Crisis - formatted efi partition.

[[)roi(]]

Using your external OS X bootable drive, download the Coriolis iPartition app (too make things a little easier); and then compare the partition map between your bootable external drive and your non bootable internal one.

Btw the format of the EFI partition is FAT32 @ 200MB & the partition scheme should be GUID.

 

[Grant]

Using your external OS X bootable drive, download the Coriolis iPartition app (too make things a little easier); and then compare the partition map between your bootable external drive and your non bootable internal one.

Btw the format of the EFI partition is FAT32 @ 200MB & the partition scheme should be GUID.

here is iPartition for the ext boot drive:


and unfortunately, this is the internal mac drive / partition:

 

[Grant]

Using your external OS X bootable drive, download the Coriolis iPartition app (too make things a little easier); and then compare the partition map between your bootable external drive and your non bootable internal one.

Btw the format of the EFI partition is FAT32 @ 200MB & the partition scheme should be GUID.

the ext boot drive comes up as GUID
the internal mac drive appears as MBR:

 

[[)roi(]]

Ok that confirms something must have screwed up the partition map (probably the changes in Windows).

Ok the only way I know to recover lost partitions is using terminal tool called TestDisk (I'd suggest reading the documentation and looking at some of the recovery examples).

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

here's a Mac article related to a recovery using TestDisk and pdisk:
http://perrohunter.com/repair-a-mac-os-x-hfs-partition-table/

Good luck...

 

[sajunky]

I don't know MAC, but many DR professional recommend R-Studio. It supports HFS/HFS+, it is payware, but you can download free, see whether it can access your files and decide what to do later. I would start from this before looking for other solutions and permanently destry your data. Professional recovery tools do not write over existing volume, they build virtual disk. Sometimes they need to scan entire disk surface to rebuild virtual volume, so be prepared it takes long.

 

[[)roi(]]

I don't know MAC, but many DR professional recommend R-Studio. It supports HFS/HFS+, it is payware, but you can download free, see whether it can access your files and decide what to do later. I would start from this before looking for other solutions and permanently destry your data. Professional recovery tools do not write over existing volume, they build virtual disk. Sometimes they need to scan entire disk surface to rebuild virtual volume, so be prepared it takes long.

FYI Creating / changing a partition map doesn't destroy anything (except the current map of course), and for most parts neither does a typical format; these writes don't tend to affect the area containing the HFS+ directory tables i.e. the impact tends to be localized to the partition map.

Also the partition map can changed again if the information was incorrectly entered the first (or even second, third, ...) time.

This tends to be the same with almost all disk structures: Windows, Linux, ...

TestDisk is btw an open-source utility for all major platforms (incl. Windows & Linux) thats helps to discover where your lost partitions start & end.

 

[[)roi(]]

@grantza Let me know if you need help with either TestDisk or pdisk or gpt

 

[Grant]

@grantza Let me know if you need help with either TestDisk or pdisk or gpt

will do, ta

just busy in the windows partition grabbing the last of the files & folders off the mac partition

**
I did take a quick look at test disk earlier, if I recall correctly, it cannot write to a gpt - but having said that, it is clear I am no longer dealing with a gpt, but a mbr structure

 

[Grant]

I don't know MAC, but many DR professional recommend R-Studio. It supports HFS/HFS+, it is payware, but you can download free, see whether it can access your files and decide what to do later. I would start from this before looking for other solutions and permanently destry your data. Professional recovery tools do not write over existing volume, they build virtual disk. Sometimes they need to scan entire disk surface to rebuild virtual volume, so be prepared it takes long.

thanks
exploring all avenues now - if nothing else, it has been an interesting learning experience.

**
i do have a question tho.
mail messages (outlook) where are they stored ?

My primary mail account is imap - with messages saved on server. (i use mac's mail prog for this), so I am not concerned about it.

However, for a crowd I do some work for do not use imap for a number of reasons, instead use pop.
It is for this mail account that I use outlook. Just wondering where the messages are stored.
I have copied the "library" of my user account - would the messages be buried in there ?

 

[sajunky]

FYI Creating / changing a partition map doesn't destroy anything (except the current map of course), and for most parts neither does a typical format; these writes don't tend to affect the area containing the HFS+ directory tables i.e. the impact tends to be localized to the partition map.

OP reports that partition had been formatted with FAT32. In such case rebulding partition filesystem structure is neccessary. I do recommend the best tool on the market as a starting point. See if you can recover files, then look for a free tool which can do the same.

 

[jansdejager]

@grantza Let me know if you need help with either TestDisk or pdisk or gpt

this is your best bet imo. it may even be a good idea to create an Ubuntu install disk, boot into Ubuntu (don't install it), and follow the guid/gpt file system recovery tutorials related to GPT fdisk. I've successfully recovered a guid/gpt drive like this before using the fixparts tool. You may be able to run fixparts from Windows though, but I'm don't use bootcamp so uncertain on that front.

 

[ponder]

Why don't you backup your data, format & start from scratch?

 

[vinodh]

Why don't you backup your data, format & start from scratch?

I agree. Might be the best option.

 

[Grant]

OP reports that partition had been formatted with FAT32. In such case rebulding partition filesystem structure is neccessary. I do recommend the best tool on the market as a starting point. See if you can recover files, then look for a free tool which can do the same.

Luckily there was no need for any recovery type software as everything on the mac partition was visible via win7 on boot camp, so it was simply a matter of copying everything.
Definitely going to give R-studio a try tho.
Got a couple of WD Black drives that need a working over with a good proper recovery program.

 

[Grant]

Why don't you backup your data, format & start from scratch?

I have all the data back.
Starting from scratch is such a ball-ache, although I know its the better option.
This MBP is a few yrs old & seldom use it - but it was perfect - until I buggered it up trying to deal with a defective (one of many) WD drive via win7 (hirens in fact).

Going to give TestDisk a ride at the rodeo as well as Ubuntu since I have a boot disc lurking around somewhere.

 

[[)roi(]]

I have all the data back.
Starting from scratch is such a ball-ache, although I know its the better option.
This MBP is a few yrs old & seldom use it - but it was perfect - until I buggered it up trying to deal with a defective (one of many) WD drive via win7 (hirens in fact).

Going to give TestDisk a ride at the rodeo as well as Ubuntu since I have a boot disc lurking around somewhere.

Good to hear you lost nothing, however it might have been a worthwhile exercise to see if you could have recovered your lost partition data.


Ps. Going forward it's probably a good idea to scratch around for a spare drive for a backup.

 

[Grant]

Good to hear you lost nothing, however it might have been a worthwhile exercise to see if you could have recovered your lost partition data.


Ps. Going forward it's probably a good idea to scratch around for a spare drive for a backup.

I am going to have a go at sorting out the partition, probably more out of interest than anything else.
The ext mac boot drive is actually a clone of the MBP's OS & some of the folders from my user acc on the MBP.

 

[Grant]

@grantza Let me know if you need help with either TestDisk or pdisk or gpt

i'll take you up on your offer tomorrow (tues) if you have the time.

but on my maiden voyage, i was prepared to travel to a point in testdisk - no further, a bit like a sailer back in the day afraid to sail over the edge of the flat earth, or a pilot not wanting to fly too close to the sun.

so i took 5 baby steps
testdisk 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
at testdisk 5, my nappy rash was beginning to show, so i thought best to stop there & then !

 

[jansdejager]

I don't recommend testdisk because it's not intended for GUID/GPT partition tables,. What you need is a tool to convert your mistakenly MBR partition table (which testdisk can recover under normal circumstances) back to GUID/GPT, using the GPT Fdisk tools that I mentioned. Not sure if []roi[] agrees but please read up a bit more about testdisk before you go even deeper (see what I did ther - there's a function in testdisk to do a 'deeper search' if quick search fails)

 

[[)roi(]]

I don't recommend testdisk because it's not intended for GUID/GPT partition tables,. What you need is a tool to convert your mistakenly MBR partition table (which testdisk can recover under normal circumstances) back to GUID/GPT, using the GPT Fdisk tools that I mentioned. Not sure if []roi[] agrees but please read up a bit more about testdisk before you go even deeper (see what I did ther - there's a function in testdisk to do a 'deeper search' if quick search fails)

TestDisk is perfect for discovery (analysis), and as the last screenshot reveals, it has discovered what the partition map should look like; which is clearly quite different from the current one.

What's a little strange is the dual HPFS - NTFS partitions, but I suspect that's some latent echo of a previous config + we'd anyway look at contiguous sectors + disk size (which implies we should ignore the 1st HPFS partition & considering his current map also shows the 2nd values + that the Windows partition is working confirms this).

So IMO the valid partition maps values are the 1st, 2nd and 4th one.

To recreate the partition map I'd like you avoid TestDisk, and rather recommend either pdisk or gpt; the article I attached in an earlier post details the pdisk process using the information obtained from TestDisk's analysis.

With regards to the need to do a deeper search; I'm not so sure we need that, as the quick search appears accurate.

What would help is if @grantza could describe what were the partition sizes before the problem, for example: how big was the Mac and Windows partitions: the analysis shows this to be 200Mb for EFI (which btw is the standard size), 284Gb for the Mac partition, and 36Gb for the Windows partition; all totaling to 320Gb.

If this is correct then the next step I'd recommend is recreating the correct partition map with pdisk (and only if that fails, revert to gpt)