Lost hard drive, trying to recover

Disk Utility's info is giving me a glimmer of hope, but let me trace my steps first...
I have a Macbook Pro with Leopard that I purchased in the summer of 2008. The Boot Camp Assistant helped me partition about 16 GB for Windows, and when the machine restarted the Windows installer took over (did I do the wrong thing, and was I not supposed to insert the CD before restarting?). Weird: it was NTFS formatting 130170 MB (I should've stopped at that since that's different from what I chose to partition and I foolishly assumed it was some Boot Camp-related bug, like Windows didn't really understand what the Macbook Pro was doing behind the scenes).
Then Windows Setup warned about installing Windows on a partition that already had an OS on it, so I stopped the installation and saw my OS X was gone (e.g. there's nothing when I hold down Option on bootup). When I try to install OS X and it asks me where I want to install it, the the Select a Destination window is blank where it usually says Mac HD or whatever (no disk shows up, and I can't click the Options button). If I boot from the OS X CD, Disk Utility shows me a 186.3 GB FUJITSU drive and disk0 under that says it's Windows NT formatted and has a Capacity of 186.3 GB but Available is only 127.5 GB, and this is the only thing that gives me hope that my data is still there on the 50-60 GB of disk that isn't available.
However, I admit that perhaps it's not available just because Windows only formatted that 127.5 GB, so the rest is a nebulous blob. But why did Windows only format part of the disk to begin with if it was trying to format the whole thing? Did the Macbook Pro protect that part of the disk where OS X was residing?
How can I find out and if that's the case, how can I recover it?

No backup. I mean,
Ridiculous, I know!
The guys behind the Genius Bar said nothing could be recovered. At least the Apple Store was kind enough to once again do me a favor even though I've never had AppleCare. The guy wanted to check to make sure the memory wasn't negatively affected, so they kept the machine for a few hours and reinstalled the OS.
When I got it home, I tried Boot Camp again, and I saw the same weird issue: after Boot Camp created a partition for Windows, the Windows Setup running from my XP Pro CD did NOT see that partition (it only saw one volume). This time I Googled around and found out other folks have run into this issue.
Someone suggested I try a different Win XP CD in case that was the problem, and sure enough, a different Win XP CD was able to see the partition created for Windows by Boot Camp! Both of these CDs had SP2 and both had nice and shiny holograms on them, so I'm not sure what the difference was--I got both of them so long ago I don't even remember the story behind each one. Anyway, now I've got Windows on my machine (which I needed for a training class I'm taking).
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1422321
Looks like someone else wiped their drive because of this after some person trying to be helpful gave them bad advice that led them to commit the same travesty that plunged me into depression last night! Take a look:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=438572
Thanks for all the suggestions...

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Formatted external hard drive, trying to recover files I missed off when backing up.

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The thumbnail is quicktime and it opens in quicktime as default.
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If anyone has any further knowledge of recovering any sorts of FCPX or video files from a formatted hard drive then I'd be very appreciative.
I imagine the FCP projects and events or anything to do with that are gone forever, just can't work out anything else I can do to salvage clips.
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Lost Hard Drive How to Recover Data?

Hello Apple Team,
I hope someone at Apple can help me with my problem. I was partitioning my secondary Hard Drive on bay 2 using boot camp assistants to partition my HD and I partition the whole drive. I lost all my personal data and would love to get it back. Can someone help me with a how-to or and application to fix this problem.
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Basics of File Recovery
If you empty the Trash the files are gone. Recovery is possible but you must not allow any additional writes to the hard drive - shut it down. When you delete files you erase only the directory entries, not the files themselves. However, the space occupied by the files has been returned to the system as available for storage. 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 with 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.

Lost hard drive space

Hi, I just bought mac mini which is working great but I have lost a lot of hard drive space. My mini says it has 74.5 GB hard drive according to the system profiler, but after doing the transferring of information as per the Mac mini user guide using a firewire cable between my old emac and my mini now I only have 12.3 GB left on my hard drive.
I know I had about 22 GB of info on my emac, so does that mean the the mini comes with over 40 GB’s of stuff on it from the factory? I think maybe I messed up some place. I know I now have two administrators on the mini. One is the new one I set up, the other is the old one that was transferred from the emac.
I must have duplicated something, but if anybody has any ideas on how to gain back some lost hard drive space I love to hear form you.
Thanks, Brad
Ps. I tried to post last night but today when I went to find it nothing came up. I hope I'm not double posting.

Thanks Ian, I did what you suggested and down loaded "whatsize" then ran the program. What it found was that in the Library>Logs>Console>502file there was a strange log in file that and 25GB's of ishock controller logons.
I guess what happened is that when I transferred the info from my emac the ishock controller app. and driver was also transferred but the mac mini didn't like that. Every time I started up the computer it would cause the ishock to logon which took up a bunch of hard drive space. So I just deleted the file restarted and like magic I gained back 25 GB's
Thanks for your help!
Brad

Help! Need to recover lost hard drive data after creating a partition!

