Ley Fey

Q: My hard drive removed from a laptop  no photograph files left can I recover them?

Please HELP with advice someone if you can. I had a white unibody laptop which was snow leopard but upgraded to Lion. A couple months ago my daughter splashed a small amount of water on it whilst it was unplugged when I was working on it. No apparent damage but the battery was low. Later after I forgot about the water splash I (stupidly) unknowinlgly plugged into a power source but it must have 'blew' as it never started up. I may have tried a few times after trying to power up, including holding down power key for a good while but nothing dead.. kaput.

 

A few weeks ago I got myself a new laptop, with mavericks on it. But I really needed my data off old laptop, so I took it to a simply fix it  store who do apple repairs, and they took out the hard drive and put it in a case that could be plugged into my new laptop. I got it home and tried it, but it would not open iphoto obviously because, different system/update issue ect. SoI searched to see if i could find the photo files maually but ll I could find were a few files from my documents. Everything that was on the desk top, music and photo files were missing!. I took it back to simply fix it and they said that they searched everywhere and tried booting it up on an older sytem but they could not find any of the files that were missing.

 

I am gutted, as all my personal photos of which I never backed up are gone. I really need /want some of these pictures back . Does anyone know what may have happened? The guys at simply fix it said , all they done was removed the hard drive, and encase it. They never moved files or anything. Is it possible they may have been damaged with the water and plug into electric? Or could it have been me trying to start it up after water damage and I ruined part of hard drive.

 

The rest of my applications and documents are all ok, its weird just music , desk top, and photo files gone.

 

Is it worthpaying for a data recovery which simply fix it will charge me £100?

 

Any advice much appreciated. Sorry I cant tell you what sytem my old mac was as I dont have the hard drive with me to find out it was bought in Jan 2011 new white unibody snow leopard.

 

Thanks in advance.

MacBook

Posted on Apr 12, 2014 4:24 AM

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Q: My hard drive removed from a laptop  no photograph files left can I recover them?

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  • Helpful answers

  • by Eustace Mendis,

    Eustace Mendis Eustace Mendis Apr 12, 2014 10:40 AM in response to Ley Fey
    Level 7 (25,402 points)
    Apr 12, 2014 10:40 AM in response to Ley Fey

    I take it the external hard drive is visible (i.e. mounted) on the desktop of the new computer. In that case you can try this:

     

    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5296

  • by Ley Fey,

    Ley Fey Ley Fey Apr 12, 2014 5:07 PM in response to Eustace Mendis
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    Apr 12, 2014 5:07 PM in response to Eustace Mendis

    Hi Eustace ,

    Thanks for your input. However I cannot find my libraries on the external hard drive to enable me to merge libraries. This option would also mean that I buy an application (aperture) to merge photo libraries. I don't understand how it can help me unless this applicaiton can also find my library (which I cant see on hard drive for me) Is this what you mean? Basically I am trying to find my lost data, and find out if  its gone for good corrupted or  hopefully recoverable.

    Thanks

     

    Ley

  • by Eustace Mendis,Helpful

    Eustace Mendis Eustace Mendis Apr 12, 2014 5:17 PM in response to Ley Fey
    Level 7 (25,402 points)
    Apr 12, 2014 5:17 PM in response to Ley Fey

    On the old hard drive, look for the Users folder. Your Home folder (the house with your name) is in that folder. Open it. The iPhoto Library is stored in your home folder.

  • by Ley Fey,

    Ley Fey Ley Fey Apr 13, 2014 12:46 AM in response to Eustace Mendis
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    Apr 13, 2014 12:46 AM in response to Eustace Mendis

    Hi, Thanks for reply, I already tried that, the users folder is completely empty. I am wondering if trying to open iphoto from old hd, on new mavericks erased all the data. The only data visible is documents. Everything from my desktop, my photos and itunes are gone. The user folder completely empty with low bytes indicating vanished somehow? Any pointers?

  • by Eustace Mendis,Helpful

    Eustace Mendis Eustace Mendis Apr 13, 2014 4:19 AM in response to Ley Fey
    Level 7 (25,402 points)
    Apr 13, 2014 4:19 AM in response to Ley Fey

    It would be most unusual for an OS installation to erase a folder.

