External hard drive recovery

I plugged my brother in laws WD Elements external hard drive into my MacBook Pro and time machine asked if I wished to use it as a back up to which I answered no but somehow it has formatted the drive and now it appears empty on my MacBook and unrecognisable on his PC. There were very important files on this drive and I was wanting to know if there is anything I can do to recover the data ??? Please help !!

"the files that I'm finding have all got uniform names and not what I named them. will that mean that they are changed? particularly the final cut pro files."
This is "standard operating procedure" for the data recovery apps. There is a very good chance that you may lose filenames and folder hierarchies, even if the data files themselves get recovered.
This is because originally the files were "lost" due to corruption/loss of the drive's _directory_ (and not "damage" to the files themselves).
Data-recovery software "goes around" a corrupted directory, and goes "right to the platters", to scavenge and then re-construct the file data.
Thus, you "get the files back", but because the directory (again, which contains the "names" of the files) is bypassed, the files _may not_ have their original names.
Not much to do about that, other than be thankful that you actually got the files back....

Similar Messages

Advice about external hard drive recovery

Does anyone have experience or advice about external hard drive recovery?
I have a USB external drive that crashed during a power brownout, I couldn't mount the image at first but used Diskwarrior to rebuild it. Now I can see and navigate the drive but I am unable to pull many files off without the finder crashing. It would transfer about 130mb of 10gb then stay at that number and not progress past that amount.
Should I try a different recovery program or would removing the drive and placing it in another external drive enclosure solve something like this?
any help appreciated

When in DW there is a Preview to see the old and new volume.
http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/harddrives/topic4557.html#d10aug2010
Data Rescue 3 demo will show you what it's scan finds, costs $99
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php
you need to have another drive to recover your files to.
Yes I would try another case, maybe the power brick was all that is now half-dead also
And you really need a UPS - never be w/o
http://pondini.org/OSX/UPS.html
MacBook Pro:
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro

Brand new OS X Mountain Lion starts in grey screen login window doesn't know me verify passwords all jacked up says to get external hard drive recovery so I have to spend more moneyon my brand new computer or can I fix and safe boot

brand new OS X Mountain Lion Bought in November 2012 starts in grey screen login window doesn't know me, went to utility dIsk ,verify passwords all jacked up, I Engaged repair passwords then press verified Macintosh HD it said Macintosh HD is OK but repair disk button was still lit up and wanted me to make a recovery disk external hard drive and such,please tell me I can fix in safe boot..

The repair button is always clickable when you are on your Recovery partition, it's nothing to worry about. Do this instead.
Then start in single user mode (Command-S)
Type fsck -fy to check your disk first (it wont let you start working on a disk until you have checked it)
Then type mount -uw / (dont forget the slash) to mount your Macintosh HDD
Then type passwd username with username being the username of your admin account
It will make you type the new password twice afterwards. From then you can boot into OSX as normal and use that account to fix the rest of your passwords.

Data Recovery - External Hard Drive

Hi,
I have recently copied over a folder on my iOmega (Prestige Portable) External Hard Drive with a folder from my Power Book Hard Drive, with the replace all.
What I need to know is there a way to step back to the point before I copied over this folder?
Ok so here comes the Dumb bit, I have never set up Time Machine! Yes I know, very stupid!
So I'm now in the process of seeing if it is possible to step back with data recovery software and if this is possible what do people reccomend! I have tried SanDisk RescuePro but It comes up with a message saying that the drive is too big, I think it is meant for Flash Drives!
Have I posted this in the right Discussion thread? If not were do you think I would be best to post this?
Thanks

Johno11111 wrote:
Ok so here comes the Dumb bit, I have never set up Time Machine! Yes I know, very stupid!
Us mere mortals do tend to learn things the hard way, don't we?
So I'm now in the process of seeing if it is possible to step back with data recovery software and if this is possible what do people reccomend!
FIrst, stop using the drive immediately. If the files haven't been overwritten already, the more you use it, the more likely that is.
There are several Data Recovery apps for Macs; +Data Rescue II+ seems to be the one mentioned here most often, but others get good reviews, too. I've not used any, so can't say one is better than another.
I understand you'll need another external disk to receive the recovered files. (But you'll probably need one anyway for Time Machine or other backup app that you'll be using regularly from now on, right? You can use a second internal HD, Time Capsule, or in some cases back-up over your network.)
I also understand that some of these apps have a trial version that will tell you whether there's anything to be recovered, and perhaps recover a single file, so you don't spend the $$ for nothing.
Look for +Data Recovery+ via Google, VersionTracker.com or MacUpdate.com. The last two have user reviews. Just be certain whatever you use is compatible with Leopard.
And/or, search for +Data Recovery+ in the Using Leopard forum.
Once this is sorted out (or to explore Time Machine options), you might want to review these:
Time Machine Tutorial
Time Machine 101
How to back up and restore your files
Time Machine Features
Apple - Support - Mac OSX v10.5 Leopard Time Machine
and perhaps browse the Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum.

