How can I recover files from an iPod classic (when using as a hard disk) after reformatting? Recently, my 120 GB iPod classic was not being recognised by my MacBook and kept prompting to reformat. I have done this many times before but make it a conscious effort to back up my files before I do so. I genuinely forgot about the folder I had saved on my iPod classic (when using it as a hard disk) and went ahead to reformat it. A week later I realised I forgot to back up my files but it was too late. I want to retrieve the files really badly as they were pictures/memories!

Is it possible to retrieve without paying for those softwares?
If you are comfortable with the command line, try TestDisk

It's fairly intuitive for a command line program.

The basic steps are as follows:


Download from above link.
Extract download.
Navigate to extracted folder in Terminal.
Run ./testdisk
Follow the onscreen instructions.


Note: You may want to read the documentation before you do anything. The documentation links are about halfway down the page I linked previously. The instructions are for NTFS, but I imagine it will be a similar process for HFS.