Deleted file recovery - NTFS/HFS+

If they've been written over, and likely have, then there's nothing which will recover them. Not anything you can buy anyway. There is a method involving specialized hardware and software to try and rebuild the previous waveforms that have been written over, but you can probably guess it would cost as much as your house to recover the data.

There is no Mac software that can do that. You would be looking for Windows software.

The HFS data and formatting are just noise, as far as you're concerned. The NTFS data -- what's left of it, if anything -- is the signal. You have an NTFS volume that has been partially overwritten with random bits.

There is Data Rescue 3 and FileSalvage for the Mac.

They both work by scouring the hard drive for BOF (Beginning Of File) markers that don't have a matching pointer to that file in the drive's live file table. Meaning, it's been deleted. They then read the file header information at the BOF marker to see how many bytes the file should be so it knows when it reaches the EOF (End Of File) marker that it has read the correct amount of information for the file being recovered.

Now what I don't know is if either program will pay any attention to, or recognize data written originally as NTFS. Neither program will work on anything but an HFS+ drive, so they may not see anything written under NTFS. They both have demo software you can download. It's worth a shot.

If that doesn't work, the only other option you can do yourself is to put the drive back in a Windows computer and do a quick erase of the drive back to NTFS. That will only overwrite the HFS+ file table with a new NTFS table, so the data on the drive itself will not be formatted. Then you could try a file recovery software from Windows. After that, the only option is a place like DriveSavers. And that ain't cheap.

But Windows can't even read HFS+ natively though, so why would I need a windows app?

A Mac on Windows software can be used in which Mac software can be installed in a Windows PC and attaching a Mac hard drive to it and recover your lost data.

Mac software can be installed in a Windows PC

Not only is that difficult to do (and almost always ends up in an OS X installation that runs badly), it's illegal.

I Mean a third party Mac Data Recovery software which runs on Windows based PC as a (Mac Recovery on Windows Host)....which can read Mac files on Windows based system.

Ah! Hmm, I'm not sure there is one. Haven't looked though. Do you know of one? All those I've seen are platform specific. Mac software will only recover Mac drives; Windows software will only recover Microsoft formats (FAT16, FAT32, NTFS).

Edit: R-Studio is rated highly and can read all MS, Linux, UFS1/USF2 and Apple drive formats. There's Stellar Phoenix, but it cannot read NTFS. According to a chart I was looking at on another site, FileSalvage can also read MS drives. Their review states it supports all common Mac OS X file system types, including HFS, HFSX and HFS+ as well as FAT12/16/32, NTFS/NTFS5, ext2fs and other file system types, though the company's own documentation doesn't mention it.

I see from the same referance which you provide that Stellar Phoenix has one more version of Mac Recovery which works on Windows based PC i-e Mac on Windows that said if your Mac hard drive is crashed or your Mac is not booting properly you can attach your Mac hard drive on windows based systems and run Stellar Phoenix Mac on Windows software to recover your lost data.

I hope this may be helpful...

you can attach your Mac hard drive on windows based systems and run Stellar Phoenix Mac on Windows software to recover your lost data.

That would be a pretty nice feature. Not saying I don't believe you, but I couldn't find that reference in the Windows version. Could you please link to the correct page?

Rather than moving the drive, I'd use DiskWarrior. It not only repairs drive, but has a Scavenge function to look for lost files.

Here is the page where i found this software

Mac Recovery on Windows

I hope it helps !!

Thanks, allensood. I managed to look right past that page.

That actually is a very nice option to have! If a drive's file table is damaged enough, it may not be recognized by the Mac OS. Then you can't do anything with it using DiskWarrior, Tech Tool Pro, Drive Genius, FileSalvage or Data Rescue. The drive has to show up in the system first.