EMERGENCY: Recovering files after a hard drive wipe

[MDLarson]

You guessed, it. I lost some files completely due to my own stupidity. I have some critical FileMaker files that I failed to backup before I wiped the drive and installed 10.6.

I have seen several articles and programs that deal with recovering deleted files (via the Trash) but I think I'm in a bigger mess since I reformatted it and installed a new OS on top of it.

Should I shut the machine off and send the drive into the experts? I'm pretty devastated now and could use any advice. And yes…*I should have backed up those damn files.

 

[MDLarson]

Running FileSalvage 7 now…

 

[Mikuro]

The most important thing is, don't actively use the drive. Don't even mount it if you can avoid it.

All I can tell you is that Data Rescue has been saving my butt periodically for about 15 years. It has saved me from corrupted file systems, and YES, even reformatted drives. The free demo will let you see what it can find and rescue one file at a time. If it works, buy it and rescue everything.

 

[MDLarson]

Thanks Mikuro,

After running (and purchasing) FileSalvage 7, I recovered 138 FileMaker files. While a small handful of them opened immediately, the vast majority of the files were unusable, with these error messages as possibilities:

“File22.fp7” is damaged and cannot be opened. Use the Recover command to recover this file.

The access privileges in this file have been damaged or possibly tampered with.
Please contact FileMaker Technical Support if the problem cannot be resolved.

Some were able to be opened after a file recovery, and some made FileMaker crash on open.

I tried Data Rescue 3.2, and a scan resulted in 900+ .fp7 files, which is quite a bit more than what FileSalvage reported.

Both recovery programs apparently couldn't reconstruct the actual file name; they were all File2.fp7, File3.fp7, File4.fp7 etc. That left me guessing.

The good news is I was able to recover the most important file I lost, and all the information appears to be intact.

To anyone reading this, let this be a lesson learned…* make sure you have a friggin' backup.

 

[djackmac]

I tried Data Rescue 3.2, and a scan resulted in 900+ .fp7 files, which is quite a bit more than what FileSalvage reported.

Both recovery programs apparently couldn't reconstruct the actual file name; they were all File2.fp7, File3.fp7, File4.fp7 etc. That left me guessing.

Data Rescue 3 is a great app. Have used it multiple times for many clients. The reason the names can't be recovered is because when you delete things, the entries or 'pointers' in the directory structure get erased but the data remains and the blocks the data reside on are reported as unused until it gets overwritten by new data. There is an app that has been released lately that will actually vaults the directory structure in case something gets accidentally deleted. The software is Disk Drill and the article has a really good explanation on what happens when something is deleted. Other than that, Time Machine is great for retrieving accidentally deleted files but it has to be setup and running.