# Recovering data from formatted disk drive



## knightriderq (Oct 25, 2011)

I accidentaly formatted my back up 1 TB seagate drive (instead of portable seagate which i intended to in first place), not only once but twice(yeah i messed up on this one), I had some important back up files on that disk, is there a way to recover the data? I used disk format utility of Mac OS.

I want to know if there is a way to recover the data from the disk which has been formatted twice? if yes, what is it?

Thanks for the help.


----------



## knightriderq (Oct 25, 2011)

I formatted the drive to MS-DOS File System

instructions i followed were from http://www.techiecorner.com/159/how-to-format-external-hard-disk-for-mac-and-windows/

thanks


----------



## Headrush (Feb 9, 2005)

How important are the files?

There are paid commercial options like Data Rescue 3

(This doesn't guarantee success either though)


----------



## iCharlie (Oct 26, 2011)

knightriderq said:


> I accidentaly formatted my back up 1 TB seagate drive


In the OSX's disk utility there are several options when erasing your drive in terms of security. The options you were met with very in degree from _fastest_ to most_ secure_. If you had selected "fastest" your data is not actually erased per say, but rather re-formatted to indicate to the system that what was once data on the drive is now freely available; like "don't bother, pretend I'm not here, write-over me!". If that is the case one of a hundred tools from the web could serve just fine in recovering your data. However, if a more secure option, like "most secure" was selected the data on the drive is, in fact, being written over and the chances of recovery grow much slimmer. What option did you choose?

If you really wrote over it several times using one of the secured options then I'm not sure what to advise....the data, if even partially recoverable, would be badly degraded and probably not worth spending money on specialty recovery software.


----------



## Headrush (Feb 9, 2005)

P.S. Some of these applications have free trials that are non-destructive so you can see what kind of results you might get before deciding to purchase them, without making the drive worse.


----------



## knightriderq (Oct 25, 2011)

@ icharlie; i formated using the default settings which i checked were "fastest", but my concern is that i did it twice! 
The data i want to recover is my pictures and scanned documents which I stored in this external hard drive. 

@headrush; any suggestions you can make to rescue the data?

Thanks


----------



## knightriderq (Oct 25, 2011)

any one has any idea about mackeeper? it is pretty popular on goolge search


----------



## Noyb (May 25, 2005)

Try running one of these Free File Recovery Programs


----------



## iCharlie (Oct 26, 2011)

Did you see if the data was still there using one of those free file recovery programs @Noyb suggested? They look like good suggestions.
Then again, only one of the programs on that list was Mac OSX compatible BUT it didn't have a GUI, only text (or terminal) functionality. That may be an issue if you don't have access to a Windows machine to try the other software. But if you do have access to a windows machine did you attempt recovery? If so, did you get any results?


----------



## knightriderq (Oct 25, 2011)

i used some thing called as wondershare data recovery and it seems the data is still there! but this program is fickle and closes down on its own at any random click at its icon.


----------



## knightriderq (Oct 25, 2011)

i tried it on MAC, didnt try anything on windows.


----------



## austin447 (Nov 8, 2011)

Hi,

You can recover your data using Mac Data Recovery Software. It helps you to recover all your data which you have lost during formatting process.

You can download the demo version of the Remo Recover Mac Basic to check the probability of recovered data, which has been lost or deleted.


----------



## tompatrick (Apr 19, 2010)

no need to worry if you have formatted your backup data you just need to make sure that the you stop using the drive straight away as the data may get overwritten if you continue the use of the drive also you need to make sure that you don't spend money on the Mac data recovery software till the time the demo version of the software doesn't show you the lost data, I will advise you not to use the free to use software as these software will not guarantee the data recovery

I would rather suggest you to use stellar phoenix for Mac data recovery you just need to download the demo version and scan the hard drive using the software if you find the formatted data in the preview section then only you need to purchase the software.


----------

