So last night my wifes laptop died big time. I could only boot up in safe mode and clearing pram / smc wasn't helping so I decided to wipe the hard drive and install Mountain Lion. I booted it in safe mode and copied any important files over. Then I wiped the drive and installed ML, which has now fixed the problem.
Only I made a mistake, the one thing I forgot to copy was the iPhoto library, which had all of our photos for the past 2 years on it. And it wasn't backed up.
Any ideas on recovery methods?
Best Answer
Okay, so I think I've solved the problem and thought I'd post this up just in case anyone runs into similar issues...
I've downloaded a program Data Rescue 3, and I'm scanning the drive for deleted files. The program seems easy to use although I found that if you want to scan your internal drive (as in my case), you'll need to have another external drive plugged in as the software won't let you restore to the same drive you're recovering from.
When you run the software, select your internal drive to scan off then select the deleted files scan. When prompted, select your external drive to work off.
I'll post my results, success or failure, in the comments soon.
Screenshot of results: