Suggest recovery software for ext HD

[inscrewtable]

I accidentally went to reformat the wrong disk, I pulled the plug immediately after hitting the button, but of course I cannot access the drive now. I am wondering of all the various recovery applications around which would be the best on in this instance that would be able to get at all the stuff on the disk or maybe even rebuild the file system?

Not really sure how best to proceed here. I don't think much happened before I pulled the plug.

Any suggestions appreciated.

 

[Fishrrman]

Was the disk in HFS+ format, or was it in APFS format?

There is data recovery software for HFS+, but I'm not sure what (if anything at all) is available for APFS.

Just one more reason why a "data only drive" SHOULD NEVER be APFS...

 

[inscrewtable]

OK I do have everything off the drive now it's just a matter of organising the trash from the treasure now. I guess what I'm really asking is, is there any way to preserve some of the labelling? Or should I just be content that I have the data off?

 

[MacBH928]

Was the disk in HFS+ format, or was it in APFS format?

There is data recovery software for HFS+, but I'm not sure what (if anything at all) is available for APFS.

Just one more reason why a "data only drive" SHOULD NEVER be APFS...

I don't think Apple is keeping the HFS+ any longer, they are going to APFS for all their SSDs which is near everything now.

 

[AppleSmack]

OK I do have everything off the drive now it's just a matter of organising the trash from the treasure now. I guess what I'm really asking is, is there any way to preserve some of the labelling? Or should I just be content that I have the data off?

That's good news! What software did you use for recovery?

 

[Fishrrman]

Be aware that when you use data recovery software, previous file names and folder hierarchies can be "lost". Sometimes these will need to be "re-constructed" manually.

That's one of the givens with such software.
But... the consolation is you got the data back, even if the file names are lost.

Were some of the recovered files music files (such as, "mp3")?
If so, a trick that might work:
Open iTunes (don't know if this works with Apple Music).
Create a new "library" (which will be used to work on the files)
Import all the files with munged names.
What happens next: iTunes will read the metadata, and "re-group" the files into its library.
Because the names "in the metadata" exist independently of finder-assigned names, they may have "survived" the recovery.
You can now manually-rename the files in the finder if you wish.
(it's a long process, but it CAN be done -- I've done it).

This might work for photo (jpg) files as well, using either Photos or iPhoto.

 

[MacBH928]

Be aware that when you use data recovery software, previous file names and folder hierarchies can be "lost". Sometimes these will need to be "re-constructed" manually.

That's one of the givens with such software.
But... the consolation is you got the data back, even if the file names are lost.

Were some of the recovered files music files (such as, "mp3")?
If so, a trick that might work:
Open iTunes (don't know if this works with Apple Music).
Create a new "library" (which will be used to work on the files)
Import all the files with munged names.
What happens next: iTunes will read the metadata, and "re-group" the files into its library.
Because the names "in the metadata" exist independently of finder-assigned names, they may have "survived" the recovery.
You can now manually-rename the files in the finder if you wish.
(it's a long process, but it CAN be done -- I've done it).

This might work for photo (jpg) files as well, using either Photos or iPhoto.

How do files lose their names, what would their names be then?