Wiped external hard drive

BlackEdelweiss

My son plugged in our external hard drive to his xbox and has wiped the whole thing including thousands of photos. Is there any way these can be retrieved?

biko

Yes, most likely they can be retrieved if he didn't overwrite the hard disk with other info.
One suggestion is this way but there are more if you google

BlackEdelweiss

One problem i have is that the data was stored using a pc and now I have a mac so it is all old photos and I dont know about retrieving it using my mac. Would I be best bringing it into a computer repair shop?

Allyall

No need to bring it to a pc repair shop. You must know someone with a PC?

Or you can use BOOT CAMP.

And one (Or Two) programs i recommend for recovering files are

Stellar Photo Recovery

They also have mac recovery programs, so you may try downloading one of those first (Trial version) and see if that can recover anything before you purchase. You mightn't even have to install Boot Camp.

Either way, it would probably work out cheaper than a Repair shop, and you can keep the software.

bonzodog2

You might try a Linux Live CD distro that includes data recovery software TestDisk/PhotoRec.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Livecd
I don't know much about macs, but I'm guessing it might work on an Intel-based one.

yoyo

bonzodog2 wrote: »

You might try a Linux Live CD distro that includes data recovery software TestDisk/PhotoRec.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Livecd
I don't know much about macs, but I'm guessing it might work on an Intel-based one.

TestDisk/PhotoREC are mac compatible. No need to be messing with bootcamp, just recover all the data onto another drive of similar free capacity

Nick

riclad

recover all important data,photos 1st, dont save ANYTHING
on that drive ,until you have your photos, and important files,backup ,ed, copy em to another drive.

BlackEdelweiss

The photos are too important for me to go messing around with so I left it into a computer repair shop. €80 but worth every cent if it works.

biko

It's your dollar but I suggest you get acquainted with one of the mentioned recovery programs anyway. You never know when you may need it, or to help out a mate.
There's helpful tutorials on youtube.

BlackEdelweiss

The pc repair shop said they ran loads of recovery software but could not retrieve any photos or anything for that matter as they said the drive had been formatted by the xbox. Is that the end for this or can I try something or somewhere else. I dont really want to go messing around with it myself in case there is something there and I make a blaas of it. I would if I thought it was easy enough to do but if the pc repair guys cant find anything is there any chance of me getting to it.

Firblog

Have found these guys to be pretty good. Will not be cheap, hope you didn't have to pay the repair shop...

BlackEdelweiss

Firblog wrote: »

Have found these guys to be pretty good. Will not be cheap, hope you didn't have to pay the repair shop...

Thanks, the guy there said there might be something they can do as an xbox creates a small partition when formatting so our data could be hidden behind that.

Woddle

Did the same thing myself yesterday. I paid €12 for diskdigger you can download it for free and let it scan the drive, if it finds the files you pay. You can even get the files without paying but it'll take a lot longer.
I started scanning my drive last night and it's still only 65% done but I can see a couple of 1000 photos already, I've transferred about a 100 over so far.

BlackEdelweiss

Woddle wrote: »

Did the same thing myself yesterday. I paid €12 for diskdigger you can download it for free and let it scan the drive, if it finds the files you pay. You can even get the files without paying but it'll take a lot longer.
I started scanning my drive last night and it's still only 65% done but I can see a couple of 1000 photos already, I've transferred about a 100 over so far.

Did you do yours with an xbox or just formatted it with a pc?

Freddy Smelly

if you do restore your photos i highly recommend you get a dropbox account or some form of cloud storage and upload your photos there so u will have a back up plan if your kids nuke your hard drive again

Woddle

BlackEdelweiss wrote: »

Did you do yours with an xbox or just formatted it with a pc?

xbox.
At first when the xbox didn't recognise my drive so I partitioned it and turned 8gigs into Fat. Then when I plugged it back in, the xbox recognised it but asked to format. My mistake was thinking it was only going to format the 8 gigs as it had never recocognised the drive. Second I did it, I knew.

if you do restore your photos i highly recommend you get a dropbox account or some form of cloud storage and upload your photos there so u will have a back up plan if your kids nuke your hard drive again

Absolutely, my wife was fit to kill me last night.

Managed to get 600 photos back now but it's a slow slow process. Not making any plans for the weekend.

BlackEdelweiss

Firblog wrote: »

Hope you didn't have to pay the repair shop...

€39

Capt'n Midnight

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

does exactly what it says on the tin.

it recovers photographs from bare metal long after any directory structure has gone

(and other files too - but turn off those in the menu so there are no false positives)

it's free and most importantly it doesn't write to the disk so it won't make things worse

BlackEdelweiss

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

does exactly what it says on the tin.

it recovers photographs from bare metal long after any directory structure has gone

(and other files too - but turn off those in the menu so there are no false positives)

it's free and most importantly it doesn't write to the disk so it won't make things worse

Do any of these work with a Mac? The images were put onto the hard drive from a pc but I have a mac now.

yoyo

BlackEdelweiss wrote: »

Do any of these work with a Mac? The images were put onto the hard drive from a pc but I have a mac now.

Yes just download the Mac builds

Nick

BlackEdelweiss

yoyo wrote: »

Yes just download the Mac builds

Nick

Cheers, I was working off my phone there so I couldent check.

