bootcamp Windows partition recovery

[Notsoflymacguy]

Hello,

I upgraded my mac operating system with out backing up any data. I had a windows 7 partition that was written over or erased. I have looked through the forums and haven't found a case similar to mine. I downloaded ease us wizard and located the partition so i know it still exists but don't know the best way to recover the partition. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Washac]

Do not know what has happened there because upgrading the OS in the Mac partition should not affect the Bootcamp partition, the Mac will see the two partions as two drives. I have updated my OS the drive that I have Bootcamp on and have never seen or had this problem.

What OS did you upgrade to and have you tried the Macs Disk Utilty ?

 

[Notsoflymacguy]

I upgraded to El Capitan and in the utility it only shows the Macintosh HD. I tried using the first aid feature and that didn't help.

 

[Washac]

I upgraded to El Capitan and in the utility it only shows the Macintosh HD. I tried using the first aid feature and that didn't help.

When in Disk Utility what result do you get if you click on the disk containing El Capitan, not the named drive you gave it but the overall drive.

 

[Notsoflymacguy]

I took a screen shot of the utility when I clicked on the "Fusion Drive"

 

[DeltaMac]

I think your Windows partition is gone. The OS X install does not erase the drive, unless you choose to do that erase first using Disk Utility. If your Windows partition was in NTFS format (normal for a Windows partition), and you deleted it, while rebuilding the Fusion drive, then I guess there's little chance you can recover data from that Windows partition.

It's all pretty tricky, as the Fusion drive spreads out over the two storage devices in your iMac: spinning hard drive, and SSD. The Windows partition did not exist on the SSD, only the spinning hard drive.
Now that you have rebuilt the fusion drive, effectively over-writing the former partition information, the Windows partition will be especially challenging to retrieve in any practical way.

Try opening your terminal.
Show us the result from this command

diskutil list

I would also be curious if your Boot Camp assistant reports that a boot camp partition exists (which means the assistant would offer to remove it)

 

[Washac]

And you did was update the Mac OS ?

Only help I can offer on this have read through this thread - https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/how-to-recover-bootcamp-ntfs-partition.1405449/

Also these may help....

https://www.stellarinfo.com/blog/recover-bootcamp-partition-mac/

http://nerdr.com/bootcamp-partition-lost-repairing-mac-partitions/

 

[Notsoflymacguy]

Here is the list from terminal and I'll take a look at those links thanks Washac.

 

[Weaselboy]

Here is the list from terminal and I'll take a look at those links thanks Washac.

What I see there is a totally normal 1TB Fusion setup with no sign of any Windows partition. I cannot tell if you ever had a Windows partition there, or if you had one and somehow got rid of it, but you do not have one there now.

 

[Notsoflymacguy]

That's the odd thing I did not change anything. Only after the upgrade to the new OS the drive disappeared. I downloaded a program called EaseUS data recovery wizard (its only the trial but it allows me to scan my drive and see the files). I've taken few screen shots showing whats there. From what I can tell there is still windows files and a ntsf partition.

 

[Washac]

The thing with all this is I feel this.

If the programs and information in the what is a now lost partition is important then this is worth pursuing, but would probably need to be recovered by professionals in the field of data recovery. I tried to recover missing files from a drive that I wiped without thinking, there are programs out there that claim to do this but all the demo versions I tried at the time proved worthless.

If the Bootcamp partition only contained games then I would not waste time on it just start again and reinstall the games and also if you feel the Bootcamp partition is important to you then use/try this....

https://twocanoes.com/products/mac/winclone

All this is the very reason why I just use Bootcamp for games and emulation etc.