Apologies for the laggardly reply, I haven't read my digest for the last couple of days.
I have just been attempting image recovery myself and whilst not exhausting every option on this yet the following summary may be of help in recovering deleted files - I have managed to recover some files.
1] The best solution so far has come from a New Zealand outfit - Subrosa - with a program called File Salvage. The program is easy to download and use, but has limitations to the files it can recover. For me, the big drawback was not being able to recover .psd files, but they say they are working on this. It did recover quite a few Jpeg and Tiff files for me.
"File Salvage can currently recover JPEG, TIFF, PNG, MP3, M4A (iTunes AAC files), M4P, AIFF, WAV, MIDI, AVI, MOV, ASF, RealMedia, Word, and Excel files from Mac OS X. If you accidentally delete any files that you want back, just run File Salvage and if the deleted files have not been written over (of which there are usually very good chances), it will restore them like new. File Salvage will even recover your files from an initialized disk. Corruption does not detain File Salvage. It will process any intact data on the disk and recover whole or partial files wherever they can be found" .
Relatively inexpensive - Well worth a try. - http://www.subrosasoft.com
2. Data Rescue claim not to be able to recover deleted files. http://www.prosofteng.com
3. Same goes for the faithful standby DiskWarrior.
4. VirtualLab� Data Recovery Software for Macintosh. http://www.binarybiz.com/vlab/mac.php
Several people recommended this to me and claim to have had success with it. I had terrible trouble with it. The whole process is completely unwieldy. Documentation is pathetically inadequate, queries to their tech services desk have to be sent and answers received from the website. Answers to 5 clearly delineated questions I asked them were two sentences of misspelled and uninformative garble. They have discontinued their phone helpline and the offer to allow a sample recovery. The only way to find out if it will work is to guess how much data you are going to recover and pay for it in advance. Which I did, and because I got an error message requesting I use a non web based email address, went through the ordering process again only to discover later they have debited my credit card twice. I'm still trying to recover this.
The 'recovery' process itself - using the program, proved to be slow - it hung frequently - and the 'preview' of files that could possibly be recovered is done by comparing the code from an existing file of that type with the recovery possibility. None of the filenames are visible/recoverable, so you need to guess from the file sizes whether they are worth trying to recover or not. Having got what appeared to be a perfect match on some .psd files I went ahead with the recovery process. None of the files will open in Photoshop 5.5, 7 or CS - the message that comes up is 'not compatible with this version of Photoshop'.
Try it only if you are truly desperate and have money to throw away. It probably still won't work. Then again, it could just be me...
5. Norton FileRecover
I was going to try this as a last resort as so many people have said that Norton and OS X don't work well together. As I don't have a copy though, and I'm still skint and whimpering from my run in with binarybiz it may never happen.
So basically if its Tiffs and Jpegs you are after File Salvage http://www.subrosasoft.com seems to be the best bet. Its not much, but I hope its of some help to you.
And for the rest - well - we all should know by now to back stuff up regularly and be a little more careful with the delete key.
It won't save you if you get so crazed with despair you drag all your work out and burn it and erase the hard drives for good measure [there is another good reason for keeping backup copies in another location] but for most purposes it should serve.
All the Best
Julia
On 9 Dec 2004, at 13:49, Chris wrote:
Dear List,
Can anyone recommend recovery software for accidentally deleted image files
from a hard disc - more in anticipation of what may happen than what has
thankfully. I tried running Norton System Works Version 2 but it has never
been fully compatible with OSX (running X.3.5) and its unerase function
doesn't work, nor is it bootable from the disc. (I have three copies of this
as having complained to Norton at the lack of compatability so they sent me
two more all equally useless!)
Thanks Chris
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