Have I lost my external hard drive data forever?

In article <00e6f4f5$0$23370$>, Gary
<> wrote:

> I'm using OS X Leopard. I was running an update overnight against my
> music database located on an external Seagate Freeagent drive; in the
> morning when I went to check, the entire external drive appeared to be
> still formatted but empty.
>
> This database has taken me years to accumulate, and is too big or me to
> have a backup.

too big to have a backup? you've got to be kidding me.

buy a second drive of whatever size the original drive is and clone it.
instant backup. if it can fit on the original it will fit on the clone.
not to mention that backup software can deal with splitting backups
across smaller media.

plus, doing any sort of update without a backup is stupid. just ask
microsoft how well that worked with sidekick.

> Can anyone suggest what program might have the best chance of restoring
> the data that used to be on this disk?

disk warrior can repair directory damage, which hopefuly is all that
happened. if not, datarescue might be able to recover files. if *that*
doesn't work, call drive savers and plan on spending a lot of money.

In article <>, J.J. O'Shea
<> wrote:

> 1 send the drive to Drive Savers or equivalent, and be prepared to spend at
> least $200 to recover your data (plus the price of either a new drive or
> enough DVDs to hold the data)

you forgot a 0. they'll probably charge $1500-2000 to recover it,
possibly more.

In article <>, J.J. O'Shea
<> wrote:

> > plus, doing any sort of update without a backup is stupid. just ask
> > microsoft how well that worked with sidekick.
>
> Mickeysoft is still trying to pretend that they can get that data back. I
> predict lawsuits. Lots and lots and lots of lawsuits.

from what i heard, they recovered some of the data and there have
already been lawsuits.

> I also predict
> unemployment for a prolonged period for the Mickeysoft suits who were in
> charge of the project.

doubt it, they'll be 'reassigned to another project.'

In article <>, J.J. O'Shea
<> wrote:

> > you forgot a 0. they'll probably charge $1500-2000 to recover it,
> > possibly more.
>
> $200 is the minimum charge. I've seen people get charged as much as $3000.

although it's been a few years, when i called them it was free if they
fail to recover and in the rage of $2k if they do recover, depending on
drive size.

> Buying a drive and getting hold of SD! or CCC is a lot cheaper.

yes but that has to happen before the disaster.

I'm using OS X Leopard. I was running an update overnight against my
music database located on an external Seagate Freeagent drive; in the
morning when I went to check, the entire external drive appeared to be
still formatted but empty.

This database has taken me years to accumulate, and is too big or me to
have a backup.

Can anyone suggest what program might have the best chance of restoring
the data that used to be on this disk?

In article <00a7154a$0$32354$>, JF Mezei
<> wrote:

> Get yourself a terabyte drive or whatever is needed to contain the old
> drive.
>
> Use diskutil (of the dd line command) to make a bloc by block image copy
> of the bad drive. Disconnect the bad drive and then "play" with the copy
> to try to restore it.
>
> You don't want some utility to worsen the situation and not being able
> to go back.

good advice, but a better idea is get a read-only forensic bridge to be
absolutely sure.

On Sun, 1 Nov 2009 16:13:56 -0500, Gary wrote
(in article <00e6f4f5$0$23370$>):

> I'm using OS X Leopard. I was running an update overnight against my
> music database located on an external Seagate Freeagent drive; in the
> morning when I went to check, the entire external drive appeared to be
> still formatted but empty.

possible directory error. try Disk Warrior.

>
> This database has taken me years to accumulate, and is too big or me to
> have a backup.

You really should have bought a second hard drive and cloned over the
contents of the first. SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner would have done the
job, no problem. Most music apps will back up to CD or DVD, you just have to
sit there and feed discs until it backs the whole music system up, so if you
didn't want a second drive all you had to do was buy some blank discs.

I hope you have the original discs and LPs and whatnot from which you got
that music, 'cause if DW can't fix it then you have two choices:

1 send the drive to Drive Savers or equivalent, and be prepared to spend at
least $200 to recover your data (plus the price of either a new drive or
enough DVDs to hold the data)

2 get out the original data and start the process of building the database
over again.

