Home > Questions

My external hard drive is accidentally overwriting, can I undo it?

So my old iMac died and I ended up getting the hard drive put into an external enclosure and getting a MacBook Pro 2018 with High Sierra attempted to restore the data from this hard drive to the MacBook Pro using the directions I found on this website. I clearly didn’t follow the instructions carefully enough. Because I ended up overwriting my old hard drive with the data from my empty new Mac book. Is there any way to undo this?

Best Answered by

iBoysoft author Amanda Wong

Amanda Wong

Answered on Tuesday, August 27, 2024

You can not undo any data overwritten on any storage media. But you can try to recover data that is not overwritten from the external hard drive. Just pick up professional data recovery software to scan the target drive, perhaps, you can get some files back.

The next time your MacBook won't turn on, you can recover data from the unbootable Mac in macOS Recovery Mode to get wanted files off the drive and proceed to fix the unbootable Mac without losing data. 

According to your description, you have selected the iMac hard drive in Disk Utility and clicked Restore, and chosen Retore From the MacBook hard drive, therefore the iMac hard drive was erased, and a copy of the MacBook hard drive is kept on the erased iMac hard drive, unfortunately, you can't undo this action.

Any data overwriting is irreversible, the previous data on the iMac hard drive is replaced by new data. Have you ever backed up the iMac hard drive with Time Machine, iCloud, or in other ways? If your answer is YES, you can restore the iMac hard drive with your backups.

Besides, given the data is stored in the sectors randomly, perhaps some previous files on the iMac hard drive haven't been overwritten, then you can recover such data back. You'd better recover them ASAP to avoid further data overwritten. What you need is data recovery software such as iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac, it can scan the drive for lost/deleted files, then you can preview and recover wanted files to a different location. Just download it and try it for free now!

People Also Ask

Read More Questions

Read More Advice From iBoysoft's Computer Experts

summary- recover-deleted-audio-files-mac

Four Effective Ways to Recover Deleted Audio Files on Mac

Four effective methods to recover deleted audio files on Mac are introduced in this post.

Mac Data Recovery Tips

Mac startet nach Time Machine-Wiederherstellung nicht

Mac Boot Nach Time Machine-Wiederherstellung nicht, Hier sind Lösungen

Wenn Ihr Mac nach der Time Machine-Wiederherstellung nicht startet, lesen Sie diesen Beitrag, um die Lösungen zu erhalten. Erfahren Sie auch, warum dieses Problem auftritt.

Wählen Sie ein Wiederherstellungsmodul

Beste SD-Kartenwiederherstellungs-Apps und Richtlinien

Dieser Artikel zeigt Ihnen, wie Sie eine SD-Karte mit der besten SD-Karten-Datenwiederherstellungssoftware wiederherstellen können, wenn Sie Fotos, Videos, Audio und andere Dateien verloren haben, sowie Lösungen zur Behebung von SD-Kartenproblemen.