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One partition ate the others?!?!

U

-Ussu

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 12, 2007
27
0
Tallinn, Estonia
I had 3 partitions on my late 2011 MBP internal harddrive: Mac HD (about 700 gb), Windows (about 30 gb) and temp(about 20 gb).
Temp was for transporting filed from my mac to my windows.
Anyway, I discovered that my temp was in a wrong format because I could'nt put my 5 gb file on it. So i went to Disk Utility and Erased temp, putting it in ExFat. It threw somekind of error, MediaKit was mentioned. Anyway, I didn't have an idea what to do with the error so I just went ahead and tried to copy my file on the partition.
I left the room for some time to let the transfer finish. As I came back, my computer was at Windows booting screen, with the white little thingy blinking in the corner. I waited for some time but the boot-up wouldn't countinue. So I restarted and looked at my partitions on which to boot on. Only windows appeared there. I tried to fix my windows booting with my win 7 disc, it said that some kind of error occured and it couldn't be done. Then I went into recovery mode. Disk Utility shows that I have only 1 partition on my mac - temp. And it is 750 gb, with about 10 gb taken by the files i was transferring to it while this all began.
I am willing to make a clean install, but I'd really like to get some important files from my Mac HD. It isn't possible that the mac parition (which had about 400 gb worth of data on it) just dissapeared when my computer probably crashed? As my bootup screen shows Windows, then I have some hope that my mac and windows are somewhere on this hard drive, somewhere hidden.
What to do, how to do it? I've been trying to google on this but it is not a very common situation to get in.
I'd be very grateful for any kind of advice on what to do.
I have a macbook air to use while trying to fix my pro if that could help me in any way.
 
U

-Ussu

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 12, 2007
27
0
Tallinn, Estonia
Macman45 said:
From what you say, it looks as though your formatted the entire drive...I hate to tell you but if that's what's happened only a specialist data recovery company could help, and they charge$$$
Click to expand...

But how has that happened? One moment everything was okay, I was transferring files from one drive to the other and after crashing the the drive was formatted? It just doesn't make any sense :mad:
 
theSeb

theSeb

macrumors 604
Aug 10, 2010
7,466
1,893
none
Macman45 said:
From what you say, it looks as though your formatted the entire drive...I hate to tell you but if that's what's happened only a specialist data recovery company could help, and they charge$$$
Click to expand...

He might still be able to recover his files, provided he does not do anything else to the drive, like reinstall OS X.

I would take the drive out, throw it into an external enclosure and connect it to another Mac. Then download some data recovery software (I use Stellar - you'll have to pay, but If I recall correctly, the free demo will allow you to scan the drive and see if it finds your files, before buying the app to do the actual recovery - http://www.stellarinfo.com/ )
 
theSeb

theSeb

macrumors 604
Aug 10, 2010
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-Ussu said:
But how has that happened? One moment everything was okay, I was transferring files from one drive to the other and after crashing the the drive was formatted? It just doesn't make any sense :mad:
Click to expand...

Your partitions might still be there, but something went wrong when you were doing the format.

Try going into Recovery HD, then open the Terminal, and type in diskutil list. See if your partitions are there.

Oh, in the future make sure you keep a backup. You can never have enough backups. Most importantly: always make a backup before mucking about with partitions!
 
U

-Ussu

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 12, 2007
27
0
Tallinn, Estonia
theSeb said:
He might still be able to recover his files, provided he does not do anything else to the drive, like reinstall OS X.

I would take the drive out, throw it into an external enclosure and connect it to another Mac. Then download some data recovery software (I use Stellar - you'll have to pay, but If I recall correctly, the free demo will allow you to scan the drive and see if it finds your files, before buying the app to do the actual recovery - http://www.stellarinfo.com/ )
Click to expand...

Is it possible to do that from my macbook air? so that i wouldn't have to remove my hd.

----------
theSeb said:
Your partitions might still be there, but something went wrong when you were doing the format.

Try going into Recovery HD, then open the Terminal, and type in diskutil list. See if your partitions are there.

Oh, in the future make sure you keep a backup. You can never have enough backups. Most importantly: always make a backup before mucking about with partitions!
Click to expand...

"VAHENDAJA" is temp

/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: FDisk_partition_scheme *750.2 GB disk0
1: Windows_NTFS VAHENDAJA 750.2 GB disk0s1
/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: Apple_partition_scheme *1.5 GB disk1
1: Apple_partition_map 30.7 KB disk1s1
2: Apple_Driver_ATAPI 2.0 KB disk1s2
3: Apple_HFS Mac OS X Base System 1.5 GB disk1s3
/dev/disk2
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: untitled *524.3 KB disk2
/dev/disk3
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: untitled *524.3 KB disk3
/dev/disk4
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: untitled *524.3 KB disk4
/dev/disk5
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: untitled *524.3 KB disk5
/dev/disk6
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: untitled *524.3 KB disk6
/dev/disk7
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: untitled *6.3 MB disk7
/dev/disk8
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: untitled *2.1 MB disk8
/dev/disk9
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: untitled *1.0 MB disk9
/dev/disk10
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: untitled *524.3 KB disk10
/dev/disk11
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: untitled *524.3 KB disk11
/dev/disk12
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: untitled *1.0 MB disk12
 
theSeb

theSeb

macrumors 604
Aug 10, 2010
7,466
1,893
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-Ussu said:
Is it possible to do that from my macbook air? so that i wouldn't have to remove my hd.
Click to expand...

First try what I said in my last post. Edit: oops, you already have. Let me take a look

It looks as though you've lost the other two partitions. I am not sure that you can do the recovery directly using Target Disk Mode, considering the state of your hard drive. I reckon it's best to take the drive out (it's really easy in a MBP - you can find instructions and videos all over the place, if you're unsure what to do).
 
Last edited:
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