How can I recover my directory structure/file names???!

[pixeltarian]

ok, I cannot find out what i did wrong without wrecking another hard drive. I can only give you these facts:



1. the drive was fine. it was NTFS formatted. external usb storage drive
2. I was on a mac, using ipartition. there's a feature that lets you see a visual pie chart of your drive. it wanted me to click something to see the ntfs drive in that fashion. I (HUUGE MISTAKE) didn't read what it was asking me, but assumed it was relatively harmless.
3. poof goes my partition data. ipartition has no partition table recovery feature.

so it's a healthy drive with an epically stupid error performed by yours truly.

I run a non profit studio, as in I record people for free. I do not have the money to have a service recover the directory structure. I can get to the files, but it would take a lifetime to relink pro tools sessions to the .wav files used in those sessions. nearly impossible.

if anyone can be of any assistance whatsoever - you would be doing me and a few very poor musicians a HUGE favor. I haven't told the musician's yet, because I was hoping I could fix it first. if I can't I'm afraid that it will put a giant dent in the progress of this little dream I have. I can't exactly entice people to come record, albeit for free, on so-so gear and I "might" loose 30 hours of your time because I didn't back up your session.

From now on though... "if it doesn't exist in 3 places, it doesn't exist" - words to live by


thank you so much for your help and advice.


P.S. I can use osx leopard 10.5.8, windows XP, or windows 7 for fixing attempts

 

[evongugg]

We have all made stupid mistakes. Me too.

Use partition recovery software, like this:

http://www.partition-recovery.com/

 

[Paperdoc]

Start with evongugg's recommendation. IF you get your Partitiion structure back and all your files, etc, stop there and thank him / her! BUT if your Partitions are recovered but somehow the files are not all there, you can try Getdataback NTFS. You have to pay for it, but it has a good "free trial" option on their website. You can download and run the free trial and it will show you exactly what the disk and its files will look like IF you let it do the recovery for you. If you don't like it, you exit out and nothing is touched. But if you believe it will do the whole job for you, you pay their price and it does the work, leaving you with all your files plus an authorized copy of the software you just bought and installed.

 

[pixeltarian]

thanks for the help. i'm trying acronis disk director 10. the partition recovery has been scanning for like 5 hours now. it's not done yet. we'll see if it works. otherwise I found out that getdataback finds the directory structure. it can't recover it, but I can transfer the files and maintain the folders if I restore the files to a new drive.

thanks for all the help thus far. I will post an update if i get it fixed.

 

[pixeltarian]

i did it! regular old hard drive recovery worked. i had to use a windows program though (getdataback) the mac equivalents (datarescue II, diskwarrior) did not recover my directory structure, just a bunch of files which would be a nightmare to weed through...

thanks so much for the help! it's such a good feeling to get lost data back! woo hoo!

 

[Guest]

@pixeltarian
Which version of getdataback did you use, FAT or NTFS?

I just did something very similar to my external hard drive. I was adding a partition using Disk Utility. At first it kept my data in tact, but I clicked something that made everything disappear. I have not written anything to the drive because all the data is there still. DiskWarrior doesn't recover the directory structure. And Data Rescue 3 only recovers a list of sequentially named files without the directory structure.

Basically, I need to retrace your steps because I need to recover the directory structure too.

 

[Guest]

I just answered my own question:

"1. the drive was fine. it was NTFS formatted. external usb storage drive "

So now, I want to know is there a way to recover the directory structure of a HFS+ formatted drive?

 

[flanagantom]

did you find a way!!!, I'm in the same boat all the software can recover files but not the file structures.. help please

 

[Xplanet]

i did it! regular old hard drive recovery worked. i had to use a windows program though (getdataback) the mac equivalents (datarescue II, diskwarrior) did not recover my directory structure, just a bunch of files which would be a nightmare to weed through...

thanks so much for the help! it's such a good feeling to get lost data back! woo hoo!

I'm in the same trouble. My external drive is formatted by mac. How you used windows program for recovery? My drive, as formatted by mac, is not woking on Windows. Which software did you use?

Thanks in advance,

 

[doktorfonk]

i did it! regular old hard drive recovery worked. i had to use a windows program though (getdataback) the mac equivalents (datarescue II, diskwarrior) did not recover my directory structure, just a bunch of files which would be a nightmare to weed through...

thanks so much for the help! it's such a good feeling to get lost data back! woo hoo!

I feel in the same situation as you did a few years ago as I run a non profit studio and just lost 3 years of datas (when I say datas I mean more that 50 complete mixed instrumental songs...). I was about to release 2 complete home recorded albums with the best recordings...

I have a Western Drive of 3 To originally formatted in HFS+ that suddently did not appear anymore on my Mac (OSX 10.6). After finding out on the internet the case for such HD were giving this specific pb with other folks I end up changing the case and now in the disk utility it is recognised as "not formatted" (even if do not appear on the desktop)

I did a "successful recovery” with Data Rescue 3 and also StellarPhoenixMacDataRecovery but i have a list of files with different names from original there is not link to original directory structure. So it will be a nightmare and take a lifetime to relink every file to every pro tools sessions... no way...

I need to find a recovery data software that recreate the original directory structure for mac

It seems you used a windows software on a mac to recover ? I just cant find a version of getdataback for mac osx.....

Can anyone help me ?

Thanks so much to help me recover my music files ...