ACK! Deleted 80gb of music! A few recovery questions....

[feralicious]

Damn. Just damn. Oh well, I can replace them eventually even if I can't recover them.

Info:
Mac OS X 10.3.9
files were on an external Mac OS Extended formatted drive
I'm scanning now to see what files Boomerang Data Recovery finds

Questions:
Do flac files have the file name in the header?
Do shn files have the file name in the header?
- the forums for that software say that if the file doesn't have the name in the header then all the recovered files will have generic names, not the original names. This basically does me no good as it would take too long to go through and figure out which file is which, doncha think?

If I mount this drive on my PC can I still recover the files? It doesn't matter where they were trashed right, since they're on the drive itself, right? I have MacDrive on my PC so I can read the drive over there. It seems there are free programs for the PC whereas I would have to spend $100-200 for one on the Mac.

Would the file name thing still apply? It sounded like it was an OS X thing, and so I was hoping that would mean that the names would actually be intact on the drive, just that OS X wouldn't read them properly on the recovery, but that could be incorrect.

Can anyone recommend a free utility to undelete files?


If I can't get them back, it's fine. I haven't been dealing with music for a long time so they've been sitting there using up drive space for a couple years. I don't even know what it all was so how am I gonna miss it that much? I'm bummed that there was a bunch on John Lennon on there though... oh well.

Any tips would be appreciated.

:wave:

[retired]

I'm sorry to hear that Nina and have no info to help. It's good to see you back around once in awhile. :wave:

[greenheatherc]

If you don't have any luck....post what you're missing. I'll fill in any shows I can.

Good Luck Nina and it's good to see you again. :icon_hug:

[direwolf-pgh]

as it is an external drive & if you have not written back extensively to that drive.
You have a best case scenario for data recovery via software.

if not PM & Ill send a DVD of the Lennon I have :wave:

[Trader Dave]

Today, 06:07 PM :wtf:

[feralicious]

Thanks everyone!

I'm not looking to replace anything right now. I have plenty other stuff to archive before I do something stupid again! Plus I don't know exactly what it was although at least it was organized enough to know it was from "F-JohnL". So when I get back into it I'll just fill up in that area. I appreciate the offers of help though. You guys are the best! :icon_hug:

I really just need to figure out the best way to go about recovering. I guess the cheapest is to do it on the PC since I think I can get freeware to do it on that as long as it works okay using MacDrive to read the drive.

My scan of 6 hours came up with over 90gb of files, but they are generically named and none are listed as flac or shn. I think it's calling them mp3s but I can't be sure since I don't see the file names. I'll try it with freeware on my PC tomorrow and see what happens.

:hmm:


If anyone has done this before and can give me some pointers it'd be a great help.

[feralicious]

as it is an external drive & if you have not written back extensively to that drive.
You have a best case scenario for data recovery via software.

if not PM & Ill send a DVD of the Lennon I have :wave:I might take you up on some Lennon in the near future. I was going to upload some for you a long time ago, but that was just before I dropped out of the music scene when I didn't have time to deal with all this anymore. Let me sort this out and see what I did archive of Lennon first. Perhaps I have some you don't and we'll trade.

[Karst]

Do you have Norton Systemworks? It might be able to recover the drive? Failing that, maybe diskwarrior? I'd say it might not work on a PC, unless it has been formatted on a PC platform. I think there is thread about that further down. Might be worth checking. Other then that, good luck Nina, we've all been there before, it makes yuour heart sink... :cool:

[feralicious]

FYI... there does not seem to be any file recovery program for the Mac that supports flac and shn files. The programs have to have been written to recover specific file types. I don't know if that's the case for pcs or not. So if you delete any flacs/shns/apes on Mac and empty your trash, save the time and just get over it. At least until one of the programs adds support for them.

Using FileSalvage, I was able to recover some mp3s that I didn't need, season 6 of The Sopranos which I didn't need and some sweet John Lennon quicktimes that I DID need. I had gotten them off Dime and they're the 3 major networks' broadcasts the night of his shooting.

And I got enough txt files and pics to let me know a lot of what I lost. :(
Oddly enough most of the txt files did not come back, I would have thought that would have been easy.

[U2Lynne]

Sorry to hear that, Nina. Maybe you can post a list of what you know you lost and some of us can help you out with the shows.

[feralicious]

Thanks Lynne. :)

But you know, most of it I can download again and I have so much to archive still that I should do that before I make another boneheaded mistake. I thought I'd poke around today since it's Lennon's birthday, but it seems the novelty of posting his stuff on Oct. 9 has worn off. ;)

[diggrd]

Should have checked earlier since it sounds like you gave up on recovery already, but my Forensic version of WinHex (http://x-ways.net/forensics/index-m.html) supports HFS+ "Mac OS Extended" you still need to have some idea of the file structure to find uncommon types such as .flac and .shn only problem is it only runs with a dongle so no way to "borrow" a copy :( Support for the filesystems FAT, NTFS, Ext2/3/4, CDFS, UDF HFS, HFS+, ReiserFS, Reiser4, UFS, UFS2
Supported partitioning types: MBR, Windows dynamic volumes, GUID (GPT), Apple, unpartitioned (Floppy/ Superfloppy)