to save the recovered files. Saving them on the same drive they're being recovered from would just overwrite other files that haven't yet been recovered.

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File not found after importing from external hard drive

I have been importing music from an external hard drive into my Itunes account. Some of the songs transfer fine, but some of them show up in Itunes as being imported, but when I go to listen to them I get a file not found message because the original file cannot be found. If I have the hard drive plugged in there is no problem, but without it I get that message.
Any advice? I"d really like to get all music set up in Itunes.

Search Amazon - Davie Pogue I believe has released the missing manual for Leopard - it is a good general reference Liz Castro did a great book on iPhoto 05 but has not done one for '08 as of now
The iPhoto Help section is very helpful
Reading this forum will teach you a lot about iPhoto
If you have not taken the iPhoto tutorials yet you should - http://www.apple.com/support/iphoto/
Make mistakes and fix them - that's the way I do it
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Audio problems after transferring from external hard drive.

I've transferred an unfinished movie from an external hard drive back onto my mac but now when I play it the audio jolts and is crackly for lack of a better word. How can I fix this?
It's a birthday present for someone that I need to give today so help would be much appreciated!

Is your external drive formatted for Mac? Should be Mac OS extended or Mac OS extended (journaled). If it's not, you will need to reformat using the Utilities/Disk Utility app on your Mac -- but reformatting will erase all data on the drive.
The bad playback may just be an iMovie playback display problem that might not appear on your final project. Quickly share your project to iDVD and play it there to see if the sound acts up. If it doesn't, then it's just a playback display issue in iMovie. That can be caused by overlapping sound tracks or too many audio clips or effects, although you didn't mention whether you were talking about audio embedded in your video clips or separate audio clips in your audio track.
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You could try the old standby of closing iMovie and trashing the file com.apple.iMovie.plist found in User (your name)/Library/Preferences. Then do a permissions repair using the Utilities/Disk Utility app on your Mac. Make sure you have at least 15GB of free space for iMovie to work efficiently.
If you are using iTunes music, you might try first burning the music to a music CD, and then importing it from there into your iMovie project.
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How can I transfer my files and documents from external hard drive to my new MacBook Air?

I recently bought a new MacBook Air and I would like to transfer my files and documents which I already saved in my external hard drive to this new mac. Unfortunately, I have not been able to do it so far. I tried to drag some files but the rest of the documents cant be transferred.
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Describe exactly what you did when it failed and the error message you received that told you it failed. Dragging and dropping files from one drive to another will work. Having said that however, you need to be aware that trying to copy items with the same name will result in a warning dialog box offering several different options including canceling.
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How to open files (NOT copy) from external hard drive

Hello there,
I have a Western Digital My Passport external harddrive. I bought the hard drive so I could take stuff like my music off my laptop harddrive, free up space and make it run smoother.
Problem is, every time I select a music file on the ex harddrive to play in itunes, the file is copied to the laptop harddrive! Completely defeats the purpose.
Does anyone know how to stop my laptop from copying music files and just get it to play files from the external hard drive? I have looked and looked but to no avail - this is my first Mac and it is the one issue that really bugs me.
Any help will be much appreciated!
N.B. it doesn't seem to do this with other file types (documents etc.) just music files/files supported by itunes.

How are you selecting the music files? I have my entire music library on an external drive. If you go to preferences in iTunes, their is an option to select where your music library resides. I think it is under advance but I'm not sure since I don't have access to my mac.
Glor

IMac cannot find library after moving from external hard drive?

