Urgent data recovery required!

[Lt Major Burns]

i just got duped into losing all my rare music!

i was adding some folders into the compilations folder, and it said "this folder already contains a folder called "compilations" would you like to replace it?"

i interpreted this as it will replace the same files as the newer ones, but leave the rest of the compilation folder intact.

it didn't

it replaced the 15gb folder with a 300mb one.

is there ANY way i can get this data back? i've heard of data recovery, and that the only way to erase a disk properly is writing zeros a hundred times...

can anyone reccomend any programs/services?

i'm on a tight budget btw

EDIT: it wasn't backed up - it usually is, but my back-up drive has panther on it at the moment

 

[Viro]

Check out FileSalvage and DataRescue. The sooner you do it the better since OS X is a fan of using free space for the virtual machine, and there is that auto defragmenter that move files around a lot. You may not be able to recover much if you leave it for too long.

 

[Lt Major Burns]

it's on a seperate disk, a dedicated usb2 lacie with just the itunes music folder on it

thank you, i will check out these. are they expensive?

 

[The Ghost]

it's on a seperate disk, a dedicated usb2 lacie with just the itunes music folder on it

thank you, i will check out these. are they expensive?

I don't know much about data recovery, but the advice I have seen from those I think are very knowledgeable is to quit using the drive immediately and to to get to a data-recovery specialist--depending on how much value one places on the lost files.

 

[Darkshadow]

Yeah, don't do any writes to the disk at all. Some of that 300 MB that was written possibly overwrote some of the files...

And yes, data recovery services are usually very expensive.

Do you have any backup of it at all? I mean, even if you can't use the applications that made the backup, the data should be somewhere, right? Can you access that without the applications?

 

[Lt Major Burns]

nope - it's gone, and all the data recovery programs i've used a trial of seem to be very mercenary - not very "macOS" (i.e. friendly) at all, and very expensive. i can get a lot of the tracks back from a set of back-up dvds my brother has, but some i'm just going to have to accept have gone. i cant afford $100+ to get some music back - just HIGHLY irritating....

 

[recoveryguru]

i just got duped into losing all my rare music!

i was adding some folders into the compilations folder, and it said "this folder already contains a folder called "compilations" would you like to replace it?"

i interpreted this as it will replace the same files as the newer ones, but leave the rest of the compilation folder intact.

it didn't

it replaced the 15gb folder with a 300mb one.

is there ANY way i can get this data back? i've heard of data recovery, and that the only way to erase a disk properly is writing zeros a hundred times...

can anyone reccomend any programs/services?

i'm on a tight budget btw

EDIT: it wasn't backed up - it usually is, but my back-up drive has panther on it at the moment

Hi

http://www.nucleustechnologies.com

Try and checkout the above as it is sufficient for your data recovery software
It is really great as it is risk free software and recovers all your important files.

Thanks