     

    This is a long shot, but worth a try.

    1. Download Carbon Copy Cloner to your new Mac and run it with the old drive connected and mounted.

    2. Select the old drive as the source and the new drive as the destination.

     

    CCC will list all the data it sees on the source. Perhaps it will find your iPhoto library.

     

    There is a free trial version of CCC for download here:

    http://www.bombich.com

  • by Ley Fey,

    Ley Fey Ley Fey Apr 13, 2014 10:24 AM in response to Eustace Mendis
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    Apr 13, 2014 10:24 AM in response to Eustace Mendis

    Thanks  for the tip,

    Thats really helpful, I will try it and get back with results.

  • by Ley Fey,

    Ley Fey Ley Fey Apr 13, 2014 1:42 PM in response to Ley Fey
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    Apr 13, 2014 1:42 PM in response to Ley Fey

    Hi Again, Well I found Carbon Copy Clone on my old hard drive so I didn't even need to download it. I just dragged it onto my desktop and I did as you said.  Using CCC and within the folder of users which has my folder of old hard drive there now shows a file called.autodiskmounted (whatever that means) and then it has a version of my hard drive below that called hard drive 1, which has nothing, but above both of these folders, there is a folder with an old user name which shows up empty on the hard drive when I search it, but actually shows lots of folders on the CCC. So without getting too excited, it lists some folders and amongst them are folders I cant see normally in the old hard drive, like my safari settings and favourites, and movies music and pictures. However in the movies pictures and music folders I can only see a  blackish square that looks a bit like a blank screen with the text.localised after it .

    Does this mean anything to you / Is there  apossibility they may be there? When I selected my new laptop as the destination i got this message below so I did not proceed any further as I'm not sure it will back up the files I need..

     

    To avoid system instability, CCC has applied a filter that will exclude system files from the backup task.

     

    If you would like to restore your Mac OS X system files, restart your computer from the backup volume and try the backup task again.

     

    If you are trying to restore a single item or folder, click the "?" button for additional suggestions.

     

     

    Is it worth giving it a try? Thanks for this btw, its further than I've got before!!


  • by Eustace Mendis,Solvedanswer

    Eustace Mendis Eustace Mendis Apr 13, 2014 1:49 PM in response to Ley Fey
    Level 7 (25,402 points)
    Apr 13, 2014 1:49 PM in response to Ley Fey

    Is it worth giving it a try?

     

    Yes, certainly. Give it a try.

     

    Good luck.

  • by Ley Fey,

    Ley Fey Ley Fey Apr 13, 2014 6:06 PM in response to Eustace Mendis
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    Apr 13, 2014 6:06 PM in response to Eustace Mendis

    Thanks Eustace,

    In the end I could not trace the photo library with the ccc,  and it seemed really complicated to use with my new MB but your input gave me courage to download a recovery app. So I  eventually tracked some files with a free stellar pheonix photo recovery trial download. Its still scanning and looks hopeful with 1186  jpg files found so far! What condition they are in I dont know yet, but hopefully good...

     

    Thanks for all your help and support ,I don't think without all the help and encouragement I find in these forums and communities I would be brave enough to try all the things recommended on my own to my poor mac.

  • by Big-Ted,

    Big-Ted Big-Ted Apr 15, 2014 2:26 PM in response to Ley Fey
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 15, 2014 2:26 PM in response to Ley Fey

    What recovery app did you use?  I've just lost  everything as my iMac got wiped and my back up is nonexistant (it's been a bad week).  I looked at paying a company and they've quotted me $400-$700!!

     

    Thanks,

     

    Stevi

  • by Ley Fey,

    Ley Fey Ley Fey Apr 15, 2014 4:50 PM in response to Big-Ted
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    Apr 15, 2014 4:50 PM in response to Big-Ted

    To Big- Ted

     

    Sorry to hear that, Thats a lot of cash! Here is a link which has more info on this thread to what I have tried so far. It lists some software recovery apps you could try. Its a bit of a long read though.

    Sorry I can't recommend seeing as the Stellar Pheonix recovery software did not work for me and I'm still trying to fix issue..

     

    Re: entire iPhoto pictures missing from external hard drive.

    by Ley Fey in iPhoto for Mac