I've accidentally formatted a nearly full 1TB hard-drive in disk manager to blank, any chance of recovering the data? Some of it is important.

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I've accidentally formatted a nearly full 1TB hard-drive in disk manager to blank, any chance of recovering the data? Some of it is important.

So in disk utility instead of formatting my 16 GB USB drive called 'untitled' I formatted into ExFAT my other 'untitled' external hard-drive, which had nearly an entire terabyte of files on it. 80% just backups, but some files are really quite essential for my university course.

I have not written any new files at all to the drive since.

What would people recommend is the best option? I see an absolute flood of data recovery programs on the market, but none of them seem to have all the file type functions I need. I mean a lot say 'will recover .mp4, mpeg, .doc, .flv, .xxx, etc] but not all the files that I will really really need to be recovered ...

So does apple have any kind of native recovery tool for this? Or am I going to have to go third party?

And if I have to go third party any recommendations about the very best software to use would be really really be helpful. As the marketing for these types of software seems to far outweigh the results I was able to find with serious facts about their functionality.

Thanks.

OS X Mavericks (10.9.5), Customac, Intel, High spec.

Posted on Apr 27, 2015 8:45 AM

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Answer 1

etresoft

Level 9

56,416 points

Apr 27, 2015 8:49 AM in response to LazyGenious

Hi LazyGenious,

Sorry to hear about the accident. I suggest using File Salvage from SubRosaSoft: http://subrosasoft.com

It has an "unformat" feature. I don't really know if it will work or not. I have purchased and used File Salvage once before about 10 years ago and it worked as advertised.

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Answer 2

JimmyCMPIT

Level 7

29,306 points

Apr 27, 2015 8:53 AM in response to etresoft

Data Rescue for Mac has worked miracles in the past for the corporations I worked with. It's about $100 US.

but nothing is a 100% sure bet.

http://www.prosofteng.com/datarescue4/

In the mean time if you can disconnect that drive so nothing else is written or deleted that is essential to the possibility of recovering.

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Answer 3

LazyGenious Author

Level 1

0 points

Apr 27, 2015 9:04 AM in response to JimmyCMPIT

This seems like a great choice, based on reviews and other functions it seems to have. I will wait a while for maybe a few other suggestions, but at the moment out of all the ones I've looked into this seems the way to go. Thanks for that.

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Answer 4

etresoft

Level 9

56,416 points

Apr 27, 2015 9:14 AM in response to JimmyCMPIT

JimmyCMPIT wrote:

Data Rescue for Mac has worked miracles in the past for the corporations I worked with. It's about $100 US.

but nothing is a 100% sure bet.

http://www.prosofteng.com/datarescue4/

In the mean time if you can disconnect that drive so nothing else is written or deleted that is essential to the possibility of recovering.

I haven't needed any file recovery since that one incident. Both File Salvage and Data Rescue are listed in Eric Root's reply in this thread: best data recovery software for Mac Os X 10.10

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Answer 5

Kurt Lang

Level 9

68,556 points

Apr 27, 2015 9:15 AM in response to LazyGenious

The only workable suggestions you will get will all be to purchase some sort of recovery software. You also need a separate drive or partition of at least the same capacity to recover the data to.

The main thing you need to do is not use that drive for anything. Saving any new data to the drive will overwrite some of what you want to recover.

There are a couple of free ones.

Disk Drill

For Disk Drill, go to the bottom of the page to get the free Basic version.

EasaUS Data Recovery free version

Not sure what limitations there are on the free version of Disk Drill. The second limits how much data you can recover to 2GB. Which is usually plenty for getting just a few critical files recovered. Given the size of the drive you're working with, the free version is likely not going to be useful enough.

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Answer 6

JimmyCMPIT

Level 7

29,306 points

Apr 27, 2015 10:06 AM in response to JimmyCMPIT

I've been in Windows and Mac OS support for years and Data Rescue was what we used when either the drive died or someone delete swaths of data from their local machines or later servers. It's what the PC guys used and told us about and when we started using it with the mac it worked very well. The price is a bit steep and if there are destructive freeware alternitives out there try them first. There is a trail version of Data Rescue on their page but I think it limits on how much data it will restore, not how many times you use it.

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