I'm a complete idiot
 

So, at 3AM after a week that has already been particularly hard, I just did something rather amazingly stupid. I wanted to back up my mac overnight, but just before crawling into bed, I realized that I'd run the program with the wrong external hard disk. Not the one that I use for backing up, but the one I use for storing all the stuff I don't have room for on my main drive. The stuff that isn't stored anywhere else. Mostly videos, including Seasons 1-9 of the Simpsons. Doh.

I stopped it about 15 minutes into the operation but obviously after that was after SuperDuper! ran its erasing procedure on the volume (I was doing a clean erase and backup).

I've tried googling/searching around but had no luck (search terms tend to tell me all the ways I can avoid making this mistake by using SuperDuper! :-). Can anyone tell me offhand if there is any conceivable way of retrieving the data? It's not critical stuff - which is why it was on there in the first place - but it would be nice to have back. My hunch is no, but I know I'll spend half of tomorrow at work trying to figure it out and would rather know if I need to just give up.

You might be able to use Data Rescue II from Prosoft Engineering -- it's worth a try.

Thanks for your help... I downloaded the trial version and it wasn't able to find anything. Too bad. I suppose I can give up in peace now.

As an aside, though, I have to note that the universe is not teaching me a very good lesson here. I go for years without backing up and have no issues. Then I try to be a good person and do regular backups and the first thing I do is erase a bunch of data....

I think, in this case, you should ignore the universe and just be a bit more alert/mindful (not always an easy thing, I know -- maybe we should make you solve some sort of puzzle rather than click buttons... :-()...