BlackEdelweiss

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

does exactly what it says on the tin.

it recovers photographs from bare metal long after any directory structure has gone

(and other files too - but turn off those in the menu so there are no false positives)

it's free and most importantly it doesn't write to the disk so it won't make things worse

I am running this program now and it has already recovered loads of photos. Thank for that link and for all the other advice given on this thread. We are looking at photos from years ago that we thought we would never see again.

I am astounded that I left the drive into a leading pc repair shop and they could not find anything and charged me €40 for the pleasure and I just downloaded a bit of free software and I have got this far. I wonder did they even do anything, I would love to go in and get my money back but I dont think I would have any luck.

yoyo

BlackEdelweiss wrote: »

I am running this program now and it has already recovered loads of photos. Thank for that link and for all the other advice given on this thread. We are looking at photos from years ago that we thought we would never see again.

I am astounded that I left the drive into a leading pc repair shop and they could not find anything and charged me €40 for the pleasure and I just downloaded a bit of free software and I have got this far. I wonder did they even do anything, I would love to go in and get my money back but I dont think I would have any luck.

That is incredible alright, I would go back and demand a refund, as they clearly didn't take any steps bar plugging the drive in and seeing if the files were there imo. Great to hear your recovering them though , once you hadn't written anything to the drive you should be able to recover all the files

Nick

Dey were Sooted

glad to hear you got it sorted - thanks to all who offered help here - i would go back to the shop and ask for a refund ....

riclad

DO a full scan with photorec,
after recovering whatever photos you can,
you may wanna try this, theres a mac version.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
photorec is designed to find ,recover photos,
testdisk, is more for general file recovery.
fix fat,tables, boot sectors fix,
ie rebuild fix the drive data structure,partition table.
if you are just recovering photos, there maybe no need to use it.

Lazarus2.0

BlackEdelweiss wrote: »

The pc repair shop said they ran loads of recovery software but could not retrieve any photos or anything for that matter as they said the drive had been formatted by the xbox.

That's horrific whether through laziness or absolute incompetence . Glad you got sorted - you'd have lost many if not all pics if you'd taken them at their word and just started re-using the drive! Refund for sure and let them know you'll be telling your friends etc ..

Mandatory caveat : Always back up the data you care about - twice !

uberalles

BlackEdelweiss wrote: »

I am running this program now and it has already recovered loads of photos. Thank for that link and for all the other advice given on this thread. We are looking at photos from years ago that we thought we would never see again.

I am astounded that I left the drive into a leading pc repair shop and they could not find anything and charged me €40 for the pleasure and I just downloaded a bit of free software and I have got this far. I wonder did they even do anything, I would love to go in and get my money back but I dont think I would have any luck.

Name of pc shop?

yoyo

uberalles wrote: »

Name of pc shop?

Please dont.

stevek93

OP whatever you do do not write to the disk, download and install http://www.piriform.com/recuva there should be an option to recover from format in the settings also do not recover to the external as it lessens the chance of a successful recovery.

yoyo

stevek93 wrote: »

OP whatever you do do not write to the disk, download and install http://www.piriform.com/recuva there should be an option to recover from format in the settings also do not recover to the external as it lessens the chance of a successful recovery.

OP has a Mac, seems to have recovered them with PhotoREC which is great . One would wonder what steps the repair shop took to recovering the data!

Nick

JDxtra

The computer shop probably didn't look at your drive at all. Much easier to take the cash, do nothing and claim they tried their best. They don't care about your photos!

You took a real risk leaving it in there, as they could have made it worse.

JDxtra

...oh, and to anybody else reading this thread - backup, backup, backup!!

Leaving 1,000s of photos on an external drive lying around the house with no other copies is sheer madness.

stevek93

JDxtra wrote: »

...oh, and to anybody else reading this thread - backup, backup, backup!!

Leaving 1,000s of photos on an external drive lying around the house with no other copies is sheer madness.

so true. I have 2x 2TB drives in my PC, if one ever fails I always have a backup.

BlackEdelweiss

I have recovered 3121 photos and a hundred or so video files thanks to this thread. There are a few than were not recovered but there was 17gig overwritten by the xbox so I presume they must have been lost there. I dont know whether to back them up to the drive again or keep trying to get the last few photos. I'm going to make several copies of them now and store them in a few different locations. I dont want to go through all that again.
I am really annoyed about the pc repair shop, I dont know what to do. I dont think they would give me a refund anyway but I would like them to know how unhappy I am with their service. I knew they were the most expensive in town but I thought that they would probably be the best to go to as they have the biggest, most professional looking shop and they are the longets established in the town. I just cant understand how they could not find the photos! If I had taken their word for it I would have lost them forever.
Thanks again to everybody for their advice, if ever being a member of boards was worthwhile it is now.

stevek93

Glas you got them back OP, as for a PC repair shop I wouldn't thurst them as far I as I could throw them.

JDxtra

stevek93 wrote: »

so true. I have 2x 2TB drives in my PC, if one ever fails I always have a backup.

What if somebody steals your PC, or even worse - you experience a fire in the home?

Cloud backup or off site backups will help. I have an additional drive I keep away from the home (for example in the shed, at work or in the glove box of the car).

Firblog

stevek93 wrote: »

Glas you got them back OP, as for a PC repair shop I wouldn't thurst them as far I as I could throw them.

Tarring a few ppl on here with that brush I'd say...