Need help recovering files form external drive!

Well, I made a stupid mistake this morning. I am used to the Windows style of copying where if you have folders with the same name and it asks if you want to overwrite the folder, it typically merges the contents.
Apparently in OSX, when you overwrite a folder, it removes the content from the previous folder and proceeds to copy the folder..
So I went to backup from my laptops drive to my external and I copied the folder and it asked about the overwrite and I said okay and instantly had the thought that it was a bad idea and stopped it after only two images and the drive works perfectly fine, just missing a lot of images.
So how can I recover these images? I haven't used the drive since to ensure that I didn't overwrite the files... What recover software do you recommend for OSX? Especially looking for a free solution.. I don't have $80 to plop down on a more conventional program. Also, are there programs that can place the images in the folders they came from? Would take a while to try and restore my folder structure as well...
I did try the program PhotoRec that is free and open-source but it searches the whole drive and can't focus only on deleted files with the HFS+ file structures, which means there will be TONS and TONS of images that it 'recovers' that are already just fine on the drive.
Any help is GREATLY appreciated! I 'lost' nearly the whole years pictures. But I know they are all still there.
Thank you, thank you, thank you...
- KS

There isn't a free solution for data recovery, and even the commercial solutions may not be able to recover all the files, since you had already started writing to the drive.
More importantly, you said you deleted files from your backup drive, right? So, if it's a backup, don't you still have copies of those files elsewhere? If you don't, you need to quit thinking of this drive as a backup, because it isn't a backup if it contains the only copies of the images on it.

Similar Messages

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    Jerry -- sorry, this thread slipped by.  I haven't had the time recently to be attentive.
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    1.  Don't be afraid to experiment -- set up a practice Library and use it to experiment.  That's how all of us learned what we know.
    2.  Your situation is a little peculiar, and I'm going to recommend something I wouldn't otherwise.  First, backup your system and confirm your backup.  Then go ahead and use Finder to copy all the Finder folders and files in question, intact, to a new drive.  Then delete the ones on your system drive.  Then open Aperture and run "File➞Locate Referenced Files" to re-attach your Aperture Images to your moved files.  You may have to run "File➞Locate Referenced Files" more than once (but most likely not) in order to end up with no Images that have missing Originals.  (If you need to, search for posts on the board about using this command.)
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  • Need help moving photos to external drive

    Hi, all--here's hoping one or more of you Aperture veterans can help.
    Here's my situation: I'm not new to photography, but I'm new to Aperture. Just bought 3.3 and still getting to know what it can do. I'm an emigre from iPhoto, and one of the reasons I upgraded within Apple is that I was tired of the non-intuitive nature of PS Elements. I like to take pictures, not spend endless time in the dim glow of a screen digging through sub-menus for stuff, and from what I read, Aperture seemed more intuitive.
    But now I've got a seemingly very basic problem that hours of poring over discussion threads and searching through the hundreds of pages of the manual has done little to address with any clarity:
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    Can somebody who knows how to do this safely please explain in clear language how to move photos as projects onto external hard drives so that Aperture keeps track of them via viewable thumbnails, even when the photo files themselves live on a hard drive that is not connected at the time?
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    First things first:
    You can easily check if an image is managed or referenced by ctrl-clicking on an image version and selecting "Locate referenced files...". If Aperture says "No Referenced Files", your originals are managed by Aperture and stored within the library itself, otherwise it should show you the location of the original, and give you some options to verify the references and so on. I don't know which method is used when importing from iPhoto.
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    If you have vast amounts of originals, spread across multiple drives, it might make sense to keep the library on your laptop and connect whichever external drive you need at the time. However, it might also make more sense to split such a huge library into mutiple libraries, stored with their respective originals (which could be either managed or referenced).
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    Message was edited by: KluZz (oops, premature submission)

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    Message was edited by: LarryHN

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