So, I'm the world's biggest idiot, and I was trying to reformat my hard drive so that I could bring the documents from my Mac to my PC.
All of the docs were perfectly organized in folders and subfolders a long time ago, and once that had been done, I deleted everything off of the MacBook itself. I never thought I'd have to move all of the docs to a PC, but alas, nothing ever goes the way we plan now does it?
Anyways, I created a FAT 32 partition not realizing it would delete everything I already had on the hard drive, so now I need to recover all of that.
Is there ANY way that I can recover all the data I lost?
Pls respond.

When you create a partition, the partition is the erased so all content is lost. There are data recovery services that may be able to recover the material, but they are very, very expensive, if they can even succeed with this kind of erasure.
Check and see if there are any hard drive data recovery services in your area.

ITune lost in damage hard drive, how to recover all the songs.

Hi everyone, I has lost my iTune in a damage hard drive, now I wanted to sync my iPod with iMac and still wanted to recover my song in the iPod, any one please help.
Thanks in advance.

Basics of File Recovery
If you empty the Trash the files are gone. Recovery is possible but you must not allow any additional writes to the hard drive - shut it down. When you delete files you erase only the directory entries, not the files themselves. However, the space occupied by the files has been returned to the system as available for storage. 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 with 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.

Old unreadable hard drives - looking to recover files

I have two old hard drives - both from my first iMac (Bondi Blue, purchased in early 1999). The first one "died" sometime in 2002 (blinking folder/question mark) so I replaced it with the second one. Eventually the second died the same death (both OS9).
I moved on and have been with my G5 ever since (2005).
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So I removed the hard drive and replaced it with each of my hard drives. Of course, same old story: each drive was unreadable (blinking folder/question mark).
I don't have the original install discs (in fact I don't have any install discs).
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Bottom line is:
I have 2 "dead" hard drives (blinking folder/question mark):
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and I have a slot-loading iMac (CRT) with no install discs and only my G5 keyboard/mouse to use it with.
I've done a lot of research looking for any possible way of recovering files from these drives, but all information inevitably leads to "see a data recovery specialist'.
I imagine I will get the same advice here, but I absolutely can't afford the upwards of $1,000 it could cost for that service.
Am I out of luck completely? Should I put the drives back into storage until I can afford a recovery specialist?
Thanks.

Last week, looking to fiddle with the old drives, I bought a slot-loading iMac CRT on craigslist for $25, no keyboard or mouse. It has a working hard drive with OSX installed. The keyboard/mouse from my G5 work fine on it.
So I removed the hard drive and replaced it with each of my hard drives. Of course, same old story: each drive was unreadable (blinking folder/question mark).
I doubt this would boot. You do not have the drivers on your version of Mac OS to support newer hardware.
All I have is a Norton Utilities disc, which the computer will not start up from no matter which hard drive (including the working one) I have attached (I suspect that even though I press 'C', the newer keyboard takes longer to be recognized and is not readable upon startup). I also tried booting from the Norton CD using open firmware with no luck.
Lots of bad reports about Norton. They stopped updating the utility, so user beware.
"Stellar Phoenix Macintosh - Mac data recovery software, recovers data from damaged, deleted, or corrupted volumes and even from initialized disks."
They have a trial version, so I guess you can see if your data can be recovered...
http://www.stellarinfo.com/mac-data-recovery.htm
"Data Rescue II is the best data recovery software on the market for recovering files from a problem hard drive. Data Rescue II works when other tools fail. Data Rescue II is also completely safe to use since it does not attempt any risky repairs to the drive while its scanning."
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php
FileSalvage is an extremely powerful Macintosh application for exploring and recovering deleted files from a drive or volume. FileSalvage is designed to restore files that have:
* been accidentally deleted.
* become unreadable due to media faults.
* been stored on a drive before it was re-initialized/formatted.
http://subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/index.php?mainpage=product_info&productsid=1

Computer Crashed, Got New Hard Drive, Trying to Sync iPod

I recently got an iPod and uploaded hundreds of my albums into it. Shortly after that, my computer crashed, and though I was able to recover a lot of stuff, my iTunes library was decimated. I have a new hard drive now and when I went to add some stuff to my iPod I was told that I had to erase everything from this iPod and replace it with the new stuff because my iPod doesn't recognized this librarly. I guess my iPod is still "synched" with the no longer existing iTunes library lost in the crash.
Does this mean I can never add anything to my iPod unless I laboriously transfer hundreds of albums again and then add from there? I hope not!
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Frank Palmieri

Frank,
Are the songs still on your iPod?
Copying from iPod to Computer threads...
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=776996&tstart=0
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=805256&tstart=0
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=797432&#797432
Also these useful internet articles...
http://www.engadget.com/2004/11/02/how-to-get-music-off-your-ipod/
http://playlistmag.com/help/2005/01/2waystreet/
iPod: Frequently Asked Questions
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60920
Patrick

Lost Hard drive need the Tarantella 3 program for Redhat 8

Does anyone know where I can find Tarantella3 for Redhat 8? I have my
Certificate of License and Authencity document, but I lost my hard drive
which contained the Tarantella install program. Obviously I cannot pull
the license out of the product because the hd failed.

