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

[MeatPounder]

I'm amazed how many windows users have full shadow copy turned off

[Damian]

Data Rescue 2 is meant to be good.

Or, you just use the back up of the data you lost. You *do* have that backed up right?

[Simon]

Originally Posted by cd34

I hope you get your files back, but, time machine has now saved me twice.

Glad to hear your problem was solved so easily. That's why I was preparing this external drive. Unfortunately this is a case where Time Machine won't be of any use since this was an external hard drive used for backups and archiving, not an internal drive with Time Machine keeping it all safely backed up.

Originally Posted by MeatPounder

I'm amazed how many windows users have full shadow copy turned off

I'm amazed how many people use Windows.*

Originally Posted by Damian

Data Rescue 2 is meant to be good. Or, you just use the back up of the data you lost. You *do* have that backed up right?

Not all of it. Some is duplicated on my other external hard drives, and in most cases the originals will be on one of my notebook computers, but since the accidentally-formatted drive was used to hold backups of data including some archives, it may have had some data that doesn't exist anywhere else.

At this point I'm looking to scan the drive and see exactly what's on it that I'd want to recover. Some of what's on there I don't really need to recover if I have good copies somewhere else. But I think there are some things on there I'd like to get back.

ProSoft sent me the download link for the Data Rescue II demo so I'll be running that this morning. Hopefully it'll show me what it could recover if I had the full version and I can see what's still there.

* I say this as someone who just spent days upgrading and tweaking a Toshiba notebook running Windows XP. I've used both, but I only use Windows when I absolutely have no other choice or want to see check out a site using it.

[Damian]

Wow.

Dude, drives are so so so so cheap now, for me, there really is no excuse for not having the following:

- main drive
- mirrored bootable backup of that drive (so you can carry on working when your drive dies)
- cloud storage back up (so you can access your shit whereever you are)
- physical off site back up (for when your place is robbed or burns down)

How much would the 250 gig of content you might have just lost cost to replace? I wager more than the 20 bucks a spare 250 gig drive would cost!

I know this isn't helping you and I'm not meaning to sound harsh but if you don't have a back up and redundancy for that back up, when drives are so damn cheap then it's a bit silly, really.

Let us know how the recovery goes though...

[Simon]

Originally Posted by Damian

Wow.

Dude, drives are so so so so cheap now, for me, there really is no excuse for not having the following:

- main drive
- mirrored bootable backup of that drive (so you can carry on working when your drive dies)
- cloud storage back up (so you can access your shit whereever you are)
- physical off site back up (for when your place is robbed or burns down)

How much would the 250 gig of content you might have just lost cost to replace? I wager more than the 20 bucks a spare 250 gig drive would cost!

I know this isn't helping you and I'm not meaning to sound harsh but if you don't have a back up and redundancy for that back up, when drives are so damn cheap then it's a bit silly, really.

Let us know how the recovery goes though...

Damiam, I don't know you and you don't know me, so you don't have any way to know that my backup strategy has kept me safe from all data loss for 25 years now. I agree with what you're saying, Damian, but I hope you understand that offering general backup advice isn't of much help in this case. I do have an external boot drive for emergencies and for all important data I do have backups of backups of backups, three levels with at least one off-site, but this drive *may* have a few things on it which I'd still like to recover. Which is why I'll scan it first to determine that for certain before recopying the backups from other drives onto it.

I asked for feedback on data recovery software for Macintosh users since I haven't had a need to recover any lost data for so long that I'm not sure which ones are the best today. I didn't ask for input on what I should be doing to protect my existing data since I do know how to do that.

Anyway, I promise not to come to webmaster shows and tell you all about the generally accepted strategies magicians should always use to ensure that the crowd can't discover how you do your tricks. In exchange I'd ask that you offer advice on my specific questions if you have some, but keep the general backup strategy advice ready in case someone else asks for it.

I think we'll both come off looking a bit better that way.

[Damian]

Originally Posted by Simon

In exchange I'd ask that you offer advice on my specific questions if you have some, but keep the general backup strategy advice ready in case someone else asks for it.

Fair point.

But feel free to offer me any advice about magic (or online marketing) you may have, whenever you like. I love to learn.