How to recover files from an external hard drive

I just got a brand spankin' new iMac yesterday. I've never had an Apple computer before so I was unfamiliar with Time Machine. I called my husband in to help me out thinking he would be more tech-saavy than me, clearly I was mistaken! He backed up my computer onto our WD external hard drive that we had stored ALL of our photos on. Before it would let him go any further is stays you must erase the previous back up or something (which we didn't really know what that meant). So now that my new iMac is backed up ALL of my pictures and files are erased. Please tell me if there is ANY way possible to recover those files? These are pictures of when my daughter was born all the way up through now!! Please help!!! Thanks!
PS. I don't know what operating system or anything like that I am using. I literally just got it out of the box last night so whatever comes on the computer!!

Click anywhere on the open desktop so that the Finder menus are displayed at the top of the screen.
Click Go > Network
Double click the Time Capsule icon, then double click the icon representing the drive to mount it on the Mac's desktop. It is named "Data" unless you have changed it
You can drag/drop files to the "Data" icon on the desktop
235 GB is going to take forever if you try to do this using wireless. If at all possible, connect an Ethernet cable from your Mac to one of the LAN <-> ports on the Time Capsule.
Even using Ethernet, you are probably looking at 10-12 hours for the file transfer. All bets are off with wireless only, but a guess would be several days....or even more.

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Please walk me through (step by step) on how to load spicific files from an external hard drive onto my new PC.
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Click anywhere on the open desktop so that the Finder menus are displayed at the top of the screen.
Click Go > Network
Double click the Time Capsule icon, then double click the icon representing the drive to mount it on the Mac's desktop. It is named "Data" unless you have changed it
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235 GB is going to take forever if you try to do this using wireless. If at all possible, connect an Ethernet cable from your Mac to one of the LAN <-> ports on the Time Capsule.
Even using Ethernet, you are probably looking at 10-12 hours for the file transfer. All bets are off with wireless only, but a guess would be several days....or even more.

How to import recovered files from an external hard drive

My hard drive crashed. I got a new one and of course lost my itunes. I had the recovered data put on an external hard drive. How do I re import my data back into Itunes?

Hello David,
Thank you for using Apple Support Communities!
If you have the entire iTunes library folder on that recovered drive, you can copy it to your new computer and use this article to choose that iTunes library that you just copied to the new computer.
iTunes: How to open an alternate iTunes Library file or create a new one
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1589
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http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1473
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How do I recover files from an external Hard Drive?

I have an external Hard Drive that has somehow lost communication with my Mac Mini. It won't mount. When I attempt to give it first aid it says first aid failed. This is what it says.
Verifying volume “MicroNet 250GB External”
Invalid Volume Header
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Invalid node structure
The volume MicroNet 250GB External needs to be repaired.
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
Volume needs repair
Then when I click repair it shows this.
Verify and Repair disk “MicroNet 250GB External”
Invalid Volume Header
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Invalid node structure
Volume check failed.
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
1 volume could not be repaired because of an error
I would be very grateful to hear that I can recover my files(I have tens of thousands of photos, and about 20Gb of music) without paying much(Free would be better).
Thanks
Message was edited by: dudebob

Post over here -> < ahref="http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=758">Using Mac OS X Tiger
since this has nothing to do with the iPod.
Check out Disk Warrior and TechTools Pro.
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You can try these.
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I'm very frustrated. I have 50gigs of documents and photos sitting in my iOmega external hard drive, some of which I need to print for my mother's funeral on Saturday.
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What are the steps for copying or transferring 235 GB of files (primarily .mts movie files) that are on a Western Digital external hard drive to a 500 GB Time Capsule that I want to use as an external hard drive? After the files have been moved, I will be returning the Western Digital external hard drive to my son's coach and will be using iMovie to access the 500 GB Time Capsule to create a highlight video.
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I can copy and paste files from the Western Digital exernal hard drive to the Desktop of my iMac but when I try to move a file from the Western Digitial external hard drive to the empty 500 GB Time Capsule, the following error message pops up:
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Click anywhere on the open desktop so that the Finder menus are displayed at the top of the screen.
Click Go > Network
Double click the Time Capsule icon, then double click the icon representing the drive to mount it on the Mac's desktop. It is named "Data" unless you have changed it
You can drag/drop files to the "Data" icon on the desktop
235 GB is going to take forever if you try to do this using wireless. If at all possible, connect an Ethernet cable from your Mac to one of the LAN <-> ports on the Time Capsule.
Even using Ethernet, you are probably looking at 10-12 hours for the file transfer. All bets are off with wireless only, but a guess would be several days....or even more.

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I believe my hard drive is in the early stages of crashing. Last night I was using my Macbook Pro and was running safari and microsoft word when all the sudden the computer froze up and I got the spinning wheel. I waited for about 5 minutes hoping the wheel would go away and after no avail decided to turn the computer off by holding the power button. I waited a couple minutes to let it cool down and then I rebooted it and I was then given the jumping folder with a ? on it. I did some research and found that this basically means your hard drive was crashing. So I read a solution online that if you hit the Option button while the Mac is booting up it will allow you to select a hard drive. I did this and luckily I was able to select my main hard drive and the computer booted up, but once I had logged in and was at the desktop screen the computer was very slow and when I tryed to open Finder I was once again given the spinning wheel. The wheel continued to spin for a solid 10 minutes and the screen finally went black with just the spinning wheel. So I once again decided to turn off the computer by holding the power button. I have gone and talked to 2 different tech support stores and both are pretty sure that the hard drive is failing, which I pretty much already knew, and that it is going to be around 75$ to recover the lost information and another 125$ to install a brand new hard drive.
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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. Recovery software usually provide trial versions that enable you to determine if the software would help before actually paying for it. Beyond this or if the drive has completely failed, then you would need to send the drive to a recovery service which is very expensive.
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.

How do i recover data from an external hard drive that was accidentally deleted? After I verified the drive, a message appeared that said my drive needed to be repaired. When I tried to access the drive again, the 700 Gigs of music is gone!

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I deleted my back up files from my external hard drive and my trash won't empty. I get an error code -22. Can anyone tell me how to fix this?

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JLCruz wrote:
I deleted my back up files from my external hard drive ...
If this is related to Time Machine Backups...
See here > Should I delete old backups? If so, How?
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I have macbook pro 13" I want to know how to copy files from my mac to the external Toshiba Hard Drive. I can't even delete files from my external hard drive. please help me my macbook HD is almost full and I have to copy my images to the Toshiba HD

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To delete files from your external HDD, attach it to your MBP and drag the unwanted files to trash and then empty trash.
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Ciao.

How to recover files from an external hard drive

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