What's the best file recovery software?

[Cary]

Just got a call from my 83 year old father - he deleted "a bunch of stuff" from his Mac - "cleaning up," he says. He just realized that he somehow deleted all the family pictures off the external hard drive.

Best of all, this was 4 days ago.

Now he wants me to see if I can recover any of it.

Here's my question: What's the best Mac file recovery software these day? Extra points for free or cheap.

Thanks,

Cary

[GGD]

You might give PhotoRec a try, it's free, and designed for photo recovery.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

[bazookaman]

I've used Data Rescue many times before and it's never failed to save my bacon. It is neither free nor cheap. However, when it comes to recovering precious data, I think I'd prefer something that is neither free nor cheap.

[evilrobot]

I'll second Data Rescue for it's bacon saving properties. Absolutely worth it.

[weapon]

data rescue works for me.

As long as he has not overwritten the disc much. He should be able to recover most photos.

[rz]

Data Rescue saved my bacon about 9 years ago when I had a hard drive get badly damaged. It was so bad, even Disk Warrior couldn't see the drive. DR managed to not only see it, but recover about 60% of my files. Granted, it took 11 days for it to do the deep scan and recovery, but it worked.

I've used it twice since then, both times on other people's drives. Recovered 100% of files both times. Interestingly, a friend of one of those people had a PC hard drive go bad and we tried the PC version of DR. It didn't recover anything. Coincidence?

Oddly enough, I recently came upon that hard drive from 9 years ago. I had put it in anti-static wrap and stored it away. I decided to see if the new version of Data Rescue, on a much faster machine, would be able to recover anything. It ran for a while, but finally came back and said it couldn't. So I decided to destroy the drive by opening it up. when I looked at the platters, there was a gouge in one of them, obviously where the head crashed onto it.

[mattkime]

hope you get that stuff back!

then install backblaze and time machine

[anonymouse1]

TELL HIM TO STOP USING THAT HARD DRIVE! Turn it off!

Then, Data Rescue.

[Lew Zealand]

Bacon is something which needs to be safeguarded at all costs and the best bacon-saving program is Data Rescue. After a similar event but which included wiping an entire hard drive, Data Rescue recovered 100% of the wiped files.

Best $89 I have ever spent.

[Speedy]

Be sure he exercises patience. Set Energy Saver to never sleep and tell him not to worry about the $2 of electricity he may think he is wasting.

rz wrote: it took 11 days for it to do the deep scan and recovery, but it worked.