Accidentally repartitioned drive - can I recover files?

July 7, 2007 7:27 AM

I was going to repartition an external USB hard drive in Mac OS X 10.4 in Disk Utility, and after I clicked Partition, I thought I clicked Cancel when I learned it would result in data loss. I guess I actually clicked OK, and then I quickly quit Disk Utility and disconnected the drive (it had already been unmounted). Now, when I reconnect the drive, it shows up as having been repartitioned, and all of the data on there is gone. Can I get my data back?

It only had about 4 seconds of being connected before I cancelled and unplugged it. I am sure that all of the bits are still on there, but the partition table seems to have been nuked. Is it possible to recover the files without sending the disk to DriveSavers? (It's mostly backups, but there are some original photos not backed up anywhere else that I would really like to recover.)

All partitions are Mac OS Extended (Journaled). The disk is a 500 GB Western Digital external USB hard drive.

posted by jbb7 to computers & internet (6 comments total)

Tech Tool Pro can do a block by block scan of the drive and recover data. I had to do this on a 300gb drive that was accidentally formatted and we did get a significant amount of data back, the problem was the amount of time that the scan took. Each scan of the drive was roughly 6 hours, and then the recovery was time consuming as well. It's worth a shot if you have nothing else, and the Tech Tool Pro suite has many other useful tools.
posted by bcnarc at 7:46 AM on July 7, 2007

Data Rescue is what I would use in this situation.

I most recently used it to recover about 80GB of data from a drive whose directory was so mucked that Disk Warrior wouldn't even fix it.

(Note: Disk Warrior won't help you in this situation.)
posted by tomierna at 9:09 AM on July 7, 2007

x2 for Data Rescue II - it will almost certainly help you recover some, if not all, of your data.
posted by maniactown at 9:27 AM on July 7, 2007

Spinrite is the best harddisk data recovery program there is. Not sure if they have a MAC version.
posted by three blind mice at 1:17 PM on July 7, 2007

Spinrite is the best harddisk data recovery program there is. Not sure if they have a MAC version.
posted by three blind mice at 11:17 AM on July 7

No it isn't.

Don't believe Leo LaPorte's hype (Steve Gibson's own ridiculous hype-mongering is already well established), Spinrite can potentially cause more damage than it purports to repair.

If a guy like Scott Moulton dis-recommends Spinrite, it's probably worth thinking twice about using it.
posted by melorama at 7:19 PM on July 7, 2007

Yes, SpinRite is the chiropractic of disk utilities - lots of noise, grunting, and effort... and very little to show for it.

Do you have access to a Windows machine? I've yet to find a disk problem that Acronis Disk Director can't handle.
posted by meehawl at 9:48 PM on July 7, 2007