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Recently I have accidently erased my harddrive with all my old mac files on it, and I have been trying desperatley to get it back.

I have tried EaseUS recovery program and it has found my files (thank heaven!) but it asks to pay to recover these files.

After looking through and through, I've found testdisk, and followed the instructions to get an image copy of my hard drive. It had a similar size, which I believe is my files!

Buut this is the problem. It's compressed as a .dd file, and after a little research it seems to be an old UNIX compression file.

Is there any way to open this file to get my lovely stuff back?

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    Please add a link to the "instructions" you followed.
    – klanomath
    Commented Jun 8, 2015 at 6:30
  • Although I know you've found a solution for your problem, this entire issue could have been avoided with a backup. Let's bring up the oft-repeated age-old and unquestionable advice: Backup backup backup. You have to realize that all of your data is hanging by a thread. That's the thread of usability. Can you access you data? Can you use it? That thread can break for a number of reasons, and eventually, without a backup, you will lose access to your data, and if you're unlucky, you may lose it for good. Backing up is the only way to avoid this.
    – William T Froggard
    Commented Jun 9, 2015 at 2:02

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An image copy (what you did with testdisk) is a block-level clone of your drive, not a file copy. it includes the directory, which does not include any of your files.

EaseUS, Data Rescue and similar programs can usually recover files from a formatted drive. Yes, they cost money so get out your credit card. Some have a preview mode that can recover a small number of files per scan, basically to prove it's worth investing in.

EaseUS costs $90, you apparently don't think your data is worth that much. Decent external drives cost about $200, a backup would have eliminated the headache you are going through. And there's more to come, as recovered files typically don't have the original filenames.

Also note that if you are talking about the disk drive in the computer you are currently using, the chances of recovering anything go down every minute you continue to use the computer.

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  • Thank you providing an accurate description of what the .dd file actually is. It looks like it would have to be using a paid option to get all my stuff back. I'll give it a wait until tomorrow and I'll claim this as this answer
    – MrU
    Commented Jun 8, 2015 at 7:44
  • in AUD its $128 when i bought it yesterday, and hopefully if it all goes well I'll have all my movies, work and files back.
    – MrU
    Commented Jun 8, 2015 at 23:21
  • and nope. all files corrupted. I read on why and it turned out defragging actually had a use. to prevent files from being corrupted. – which i had never defragged in my life.
    – MrU
    Commented Jun 24, 2015 at 0:24
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Because what you have used is free edition of EaseUS, the free edition for EaseUS support recover 2GB, if your files is more than 2GB, you have to pay for it.

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