I accidentally erased my partitions, HELP! :-(

Howdy everyone, its been a while.

Well, the other day I wanted to remove my bootcamp partition on my

macbook, but I couldn't use the boot camp assistant because the beta

was expired already. So, I fired up Disk Utitlity to see if I could just

erase the partition, but the options were all grayed out. So I thought

maybe I could run the Disk Utility from my OS X Install CD, so I

opened that up and tried to remove the partition from there, but it

popped up a window saying it would destroy the data on the whole

drive not just one partition. Of course I meant to click cancel, but

stupid me I accidentaly confirmed it and it messed up my disk. I hit

command-q just as soon as I noticed what I did and I canceled the

process just as it started, but my data is still gone (or doesn't appear

to be there). I know this would be fairly easy to recover for someone

with the right hardware, software, and knowledge, but all I have is a

non-bootable macbook and a PC that I'm writing this on now. I also

have some linux live-cds. Do you think there is anything I can do at

this point? I don't have the money to go and pay a professional

data recovery place...

Thanks,

Gabriel.

#477877

do any of your boot cd's have a partitioner on it? if so, here's what i would do:

first, boot from your live cd. see which files/folders are recoverable. if it looks like you can get your docs back, you should be okay. assuming your data is there and recoverable:

second, resize whichever partitions are there to be as small as possible. give your self a 3rd partition to move the data to.

third: go back to the data recovery part of the boot disk and move your files to your new partition.

fourth: boot from your osx cd (dvd?). before installing, check the **** utility to make sure you can see the new partition with the data on it. then, repartition the other partition(s) to make sure it's clean and ready for an os.

fifth: install osx. make sure you do this on the correct partition. disclaimer: i'm mostly a windows guy and have never done this. i know in windows, you can specify which partition to install to. i assume the same is true in osx.

assuming everything goes right you should now have two drives mounted on your desktop: the os and the backed-up data. once you get your data moved over onto the osx partition, you can use disk utility to kill the data partition.

hot tip: most windows guys know this trick. you might want to consider leaving the data partition intact. that way if you ever hose your os, you only have to reinstall the os on the 'system' partition without touching your data. then again, in windows you can tell the os where to keep your data by default. i don't know how/if you can do that in osx.

good luck!

#477898

Well, I don't think any of my liveCDs have the right tools on them to do that. I can't

see any of the files on the damaged disk, It only appears to be one large empty partition

now. I also downloaded something called Hiren's BootCD which has many data recovery

tools on it and such, but every time I try to run one of the tools it gives me a "error

creating ramdisk" and it exits. It said that it might be because of too much ram, so I

removed some until only a single 512 chip was left, but still no dice. Then I thought

maybe I could install OS X on an external HD that I could connect through firewire, and

then use some kind of data recovery program to repair my internal disk. So, I spent

the whole day walking through stores looking for an ATA-Firewire adapter and nobody

had one (only USB, and macs can't boot from USB).

:-(

#477909

yikes, doesn't sound promising. hiren's is great, but i think besides the ramdisk thing, you'll run into problems if your hd is formatted as mac os extended. a windows boot disk can't read that. i don't know of any mac-equivalents to hiren's, although i'm sure there must be some.

the biggest problem, though, is that your live cd sees no data. i assume that's some sort of osx boot cd, yes?

i don't know what else to recommend. good luck, man.

#477966

Well, the CD that doesn't see any data on the disk is the OS X Install DVD where you

can run Disk Utility, the Terminal, etc. I know the windows boot disk won't see the partitions,

but I was hoping one of the included recovery utilities might. I also tried using something

Data Rescue II which also has a bootable CD just for macs, but when I burned that using

my PC the mac wouldn't even boot from it. I think what I'm gonna do tomorrow is buy a

firewire enclosure for my external disk, so that I can boot from it, and then install OS X

on the external HD. Then maybe I can run some kind of application that will help me

recover the data from the internal drive. If that doesn't go well I guess I'm screwed, cause

I need it working by Monday for work :-(

#478071

You don't have to go to data recovery places. To recover your lost partition all you need is to download the demo version of Stellar Phoenix Macintosh Data recovery software.

Stellar Phoenix helps to recover the repartition volumes, to see how the software works visit: http://repartitioned-mac-drive-data-recove...a-recovery.com/

To try the software download the demo version of the software from: http://www.macintosh-data-recovery.com The demo shows the preview of the recovered data

#481056