Formatted external hard drive from PC to Mac - Data Recovery Needed

I formatted an external hard drive configured to (PC) for a Mac.
I clicked erase data by accident during the process of formatting -- My old files are no longer there now.
Is there a way to recover the old files that I had on there before the reformat?
Someone please say yes and tell me it's possible......

Not very likely.
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. Two free alternatives are Disk Drill and TestDisk. Look for them and demos at MacUpdate or CNET Downloads.
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.

Rescue and Recovery backup with external hard drive

When I first backed up my computer to my WD 1 tb external hard drive using R&R, boot files were placed on the drive. Recently, some files I had corrupted my external hard drive and I had to fully erase it. Now, after making the drive recognizable again, I went to go back up my computer using rescue and recovery. This time, it asked me whether or not I wanted to make the drive bootable, I said yes, but an error popped up saying I needed 1000 more mb, even though I had 931 gb open. The backup started anyway, but it did not include any boot files. Is there a way to make the drive bootable the next time I backup? What is the difference between nonbootable and bootable? Help? Thanks.

I do NOT have a external Hard drive. If you just zeroed the drive, it is blank. Go into control panel,administrative tools, computer management, disk management. See if you can get a PROPERTIES of the external drive and post a Screen shot of that here. This will show what partition(s) are there, Fat32 vs NTFS. My experience is after you zero a drive, You have to boot your system, then use a Vendor (WD) standalone format utility or windows Disk manangement format, Make partition, etc. The screen shot i need is the one that says: DISK 1 (d 298.09 GB NTFS
Healthy(active,primary partition). This is what my 2nd drive, D, says. 1 partion on the drive.
When i added my second hard drive, it was blank. Booted up, BIOS recognized drive, Then i Formatted it with windows disk managment. I then pointed R&R to take backups to that drive. Create rescue media then made a Master boot record, install standalone R&R boots files, then took the backup. This makes my 2nd drive bootable, should i ever care to boot my D drive up and have R&R standalone program in control. Thus i have 2 bootable drives. C boots into windows, D boots into the rescue and recovery standalone program. I can also boot my C drive into R&R by hitting PF 11 at startup (bios) time.
Which version of r&r you have? Which version of windows? Windows 7 changed the way Master boot records are written.
You can go into R&R, advanced menu, create rescue media. Point to your External drive. WARNING. make sure the do not destroy existing data block is checked. IF YOU ARE brave, uncheck the destroy existing data. This will erase everthing on the drive!!! <<Warning. And be sure NOT to point to any drive you really love.
Buts lets 1st get the screen shot requested to make sure the drive is FORMATTED correcly.

How do I restore backup1.swm files created during system recovery from external hard drive.

On my hp dm1 with windows 7 In full detail, this is what I did. I clicked to do a system recovery, it asked if I wanted to backup the files, I said yes. It said it backed up my files on the external hard drive. I continued the system recovery. It set my computer back to factory settings. I tried to recover my backup, it acted like it was restoring the files and showed them going into the c: area in a folder. I open the folder and it says the folder is empty. I hit properties and the folder contains 10mb+ of data. I go back into my LaCie drive, there are files labeled like backup.swm, backup1.swm, backup2.swm. I can't open these files or do anything with them. In a text document it lists all the files it apparently copied. It is only a list of text, nothing else. Have a 12 page research paper in these back ups that is due in a few hours so any help will be greatly appriciated.

@Daniella1985,
If the standard procdure of locating the program launcher (a .exe file) on the first backup media (disk 1 or the external storage device) is not working, then you can manually extract the files using 7-zip.
7-zip can be found here.
Once 7-zip is installed, open it and navigate to the first .swm file of the backup. Right-click the .swm file and select 7-zip>open archive. Once that opens, it should reveal the contents of the .swm files. If the file contains something you want to keep, you can either extract each invidual file or extract the entire directory. If you want to extract each individual file, highlight the desired file and click the extract button at the top. If you want to extract the entire directory, make sure no items are highlighted and click the extract button at the top.
This is a manual process and it can be a large task depending on how many files were backed up, but it is one method to get the backedup files when the standard procedure is not working.
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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.

Recovery to external hard drive instead of disks

How would I write the recovery data to an external hard drive?

panbroil wrote:
How would I write the recovery data to an external hard drive?
It's not clear what you are trying to do. If you are asking about using the Recovery Disk Creator but redirecting to an external hard drive, then the reply is that it is not possible to do. The recovery program requires writing to an optical disk.
If you are asking how to make a recoverable backup to an external hard drive, then you'll need an additional program like Acronis TrueImage to do this.
If neither of these solutions are correct for the question you had, please give us more to work with.

Recovery from External hard drive

So I backed up all my files onto an external hard drive using the hp program, before reinstalling windows. However when I go to restore them it goes through and restores some of the files and then when it gets to 100% and it says please insert disk 2. I cant think of what it would mean as disk 2 I only used this one external hard drive to back it up, and now most of my files are missing. Can anyone help? Is there a way of viewing what files are contained in the .swm files or can anyone tell me what to do about this disk 2 thing?

