Recovering data with Testdisk?

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Recovering data with Testdisk?

First: I know almost nothing about computers, so what seems like an easy step (like booting from the disk that wasn't erased) needs to be made explicit.

Short story: I booted from the Snow Leopard install disk (I was running Mountain Lion when my computer started lagging), I erased everything in the "MACINTOSH HD" disk (is it called disk or volume or partition?) in Disk Utilities and then I re-installed Snow Leopard and then Mountain Lion. By "everything" I mean the journaled, case-sensitive, etc. selections. Upon realizing my music and photos weren't saved to Dropbox, I tried to create a new disk image to boot up from and run Testdisk. This is where I'm stuck. I have no idea what I'm doing and anything I know right now is an aggregate of frantic Google searches. How do I go about recovering, if possible? I didn't write over all of my files... yet. Help :/.

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3)

Posted on Mar 17, 2013 10:54 PM

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Answer 1

oatmeallvr93 Author

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Mar 22, 2013 1:45 AM in response to oatmeallvr93

I'll clarify what happened:

1. I was messing around in the Terminal for a while, trying to install PIL.

2. My computer started having a lot of problems. It was slow to the point that simple mouse movements would take minutes. Restarts failed to solve the problem, and in fact, restarts would take quite a long time and I would be gray-screened.

3. I tried to move all of my files to Dropbox because I had nothing else to save my files on at the time and I feared an imminent crash.

4. At this point, my computer was completely frozen and restarts would only lead to freezing upon login.

5. I decided to factory reset with these instructions: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4390401?start=0&tstart=0. However, I did not zero pass or do any write-overs. I just erased MACINTOSH HD.

6. I re-installed Snow Leopard, and everything was speedy as could be, back to normal... but only some files had been moved to my Dropbox.

Here's what I'm trying to do now:

Recover photos. Text files were backed up, not the photos.

How should I proceed?

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Answer 2

Mar 18, 2013 6:27 AM in response to oatmeallvr93

Your post is extremely confusing.

But I tried to use Testdisk recently to recover an external hdd.

Long story short I gave up on Testdisk and used Easeus instead, which has an easier user interface and no need to mess about with various terminal commands.

You may need to use another computer to recover your stuff though. (I cannot remember whether you can run these programmes on the hdd you're trying to rescue (even if you have a seperate partition).

Try Data Recovery 3 - I seem to remember this one you can run on your computer but you need to save to an external hardrive.

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Answer 3

oatmeallvr93 Author

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Mar 22, 2013 1:21 AM in response to GalacticExports

Thanks for your response, Galactic. I'm trying Easeus right now, but I'm not sure how to use additional computers and external harddrives for data recovery. Which parts of my post are confusing?

Also, is there a way to use the trial to preview and then recover the files without having to buy the software?

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Answer 4

Mar 22, 2013 2:09 AM in response to oatmeallvr93

I've had some luck with Data Rescue3 - but I've only used it on disks where I've trashed files, NOT reformatted. If I were you, I'd get in touch with the developers of DiskWarrior and see if their utility might be of any use to you.

Good luck,

Clinton

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Answer 5

Mar 25, 2013 8:51 AM in response to oatmeallvr93

Hi your subsequent posts made more sense, much more explicit. I can't imagine you'd have much trouble recovering photos using any of the programmes mentioned, however, come to think of it, like Clinton - I don't think I've actually recovered anything after formatting, only from trashes. I'd definitely follow his advice too, depending on whether you have any success.
With regards to external harddrives - I think Data Rescue 3 requires an external USB hard drive to transfer the recovered data to. With Easeus, I believe it's the other way around. You could try purchasing an external USB hard drive caddy maybe so that you can whip out your computers harddrive, put it in a caddy, then plug it into a different computer via USB, and then run Easeus on that computer (a bit laborious really though).
With regards to the free trials vs full purchase, I really don't know. I suspect these guys will want some of your cash in exchange for their services so without advocating piracy (which I don't want to do) you might have to buy some stuff - I would make enquiries/do research to find out whether a particular software is going to be worth the money though and will actually help you.

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