Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

How to rebuild external hard drive

M

melaitaliana

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 31, 2011
13
0
I have a new macbook pro with ML.
For my first time in my life, for my little error I disconnected an external drive (ADATA sh93, 1TB) without removing it by finder before.
This drive was and it is with 2 partitions here it is the names:
1- Mountain lion (8 GB HFS bootable)
2- ADATA (992GB Exfat) (Many important documents!!)

This drive was sleeping, it was not writing/reading when I disconnected it.

After when I connected it did not mount, so I repaired it by Utility Disk, so..
Mountain Lion's partition is good mounted on finder correctly
ADATA's partition mounts on finder but is.. empty!!
It is incredible for me everything is lost!!? Only for a disconected without removing by finder??

I tried to repair disk with Utility Disk 3 times but the result always empty this partition, I think that this partition has filesystem corrupted, with Utility Disk is impossible to repair permission (it is Exfat), Diskwarrior cannot repair, rebuild Exfat partition so..

Which software can rebuild an external drive Exfat?

Thank you in advance, I am a little panicked cause this means many many hours of my job lost, please help me..
 
The standard exFAT implementation only uses a single file allocation table and free space map. FAT file systems instead used alternating tables, as this allowed recovery of the file system if the media was ejected during a write (which occurs frequently in practice with removable media).

source: wikipedia

it looks like you will need to use something to rebuild your FAT.

i'm not an expert, i was just doing some research. try some data recovery software like data rescue 3. there is a free trial..

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/10259/data-rescue/
 
Since this drive is in ExFAT format, you will also have access to the plethora of Windows applications to help you get your files back. Rather than rely on a Mac utility to work with a non-native disk format, I might go to a Windows box for data recovery.
 
camomac said:
The standard exFAT implementation only uses a single file allocation table and free space map. FAT file systems instead used alternating tables, as this allowed recovery of the file system if the media was ejected during a write (which occurs frequently in practice with removable media).

source: wikipedia

it looks like you will need to use something to rebuild your FAT.

i'm not an expert, i was just doing some research. try some data recovery software like data rescue 3. there is a free trial..

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/10259/data-rescue/
Click to expand...

Thanks. Sorry but "Rebuild" does not mean "Recovery", Data Rescue can revovery lost files, but they will be no named, I think that is not quite good for me to have got 3milions of files without name, no named!

I think that I have corrupted only some index of this drive, Disk warrior was perfect but it does not run on Exfat drive.

Thank you in advance for helping.
 
"Sorry but "Rebuild" does not mean "Recovery", Data Rescue can revovery lost files, but they will be no named, I think that is not quite good for me to have got 3milions of files without name, no named!"

You can't expect to recover file names and folder hierarchies after the directory has been corrupted, because names and folders are a creation of the directory. The data itself is "out on the platters" of the drive (and when a directory gets corrupted or deleted, the data usually is untouched).

That's why data recovery apps can get the data back, but often fail to recover file names as well.

That's the "price you pay" for data recovery. Some of the work you'll have to do yourself, such as identifying and renaming the files.

Of course, you can pay to have someone else do this for you (such as a "professional data recovery" outfit"), but be prepared to pay a couple of thousand $$ for that privilege.

Someone above mentioned TestDisk. This has a good chance at recovering a munged partition, but requires a HIGH learning curve....
 
Thank you, I am starting to learn to use TEstDisk, I maked some test with a small 2GB USB but it does not repair partition, for now recovery only files, but not files inside folders.
Maybe somebody knows pretty well this application?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back