After transferring my library from an external hard drive to my new imac the library cannot be found by itunes, although i can see the content in the folder I selected in advanced preferences and the content appears to br there

In Preferences set the loaction of the library that should do the trick.
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Missing Files in Finder from External Hard Drive - PLEASE HELP

Hi everyone, found myself with a bit of a problem and feeling a little stressed out.
I have an external, Thunderbolt hard drive which seems to be working ok. Suddenly, after a reboot I am unable to see any files on the drive and the finder says 0 files. The disk size however remains the same, indicating the files are still somewhere on the drive. I am running 10.10.1 (14B25).
Before the reboot I was writing to the drive using Compressor, I cancelled the export and then rebooted. Since then I have attempted the following with no luck:
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2. Tried accessing the drive on another computer and account. No luck.
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A small update:
I have tried using DiskWarrior - it sees the files and folders are there, confirms there is no physical disk problem but after a rebuild of the directory there are still no files present.
Is there a preference file or hidden file I could try and remove?
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Disk utility can't repair a partition on external hard drive

I have a 1TB Western Digital external FW drive that's only a couple years old (2 or 3, probably). I have it split into partitions, one of which I'm using for Time Machine. The non-Time Machine partition checked out fine with DIsk Utility, but when I ran Disk Utility on the Time Machine partition, I received this message:
Disk Utility stopped reparing "Time Machine." Disk Utility can't repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
Does this mean the drive itself is failing? I erased the Time Machine partition and recreated it through Disk Utility, and then I verified it. Everything checked out okay, but I want to make sure, especially since I'm hosting my iTunes music in the other partition (it's backed up to a 2nd external drive, so if the drive does die, at least I don't lose everything).
Before this problem happened, both partitions dropped off the Finder and the light on the drive went off. I unplugged the drive and plugged it back in again a couple times, but nothing happened. Finally, the light went back on after plugging it back in for the 3rd or 4th time, but I'm wondering if the drive could be going bad, which would surprise me since it isn't very old.

Brad Cook wrote:
Disk Utility stopped reparing "Time Machine." Disk Utility can't repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
Does this mean the drive itself is failing?
Possibly, but not necessarily. The File System on the disk was so badly corrupted that Disk Utility couldn't fix it. That might indicate a problem with the drive. It's not unusual for consumer-quality (ie, inexpensive) drives to fail after 2-3 years, although many will run for several years. It's a bit of a crapshoot.
Before this problem happened, both partitions dropped off the Finder and the light on the drive went off.
Whatever caused that is another good possibility -- if a drive is improperly disconnected, OSX can't "close it out" properly, and that can cause damage to the file system. Sometimes Disk Utility can fix it, sometimes it can't. And sometimes heavy-duty 3rd-party disk repair apps like DiskWarrior can fix things Disk Utility can't.
A power dip or spike could have caused it, or an overheated electronic component, etc. If it has it's own power supply, be sure it's on a good (ie, not cheap) surge protector or U.P.S. system.
Otherwise, keep an eye on it. If you don't have "secondary" backups, this would be an excellent time to get another drive for that purpose. See #27 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions for some suggestions.
Bottom line: personally, I'd not trust my only backups to that drive.
(But then, I'd never trust my backups to any single drive, no matter how new or high-quality.)

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This seems like a very basic problem but I cant find an answer and am no longer able to use Apple Support. I am trying to erase files from my very crowded home drive. I bought an external drive and backed up all fikles there. However, now when I delete files from my home drive and plug in the external drive, Time Machine delets the files I deleted from my home drive on the external drive which defeats my purpose. Can anyone help a hopelsessly tech savvyless stranger.
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Copy the files to the external drive in the Finder instead of going through Time Machine. If you want that drive to have a bootable OS, you'll need to use software such as Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper.
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HT1751 My win8 pc hard drive failed. After the hard drive was replaced, I copied iTunes Media backupfiles from external hard drive (Karen's Replicator was used). ITunes does not recognize the back up files - help! (it does show cloud & recently burned m

My win8 pc hard drive failed. After the hard drive was replaced, I copied iTunes Media backupfiles from external hard drive (Karen's Replicator backup software was used). ITunes does not recognize these back up files even though the location is the same as cloud & recently burned music that does show- help! The backup files consist of 34,000+ songs; almost all burned from my own CD collection. I do have most of the songs on an ipod classic but hesitate to try to restore from that. Can someone tell me how to get these 34,000 songs to show up in iTunes? Thanks!!