Lots of programs out there from which to choose. In the meantime, don't access the drive.
18 Free Data Recovery Software Tools
-Jerry

Data recovery from a Lacie external Hard Drive with blocked permissions

I have a Lacie 160 gig external hard drive. While trying to block another user on my computers data from being unintentionally stored on the external drive, I apparently blocked all access to the HD. After single clicking on the drives icon I clicked on File, get info, in ownership and permission I must have chosen no access. I guess I blocked access on the device and not a file. I'm finding out this is a bad thing. Now the external drives icon doesn't appear on the desk top. I can find it in disk utility but the apple care guy says the only way to access the drive is by erasing all the data on the drive. He said I might find help here. Is there 3rd party software that deals with this? Maybe drive recovery? Any suggestions are welcome.
iMac Mac OS X (10.4.4)

If the volume has Mac OS X installed on it, select the disk in the Disk Utility window and click the Repair Permissions button; this will correct the settings. If not, follow the instructions below:
Choose Go to Folder from the Finder's Go menu and enter /Volumes/ as the folder's location. Next, open the Terminal in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder while keeping the Volumes folder open. Type the following into the window:
chmod 755
followed by a space. Drag the volume in question into the Terminal window and press Enter. Log out and back in, and see if the drive reappears on your desktop; if not, use:
sudo chown shortname
and then drag the volume back into the Terminal window, type in your administrator password, and press Enter. Log out and back in.
(10491)

Ideacenter K330B One Key Recovery External Hard Drive

Hello, a few months back I made a full backup of my system to an external hard drive. I reached a point where it was just easiest to start my computer over using the One Key Recovery. I had to go with the factory settings at least temporarily. Is there anyway I can use the external hard drive backup to restore my stystem? The One Key system doesn't seem to agree with it.
Thank you for any replies.
Sorry if there is a post like this elsewhere. I tried to see if their was and didn't see any that applied directly to what I needed.

hi Nutcracker,
When you tried to restore your backup using OneKey Recovery, are you getting any specific error message?
Can you also try to:
1. Format the external HDD with NTFS (move your OneKey Recovery backup to another computer first)
2. Make external HDD's the partition active and copy back the OneKey Recovery backup image
3. Boot into OneKey Recovery 7.0 and try to restore your backup.
Let me know your findings
Regards,
neokenchi
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Creating Recovery Media with Portable External Hard Drive

Is it possible to create recovery data with a portable external hard drive?

Hi,
i am also facing the same problem not able to create the recovery media in external hard disk. win 7 64 bit..
Please help there is an option to create recovery media in USB flash drive but its not recognising the usb even though its connected.
Mahesh

External Hard Drive Data Recovery

Hello Apple Support Communities!
I have a Western Digital 320GB external hard drive and it currently has 0 bytes available. This has prevented me from even viewing the hard drive on my finder window. I can only see it in disk utility. I have tried repairing the disk and verifying it but neither has worked in letting me view my files. I use the hard drive for movies and now i can't see them! Can anyone recommend free data recovery software so i can delete a few files so that i can view my hard drive? Thank you!

I found a way to sort of mount the drive and consequently do a data recovery.
What i did was highlight the 'iphone-dump.img' and opened it with 'Disk Utility'. Inside of 'Disk Utility', I double-clicked the 'iphone-dump.img' icon and low and behold, it split into two drives, despite it giving me an 'Unable to attach 'iphone-dump.img' (no mountable file systems)' message at the same time.
I wasn't able to do much with it in 'Disk Utility' from there on, so I opened 'Data Rescue III' and it became available to scan as a 'Virtual Interface' called 'Apple read:write'. I performed a scan and was able to locate my missing photos. It took a while because there were several duplicates of older photos. I think this is because each time I've restored the phone from a backup, data has been placed in a different location on the hard drive. Therefore, it has not overwritten these very same photos that have been on most of my backups for some time.
I wasn't able to find my missing voice memos from the 'QuickVoice' application though. They appear not to be there. I found the existing ones from the recovery. They must be somewhere surely? Maybe the photos are stored in a different way since the photo application is a default app and 'QuickVoice' is a bought app. ?
Ideas anyone

Satellite A665 - Create Recovery Data on External Hard Drive

Hi
I recently purchased my Satellite A665 and I am trying to create my Recovery Data on an external hard drive instead of CD's or DVD's. I am using Recovery Media Creator and it's not recognizing the attached Hard Drive in the USB and keeps asking me to attach the USB Flash memory. Anyone else having this problem or suggestions??
Bettina

I double clicked on the icon (under Finder/Devices). My choices are: Open, Open Enclosing Folder, Eject Free Agent Go Flex Drive, Get Info, Remove from Sidebar. Do you have any other suggestions?
I also tried double clicking on icon, then going to File. Only choice was "New Smart Folder".

External hard drive recovery

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