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Deleted Partition Accidentally.. Can I get it back?

-tWv-

-tWv-

macrumors 68000
Original poster
May 11, 2009
1,583
2
Ohio
Yesterday I made an extremely stupid mistake and accidentally deleted a partition on an external hard drive using disk utility. It was one of those things where you click the button without actually reading what the popup box said... really bad idea..

Unfortunately, this partition had a lot of important stuff backed up on it, and I need to find a way to get the data back. The drive is a 1TB external hard drive that was partitioned into 3 separate sections, 2 of them are still there but the one I deleted is marked as just "free space" now.

I know the data is all still there, but is there any way that I can re-create the partition with disk utility or some other program in order to get it back? A free program to do this would be preferable, or something with a demo version because I'm not going to need to do this again... hopefully. Thanks in advance
 
simsaladimbamba said:
Most people have success with this: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/
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This would allow him to recreate the partition but wouldn't recover the files.

Some data recovery applications have partition recovery functions but I have not seen any that work well or reliably and you certainly won't find any that are free or allow you to do so with the demo version. Your best option may be using FileSalvage or Data Rescue to recover your lost files.
 
OldSchoolMacGuy said:
This would allow him to recreate the partition but wouldn't recover the files.

Some data recovery applications have partition recovery functions but I have not seen any that work well or reliably and you certainly won't find any that are free or allow you to do so with the demo version. Your best option may be using FileSalvage or Data Rescue to recover your lost files.
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As far as I understood, one could recover partitions with that, including the "file tree", thus no recovery software like Data Rescue might be needed. But Data Rescue has served me well in the past with file recoveries, thus I recommend it in case of file loss.
 
simsaladimbamba said:
As far as I understood, one could recover partitions with that, including the "file tree", thus no recovery software like Data Rescue might be needed. But Data Rescue has served me well in the past with file recoveries, thus I recommend it in case of file loss.
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I would assume that even if you recreate the file tree, the disk catalog still won't show the previous files.
 
The odds of recovery in this situation depend upon how much time and effort you are willing to put into it. It would also depend upon how fragmented the files are on the drive and how difficult it is to piece them back together. Though, yes, you would need recovery software to attempt this operation and a large amount of RAM for it to go fast.
 
I ended up recreating a partition in the space that was labeled as "free space" and then used Data Rescue 3 to get all the files off. Took about 6 hours but luckily I was able to get most of everything off, the only part that sucks is I now have to rename everything, but Data Rescue 3 did it's job. Would recommend to anyone else in a similar situation.
 
Sign up for an account and come and make 2 posts, both related to a specific data recovery product? Sounds pretty spammy to me. On top of that, it's a Windows application..... on a Mac forum.
 
OldSchoolMacGuy said:
Sign up for an account and come and make 2 posts, both related to a specific data recovery product? Sounds pretty spammy to me. On top of that, it's a Windows application..... on a Mac forum.
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Am I missing something here? Or did you set your suspicion meter to 11 and then turned it up a notch so it broke :eek:

Sign up for an account? Lots of people do that when in trouble, so its their first post.

The first post didn't even mention DR, the second one NINE days later did but only after many others including you recommended it here, it also mentioned the amount of time it took and a drawback. A very subtle spammer if so.

Oh yeh, finally, AFAICS Data Rescue certainly runs on OSX. :D

Oh, BTW, in case you wondered, I don't work for them either :cool:

Again, am I missing something? Are you referring to a different poster than the OP?
 
The post I was referring to has been removed and wasn't the OP. The poster had signed up for an account and made 2 posts on the forum recommending some Windows application for data recovery. Seems funny to come to a Mac forum and recommend Windows software. I can't imagine going to the PC World forums and suggesting Mac applications to resolve their issues.
 
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