This diagram shows how a typical iTunes library ought to be set out (click on it to enlarge)
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How to recover pictures I deleted from my hard drive and backed up with TM

Hello all,
2 months ago, using the TM for the first time, I decided to delete all my pictures from my MacBook Pro as they were saved with TM.
Then, when I went to look for them in TM, they were gone as well.
Anyway, I do hope, to recover them all?
and.... how to store them so that they don't take so much space on my MacBook Pro?
Many thanks in anticipation, I feel so useless with this all!

TM does not retain files that have been deleted from the hard drive for more than one week. During the weekly consolidation files removed from the hard drive are then removed from the TM backup.
If you are trying to use TM like a regular backup storage utility, then you've misunderstood how TM works. See the following explanation:
About TM "Backup Drive is Full" Alert
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How can I edit lightroom 5 smart previews on mac book pro (mbp) when the lightroom 5 master image files are on my external hard drive is disconnected from the mbp

How can I edit lightroom 5 smart previews on mac book pro (mbp) when the lightroom 5 master image files are on my external hard drive is disconnected from the mbp? So far when I try to disconnect the external HD from the mbp, I get the following pop up window: The disk "external hard drive A" couldn't be ejected because "Lightroom" is using it. Quit that application and try to eject this disk again. When I do that and restart Lightroom 5, the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom - Select Catalog screen pops up but doesn't list my external hard drive A as a choice.
I've reviewed Adobe's Lightroom Help | Smart Previews Lightroom 5 web page and still haven't been able to figure what I'm doing wrong. Any help would be appreciated.

Your internal HDD. by default, is named 'Macintosh HD'. From what information you supplied, it looks like there is already a Lightroom catalog installed on you local (internal) HDD using the standard naming convention Adobe uses as well as a Lightroom catalog on your external drive which you created. To be sure of which catalog Lightroom is loading when it starts up, To do this, start Lightroom as you normally would. After it starts, select the Lightroom menu item, then select the Catalog Preferences item and finally, navigate to the General tab. The Location information will tell you exactly what catalog Lightroom is opening by default. This will likely be the Photography Mac Book Pro Versions catalog on your external HDD. Once that is confirmed, you are ready to proceed. As an additional test/verification, you can shut down Lightroom and, this time, start Lightroom while holding down the ALT/OPTION key. This will cause Lightroom to pause and display a screen which will allow you to chose a different catalog to open. Navigate to the /Users/[user name]/Pictures/Lightroom folder and select the Lightroom 5 Catalog.lrcat file. When Lightroom comes up, there should be no previews or folders as this catalog should be empty. Now you can be certain which catalog is being used and which catalog has all your data and you are ready to migrate your current catalog. Shut down Lightroom.
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Hi,
I can not delete or copy new files to my Iomega external hard drive. Opening hard drive folder I can see that I can not overwrite it. I have heard that I need to install some program for the external hard drive to operate properly in Mac.
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I'm not the expert on this since I have never done it. It sounds like you may need a data rescue program like Data Rescue III. I believe you can download a demo and see if you can see the files. If you can, then you can buy the program and retrieve the files. I don't know if Disk Utility can restore them--I think they have to be visible but this is not something I have ever had to do.
In the meantime, don't do anything with the drive--you don't want to overwrite any files. Hopefully all or most of the files are still there and you will be able to retrieve them. The less the drive is used, the better your chances are of retrieving the data.
Forgive me for not realizing that there were files on the drive that you wanted to save. Upon re-reading your question, I now see that there were. I should have known to warn you, and my bad that I didn't.
Good luck!

ITunes Doesn't Delete Movies From External Hard Drive

I have all of my iTunes media on an external hard drive. However, when I just tried to delete a movie (from within iTunes), it removed the movie from iTunes, but the actual mpeg file is still on my external hard drive. Is there something I'm doing wrong, or am I going to have to manually delete content from external hard drive? Thanks.

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Disk utility recovery of files after deleting from external hard drive?

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