iMac/Windows data recovery

[NiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown]

Ok I'm pretty much a novice at this stuff but have picked up a few things here and there (mainly YouTube) so please speak slowly and clearly to me!

I had a 20" iMac. One day a few years back it just stopped working. It's got a ton of photos, videos, music on iTunes and some documents I'd like back. My brother removed the hard drive and we scrapped the rest.

Fast forward to now. I thought I'd try and recover the data. So I bought a SATA to USB cable. It didn't show up on my computer. In disk management it was there but unallocated. Long story short I accidentally formatted it

I have purchased EaseUS recovery software..I can see it all there in theory but cannot preview it and it's taking an absolute age to recover to my (much smaller) external hard drive. I've selected the files I think are what I want to downsize the whole thing but I can't view them once they arrive there.

I'm assuming this is because they are meant for Mac and I'm using a Windows computer...does that sound right?

I have a trial of HFS explorer but it could not find the drive before I formatted it and now it says there are no HFS+ files present.

I'm stuck, can anyone help please?

Is there an option to sync to iTunes?

Deja vu

From what? EaseUS? I don't think so. I'm trying Phoenix Macintosh something or other now but it can't seem to read the drive

If you formatted it on the Windows computer it will have formatted as FAT32 and your HFS+ format will be gone. Even if the files could be found then the will be no HFS+ file table to recover them to.

I would suggest you email [email protected] explaining what you have done and see if he can help. www.datarecovery.co.uk/recover-my-data/

At the very least he might be able to tell you its hopeless.

To recover deleted or lost data from corrupted hard drive of Windows operating system, you can use Kernel for Windows Data Recovery software. It is a very proficient and affordable tool that allows you to get back inaccessible or deleted data from damaged or formatted Windows FAT and NTFS partition without making any change in original data. For more information, visit: www.windows.recoverdeletedfiles.org/
or
www.free.pcfilerecovery.org/

Recuva is the best solution for Windows data recovery. It's freeware utility provided by Piriform. It's also available for Mac systems. It can restore whatever you've lost due to accidental deletion and corruption from the hard disk and its volumes. It can restore data from corrupt/damaged as well as formatted hard disk drives.

Interested users can also refer to this blog post for useful information - wordpress.semnaitik.com/2014/06/19/fix-hard-disk-failure/

I hope the shared information would be helpful here.

Thanks and best regards.

Hello, mommies! I know this is already a late reply but just a heads up because this one really helped me specifically with iMac data recovery. I was so miserable when my iMac, for some reason, won't start up anymore. It contained all baby photos of my children, my pregnancy journey (those bumpie pics! ) and all other important document and stuff. The program helped me a ton!

So again, just in case you're in the same boat as us, you can actually perform iMac data recovery in a breeze even without much technical know-how. Sharing is loving! Cheers, mommas!

A Mac uses a different disk format (HFS+) Windows uses NTFS.

Recovery from a disk that was HFS+, then formatted as NTFS would be difficult. If you did a full format rather than Quick Erase then it is probably impossible.

I had a critical situation one time when a partition of my disk on a PC collapsed. I had to use Partition Recovery to recover important data. After that, I always make backups.