Erased wrong Drive in disk utility when formatting.

Hello,
I just did something really careless. I just bought a new firewire drive for media and was formatting it in disk utility. I mistakenly erased the wrong drive and have now lost over 900GB of data. I just ejected the drive as soon as I realized what I had done and have not written anything on it since. I'm wondering if there is a way to recover the lost data without spending a fortune. Can anyone offer advice?
Thank you.
Jroweski.

You could try something like [subrosasoft.com] or a number of others in the same vein. 900GB is gonna take a looooong time. Taking the drive to a data recovery service also mostly works, but can be thousands of dollars.

Don't use the drive for anything else until you've got this sorted, obv.

Thanks. I check it out. I don't mind the time or the $80 as long as there is a chance to recover.

Also Datarescue 3 [www.prosofteng.com]

There is a demo you can try to see if you can recover something before you buy.



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

Jroweski, recovery works if you did a quick formatting, not if you zeroed the drive. Which recovery software to choose depends on what kinds of files the drive contained. For picture and video files I recommend PhotoRescue, just $29.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

i feel your pain! - that kind of thing is a killer - hope you recover your data mate - good luck with it. i lost a doco on an artist due to similar circumstance.

on the flip-side in the distant past, i have found that when you're under pressure to re-create lost material you often go on to supersede the initial works. of course this doesn't help with deadline-commericial projects but can be of some value regards personal works.

best of luck with recovering your files . .

Bluey,

I hit erase in disk utility, check Mac OS Extended No (Journaled) in Volume format, gave it a name and clicked erase again. Is that quick formatting or zeroing the drive? It is video and pictures I'm needing to recover.

Thanks Bluey. Yeah, it was a pretty awful feeling when I realized what I had done. Luckily, worst case scenario I have to re-log and capture everything which will take days but at least I'm not totally out.

I feel your pain as does, clearly, everyone else. But greatly relieved that you do have the original files.

Best,

Harry.

That wasn't a zeroing. You should be fine.

Jroweski Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Luckily, worst
> case scenario I have to re-log and capture
> everything which will take days but at least I'm
> not totally out.
If you have session files on another drive that you can use then re-capturing maybe a better option.

[www.prosofteng.com]



www.strypesinpost.com

Just a note on history.

Formating a drive is to replace/reorder ALLand EVERYTHING on the physical drive. That isn't a problem with SCSI drive as they don't store 'firmware settings' on the disk itself. During formating the other hardware settings of the drive will be updated.
With the cheaper (s)ATA drives this information is stored on some 'secure' blocks on the disk. Formating will make the disk totally unusable
With those tools I know available for the Mac (nowadays) you can't format a drive -- you can initialize (or erase) the hard disk which leaves some essential blocks untouched.
So if you ever come to a disk tool which allows to format your drive, never do do it.

Andreas

Re-log and capture? Keep your autosave vault tagged to your system drive and your project file on the media drive and all other non timecoded media backed up in a vault under armed supervision. This way, all you need is to do is to do a batch capture.



www.strypesinpost.com

I just spent two days using File Salvage (subrosasoft) and the results were not very good. The video I wanted to save either came back with no sound or each file went to snow after just a few seconds. Also, file name recovery portion of the recovery (step 3) got stuck on a file about midway through and I finally cancelled. I did the scan block to block and am wondering if byte to byte would produce better results. Is Data rescue 3 a better program or should I bite the bullet and recapture?

There is a trial. Try it.



www.strypesinpost.com

Thanks for all the feedback. It was very helpful. FYI, Subrosasoft is giving refunds to all who purchased Filesalvage 7.0 for the purposes of trying to save erased video. It only gives you a few seconds and then goes to snow. It does save AVI files however. I tried the trial for Datarescue 3 and the resulting sample salvage was not impressive.
So, I am going to spend the several days needed to log and recapture everything. Heck, it's only 710 GB.
Anyway, thanks for the help. Been a LEARNING experience.
Jroweski

They say you don't actually have data unless you have it twice. In practice, it's more like three times. Two backups of anything you don't want to lose. And they have to be updated. I've been doing a bunch of non-recoverable music work and I've already done three backups in less than two weeks. In cases like these, where lots of files are generated quickly and regularly, a RAID1 or RAID5 with redundancy is the way to go. In your case, where it's one big chunk generated at the beginning with changes only to a few small files (ie. project file) regularly, two backups will suffice.


www.derekmok.com