I tried that and input my license key in the format
XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX and the screen displayed "invalid key".
This was never accepted. Any idea why?
Carmelo wrote:
The COLA should have the license key. Register on Customer Central and
you should be able to get to the Downloads section and download 3.30.
Then use the keys from the COLA to license your server.
UnixUser wrote:
My license is for 3.3. That is the version that I had and I really do
not wish to upgrade. If there is a charge to get that version what is
it?
Carmelo wrote:
UnixUser wrote:
Does anyone know where I can find Tarantella3 for Redhat 8? I have
my Certificate of License and Authencity document, but I lost my
hard drive which contained the Tarantella install program.
Obviously I cannot pull the license out of the product because the
hd failed.Exactly what version do you have a COLA for? You can download
Tarantella v3.42.947 that will install on Redhat 8 from
http://www.tarantella.com/download
if you need an older version then you need to have registered or have
Maintenance with us. You can register @
https://custcentral.tarantella.com -> Downloads
You need 3.4x licenses for the last two versions of the product.
If you need to upgrade see
http://www.tarantella.com/products/ee/upgrade.html
Regards,

Lost hard drive space to "other"?

I see someone else had a similar question, and I've tried to follow some of the steps that person took, but to no avail! Briefly, something is eating hard drive space on my work macbook, and I can't figure out what, nor how to get the space back. I edit film of our library program and also sound files for our local history collection, so I do use quite a bit of space. About once a week, I do a time machine backup, and also move finished projects to the external drive. This has always given me enough room to work - until now. I had more than 30 gigs left on my drive before importing the latest 45 minute movie. Now I have less than 8. I'm not sure I've enough room left even to burn it to DVD before offloading the raw footage. Things I noticed:
1.)I don't know if this is a Mavericks thing, but, when I was deleting files from the macbook hard drive, they didn't seem to be in the trash. The command to empty the trash was greyed out.
2.)I looked at the previous thread (the poster who had 300 gigs missing). Like him, I have mystery files in storage - namely, 49 gigs in "other". My life would be a lot simpler if I could get that space back!
What I've done so far: Run OmniDiskSweeper and thrown out some older movies and music that should now be on the external drive.
Opened the Disk utility and repaired permissions and checked the drive. All okay.
Tried to run the daily, weekly, and monthly scripts in Terminal.
As per the previous thread, tried turning off Time Machine, turning it on again, backing up again, and turning it off.
All this did nothing for me. I am still missing close to 50 gigs of space - space I could really use.
OmniDiskSweeper tells me that I have used 73.4 G out of 120. "Get Info" tells me that I've used closer to 113 out of 120. "About This Mac" tells me that I have 49 G in "Other", whatever and wherever that is. How can I get rid of these "other" files and happily edit my films? And how can I keep this from happening again?
Thanks very much in advance!
Mary

About “Other”:
http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202867
Go step by step and test.
1. Start up in Safe Mode.
    http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11212
2. Empty Trash.
   http://support.apple.com/kb/PH13806
3. Delete "Recovered Messages", if any.
    Hold the option key down and click "Go" menu in the Finder menu bar.
    Select "Library" from the dropdown.
    Library > Mail > V2 > Mailboxes
    Delete "Recovered Messages", if any.
    Empty Trash. Restart.
4. Delete old iOS Devices Backup.
    iTunes > Preferences > Devices
    Highlight the old Backups , press “Delete Backup” and then “OK”.
    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4946?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
5. Re-index Macintosh HD.
   Do this twice. This re-indexing will take hours to produce reliable stats in Storage/ About this Mac.
   System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy
   http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2409

Leopard install on ibook lost hard drive

I tried to install leopard on my macbook and installation completed. the system restarted and the installer came back. My hard drive is no longer recognized and I cannot get the install disk out.
Any ideas on how to get my hard drive back?

Hello Dave:
To get the disk out, restart your computer while holding the mouse click down.
You indicate that the installation completed - that should not happen.
Assuming you were able to eject the disk, I would boot from the install disk and run repair disk (not permissions).
Barry

Problem with backing up to external hard drive and then " recovering " files, apps etc.