>
> Can anyone suggest what program might have the best chance of restoring
> the data that used to be on this disk?
>

Disk Warrior, Drive Genius, Tech Tool Pro, Data Rescue all might work.

Having a backup would remove the requirement.


--
email to oshea dot j dot j at gmail dot com.

On Sun, 1 Nov 2009 15:23:41 -0500, nospam wrote
(in article <011120091623418336%>):

> In article <00e6f4f5$0$23370$>, Gary
> <> wrote:
>
>> I'm using OS X Leopard. I was running an update overnight against my
>> music database located on an external Seagate Freeagent drive; in the
>> morning when I went to check, the entire external drive appeared to be
>> still formatted but empty.
>>
>> This database has taken me years to accumulate, and is too big or me to
>> have a backup.
>
> too big to have a backup? you've got to be kidding me.

Absolutely. My iTunes folder is currently 105 GB in size. Getting a drive
large enough to hold a backup of that is trivial. Even if it was bigger than
that, if I had a drive big enough to hold it in the first place it would be
trivial to get a second drive that size... and you better believe that if I
had spent the time required to build up a database that size I'd spend the
cash required to back it up. Probably twice. Indeed, that's exactly what I
did: I have a full clone of my boot system _and_ a Time Machine backup of the
boot system, and my iTunes folder is on my boot system. If my iTunes folder
was on a different volume I'd back that up as well.

>
> buy a second drive of whatever size the original drive is and clone it.
> instant backup. if it can fit on the original it will fit on the clone.
> not to mention that backup software can deal with splitting backups
> across smaller media.
>
> plus, doing any sort of update without a backup is stupid. just ask
> microsoft how well that worked with sidekick.

Mickeysoft is still trying to pretend that they can get that data back. I
predict lawsuits. Lots and lots and lots of lawsuits. I also predict
unemployment for a prolonged period for the Mickeysoft suits who were in
charge of the project.

>
>> Can anyone suggest what program might have the best chance of restoring
>> the data that used to be on this disk?
>
> disk warrior can repair directory damage, which hopefuly is all that
> happened. if not, datarescue might be able to recover files. if *that*
> doesn't work, call drive savers and plan on spending a lot of money.

$200 at a minimum. Possibly more.

--
email to oshea dot j dot j at gmail dot com.

On Sun, 1 Nov 2009 15:40:17 -0500, nospam wrote
(in article <011120091640178119%>):

> In article <>, J.J. O'Shea
> <> wrote:
>
>> 1 send the drive to Drive Savers or equivalent, and be prepared to spend at
>> least $200 to recover your data (plus the price of either a new drive or
>> enough DVDs to hold the data)
>
> you forgot a 0. they'll probably charge $1500-2000 to recover it,
> possibly more.

$200 is the minimum charge. I've seen people get charged as much as $3000.

Buying a drive and getting hold of SD! or CCC is a lot cheaper.

--
email to oshea dot j dot j at gmail dot com.

On Sun, 1 Nov 2009 16:13:56 -0500, Gary wrote
(in article <00e6f4f5$0$23370$>):

> I'm using OS X Leopard. I was running an update overnight against my
> music database located on an external Seagate Freeagent drive; in the
> morning when I went to check, the entire external drive appeared to be
> still formatted but empty.
>
> This database has taken me years to accumulate, and is too big or me to
> have a backup.
>
> Can anyone suggest what program might have the best chance of restoring
> the data that used to be on this disk?
>

I have never had much luck with restoration programs and I have tried
them all. Seems they used to do better with OS ¦ 9. I certainly
wouldn't run _anything_ which writes to the disk until you have done a
block for block backup. You don't want to make it worse (assuming
that's possible).

Without knowing more about your database and how you were updating it,
I don't think there is much help anyone can give you.

Sorry for your loss.

--
Nelson