Accidentally formated iMac drive and lost data. How can I recover the iMac's HD data??

sc_marktsc_markt
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited July 2014


I accidently formated an iMac HD that I had connected to my MBP in target disk mode. (I also had a new WD harddrive connected to my MBP at the same time and was supposed to format the WD drive in disk ultility but clicked and formatted the wrong drive. I still can't believe what a **boneheaded** thing that was to do...)


 


Anyway, can I recover the files on the iMac and if so, how can it be done? A program like Tech Tool Pro?


 


I can only connect to the iMac via target disk mode because the iMac display is not working.


 


I have not zero'd out the iMac's HD or written anything to it so I assume the data should be there all fully intact for the most part.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,322moderator
    Yes you should be able to recover the data using software like Techtool Pro or Diskwarrior:

    http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/index.html
    https://www.micromat.com/store

    This is one of those situations where having a cloned backup or even Time Machine would be the easier route because those tools might not be able to rebuild your directory structure. I'd give DiskWarrior a go in this case as it seems to be designed specifically for drive recovery. Techtool looks for files so you'll get thousands of files in a flat list. DiskWarrior might do a better job at rebuilding it.
  • Reply 2 of 8
    sc_marktsc_markt Posts: 1,402member


    Thanks Marvin,


     


    I ended up using data rescue 3. It looks as if it recovered everything and more (lots of deleted files). 


     


    (I *still*can't believe I formatted the wrong disk...)

  • Reply 3 of 8
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,322moderator
    sc_markt wrote: »
    (I *still*can't believe I formatted the wrong disk...)

    Good to hear you got everything back. It would be nice if Apple's tools had a built in warning when it detected that you were trying to erase a complete system drive. If it had said something like:

    'Warning, the selected drive has 600,000 files on it and a system folder, are you sure you want to format the drive Macintosh HD?'

    you'd at least see the potential damage being done before it happened. OS X should even have warnings about bulk file deletions. It's too easy to accidentally dump a folder of thousands of files into the trash and empty it.
  • Reply 4 of 8
    99thin99thin Posts: 2member


    nice info. thank you for sharing it.


     


    thanks


    99th

  • Reply 5 of 8
    scottjohnsonscottjohnson Posts: 5member
    Use the Card Data Recovery for Mac. It supports a variety of file systems. Basically, it recovers deleted files. But be sure you haven’t overwritten your files yet. Good luck.
  • Reply 6 of 8
    shydeeshydee Posts: 2member

    Data may get lost or deleted from Apple Macintosh partitions. The Mac data recovery software is embedded with QFSCI algorithms and recursively scan the partitions and recovers every file, folder, documents, music files, video files, images or other important items from the disk within minutes from deleted, corrupted, damaged, inaccessible or formatted HFS, HFS+ files. The software recovers data from IDE, EIDE, SCSI, USB and SATA drives and Memory Cards and data lost due to virus attacks.

  • Reply 7 of 8
    michalsmithmichalsmith Posts: 1member

    I recently came across the same issue and used Remo Recover Mac to solve it. The tool is worth as well.

  • Reply 8 of 8
    goergemartingoergemartin Posts: 1member

    You can use time machine backup utility if you have created any restoration point for your iMac system. Time machine allows to restore the entire system which may help you to get back files after formatting iMac hard drive. But if you haven't created any restoration point and neither have backup then in such situation you should opt for third party data rescue program for easy and complete recovery of lost files.

     

    For more information visit: http://www.macfixz.com/recovery-files-from-imac-get-corrupted-deleted-mac-data-recovered

     

    Martin99
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