Hi there,
I hope you can help me please, I have messed some things up from not knowing what I was doing : ( and would like to fix them if possible.
I will try to be brief and concise. Here goes....
1. My 2006 iMac 4 running Leopard OSX was starting to run very slowly. My hard drive had 232 GB of which 220 GB were being used. The thing using most space was iPhoto, over 60 GB of photos.
2. I downloaded Mackeeper and ran their cleaning program, getting rid of duplicate files, clearing caches etc. but it didn't release much extra space, just a couple of gigs.
3. I read an article from Maclife " 25 ways to speed up your Mac ". One of the tips was to reinstall the operating system which I did, using the " archive and install " instruction.
4. I now have Leopard OS under a new account name which is running faster but I cannot access various apps such as iPhoto, Photoshop CS4, Keynote, Pages etc.
5. Everything prior to me messing around is now in a folder called " previous system ".
6. I realize now that I should have first bought a new external hard drive, which I now have done ; an Iomega 500 GB with USB 2.0 and that I should have backed up everything first before messing around. Hindsight is a great thing.
7. Having connected the ext. hard drive, I was looking for info on what I should do next when Time Machine kicked in and automatically started copying everything, without me having to do anything such as formatting etc.
8. Everything that was on the hard drive ( 220 GBs ) has been copied to the ext. HD so I hope I haven't lost anything, especially my photos on iPhoto and CS4.
9. Other 3rd party apps haven't been effected but now I would like to integrate everything back into one seamless, quick flowing system.
10. How can I do this ?
Any advice or help would be appreciated.
Thanks, Sean.

UPDATE : I have re-installed from disk, various apps that were no longer functioning such as iLife, iWork etc. So, I now can access my photos again.
Also, I had to re-install all the software for my printer ( Stylus Pro 4880 ) and reset it so the printer is working again.
Photoshop CS4 won't open. I think I will have to get in touch with Adobe as basically, I guess they have a built-in "blocker" which prevents me from opening the app as the license is for only 1 user and having re-installed the OS, there are now, in effect, 2 users ( Me and Me 1, I think ).
So, having added on a new external HD, Time Machine has made a copy of most of the files, folders, apps etc onto the external HD. The internal HD is still nearly full ( 220 GBs out of 232 GBs ).
I am guessing the way to go now in order to free up space on the internal HD is to delete/trash older photos from my iPhoto library and hope that if needed, I will be able to access them on the external HD.
Am I correct ? Please advise before I do something I will regret.
Thanks, Sean.

Dead Hard Drive - How to Recover?

The hard drive in my iMac recently "died". The Apple Store diagnosed my problem as a failed drive.
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The Apple Store has replaced my drive (under Apple Care Warranty) and now I have an iMac with a fresh install of OS X and nothing else.
Is there a documented procedure on how to recover my home-user folders (including Library), the system Applications folder, and the System Library folder to bring my refreshed Mac back to the previous state?

Kevin,
Tailor these instructions to match whatever you have done so far within the new installation...
1) Create new accounts within the new installation, using the exact same usernames and short names that existed in the old installation.
2) Enable the "root" account, then log in as root.
3) From the root account, navigate to the "Users" folder. Move all of the newly created HOME folders to the trash. Connect the drive that houses the backed up data, and locate the same-named HOME folders there. Drag them to the new "Users" folder, replacing the folders you moved to the trash.
4) Open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal. At the prompt, type the following:
<pre style="overflow:auto; font-family: 'Monaco'; font-size: 10px">chown -R username:staff /Users/username</pre>
In the text above, you will replace all instances of "username" with the short name for a replaced account. If the short name is "fred," for example, you will type the following exactly:
<pre style="overflow:auto; font-family: 'Monaco'; font-size: 10px">chown -R fred:staff /Users/fred</pre>
Verify that the text is correct, then press <RETURN>. When you return to the prompt, perform the same task for the next replaced account, or quit Terminal.
5) Log into the replaced accounts to test that everything works as expected. If so, log back into the root account, empty the trash, then log out of and disable the root account.
It would be best if you just reinstalled any third-party applications. Keep in mind that the data, settings, etc. for those applications already exist within the restored HOME folders.
Scott

Just got a new hard drive, trying to down load new software and it tells me there is not enough hard drive space to install

I have a new hard drive on my Macbook. I am trying to install a program from a disk. I keep getting an error message that states I do not have enought free space on my HD. My storage shows that I have plenty of space to install. What do I need to do? I do not have any photos, music or movies on my computer. I haven't had time to reinstall any programs, so this is one program that I need to install and it won't let me install.
Lisa

That refers to the RAM you have installed. Must be 2 GBs or more.

Lost hard drive, can I retrieve music from ipod?

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