HDD music recovery - options???

[Charlie Jefferson]

It's happened!! My external hard drive has seemingly wiped my music or rather I was installing something on my Mac and had to disconnect the power (don't ask!), inadvertently leading to my external drive with all my music on it not being recognized by my iMac.

Some, not all, is on my iPod (about 10,000 songs) but a further 8,000 songs are trapped & stranded on the ext.drive. 99% is ripped from CDs I own but of course the prospect of uploading them all again is daunting.

In the meantime, I need some advice - other than why didn't you back-up your stuff!!!!!! - on a good data recovery service, if indeed this is an option for my ailing drive.

Any thoughts anyone?

 

[Woodruffe]

Hi, someone I work with lost a load of photos and after much trawling around I found this piece of software - http://www.recovermyphotos.com/ It managed to find them all from a corrupt SD card without a problem. From my research it was a lot more effective than other programs out there. It seems it can also find music files as well but from looking at the site I don't know if it is compatible with a Mac but a browse around the site may have other programs which are better suited to your predicament. I don't suppose you have a windows PC you could pop it on and plug the drive into that computer to do the recovery? As far as I know the trial version lets you scan to see if it is worthwhile purchasing.

Hope that helps

P.S can recommend Acronis for backups

P.P.S Just found this made by the same company http://www.recovermyfiles.com/

Ben.

 

[Sc00bied00]

Have you tried connecting the external drive to another MAC or PC?

It could be an OS issue rather than the external drive, try running the file check utility - fsck or the disk utility depending on the version of the OS. Disconnect the external drive first though, once you have done the check reboot and then try connecting the external drive again to see if it is recognised. If there was any software / drivers for this they may need reinstalled. Pulling the power may have corrupted files so the file check needs to be done to check the integrity of the OS.

HTH - sc00bie

 

[John Duncan]

Agreed - it's very unlikely that the data has gone, and disk utility ought to be able to sort it. If not, google "data recovery mac", there will be Mac apps out there to do it.

 

[Charlie Jefferson]

Thanks guys.

I've downloaded a "free" version of something called Stellar Phoenix Mac recovery, and it seem sto have located all the songs on my ext drive. However, the final click/activation requires me to buy the serial code.

Are there any legitimate totally free versions of the same thing? Or will I be better forking out for this product?

 

[Woodruffe]

Eeek! That seems a bit pricey. I'd do what John suggested and probably add the word 'free' into the search aswell.

Ben.