Help! Accidentally formatted hard disk with data on it (Macintosh)

Simon · 2009-09-03, 04:56 PM

I made an idiot mistake and formatted an external 1.4 TB hard drive that had data on it. I meant to just reserve a new partition via Disk Utility for use by Time Machine backups but accidentally erased all 250 GB of existing data on the external drive too.

I didn't do any kind of secure erase, so I'm pretty sure all of the data is right there but all the pointers to it are gone.

Looking online at Apple support and other links found via Google it seems these are the four utility programs most often suggested for recovering data lost this way:

FileSalvage v6.1.5 from SubRosaSoft

Data Rescue II from ProSoft Engineering

Stellar Phoenix Macintosh Data Recovery v4.0 from Stellar Data Recovery

File Recovery for Mac from AppleXsoft

Price is just under $100 for any of them, so before I buy one I thought I'd see if anyone has used any of them, been happy or unhappy with the results, or has any other suggestions for data recovery on Macintosh.

Cleo? cd34? anyone..?

Note: I have not touched the external drive since accidentally formatting it. Nothing has been copied to it, so everything should still be right where it was.

2009-09-03, 04:56 PM	#1
Simon That which does not kill us, will try, try again. Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Conch Republic Posts: 5,150	Help! Accidentally formatted hard disk with data on it (Macintosh) I made an idiot mistake and formatted an external 1.4 TB hard drive that had data on it. I meant to just reserve a new partition via Disk Utility for use by Time Machine backups but accidentally erased all 250 GB of existing data on the external drive too. I didn't do any kind of secure erase, so I'm pretty sure all of the data is right there but all the pointers to it are gone. Looking online at Apple support and other links found via Google it seems these are the four utility programs most often suggested for recovering data lost this way: FileSalvage v6.1.5 from SubRosaSoft Data Rescue II from ProSoft Engineering Stellar Phoenix Macintosh Data Recovery v4.0 from Stellar Data Recovery File Recovery for Mac from AppleXsoft Price is just under $100 for any of them, so before I buy one I thought I'd see if anyone has used any of them, been happy or unhappy with the results, or has any other suggestions for data recovery on Macintosh. Cleo? cd34? anyone..? Note: I have not touched the external drive since accidentally formatting it. Nothing has been copied to it, so everything should still be right where it was. __________________ "If you're happy and you know it, think again." -- Guru Pitka