Major data loss **** up

sswats · 25 Apr 2011 at 17:00

Long story short i mixed up 2 hard drives.

Bunged a Mac HDD from a macbook onto a PC using a usb caddy and formatted as NTFS.

Some important info on that hard drive and i NEED it back.

Any help or tips i would be every so grateful.

theheyes · 25 Apr 2011 at 17:29

From Windows, try testdisk or recuva. (google them, I would try recuva first)

sswats · 25 Apr 2011 at 17:58

recuva stayed on 0% for an hour.
I've used it many times before and its never done that. so i quit.

Any way long story short again, i'm a bit panicky and not thinking straight and I reformatted it in journal and i'm trying to recover it using a mac now.

Pretty much trying all the free trials.

Dewotter · 25 Apr 2011 at 18:04

Don't think formatting again was the best idea. Expect data recovery apps to take a long time as it continually scans the same point of the hard drive over and over. I'm not sure on Recuva's algorithm if it gives up after a specified amount of tries but it was your best bet.

kiel367 · 25 Apr 2011 at 18:16

use getbackdata for ntfs installed on a windows pc, and run it through the hard drive

sswats · 25 Apr 2011 at 18:17

but does recuva work on Mac OS Extended drives?

it was originally not an NTFS, so could getbackdata or recuva work?

kiel367 · 27 Apr 2011 at 12:52

getback doesnt just do ntfs partitions, so it should work