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I accidentally deleted my mac partition!!! Please Help!!!

J

Jmarvzz

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 29, 2011
6
0
So i have a fairly new Imac bought in August, so yesterday i wanted to resize my partition for windows by giving it more memory. I successfully uninstalled the windows partition using bootcamp. I then started the bootcamp, and proceeded to reinstall windows giving it more memory. In the installation process of when it asks to load drivers or something like that, i accidentally deleted two partitions that were only 200mb each (if thats why it's messed up please let me know) i then proceeded to format the appropriate sized parition that was under the list.

When i then noticed that when i restarted my computer, the windows partition is only available, and under bootcamp assistant on windows it shows theres only one partition with 700gb of free space.

So basically i think i deleted my mac partition and am only capable of running windows right now. I have most of all my files on an external harddrive that is only mac-capable though. So i'm not really that worried about having to reinstall the whole harddrive.

Please I'm not sure what to do right now, i would like to recover my deleted partition but if not i will live. ( i read a little about applications that recover them, is this wise to do?) I'd really like some help on what to do at this point. PLEASE ANY HELP WOULD BE HELPFUL.

BTW, please don't mention that i'm dumb, i messed up, or i'm screwed. I know I MESSED UP big on this one. Just please try to help me turn this around.
 
I doubt you deleted your OS X partition and you probably deleted the boot sector. I'm at work right now so I can't check what the boot partitions are supposed to look like but you should be able to recover it. Are you using Lion? I know Lion has a recovery option. Else, you might need to use Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD) to try to re-create the partition table.

If you're unable to re-create the partition table you should be able to mount the partitions/drives and back data up and then re-install.

Will check more tonight.
 
imthenachoman said:
I doubt you deleted your OS X partition and you probably deleted the boot sector. I'm at work right now so I can't check what the boot partitions are supposed to look like but you should be able to recover it. Are you using Lion? I know Lion has a recovery option. Else, you might need to use Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD) to try to re-create the partition table.

If you're unable to re-create the partition table you should be able to mount the partitions/drives and back data up and then re-install.

Will check more tonight.
Click to expand...

Okay any help would be highly highly helpful. Yes i was using lion as my operating system. I know on startup when it would start up and i pressed alt-option, the mac HD, The windows HD, and i think it was called recovery HD were all displayed. However now the only one that shows up is the windows HD. Umm, what exactly is the ultimate boot CD? Was it the CD i used to install the necessary items for windows? Please if you are free tonight, it would be really appreciated.
 
Did you try to restart the computer holding down the "option" aka "apple symbol" key. This allows you to see all the hard drive partitions. Then select the Macintosh HD disc if available.
 
DFTU101 said:
Did you try to restart the computer holding down the "option" aka "apple symbol" key. This allows you to see all the hard drive partitions. Then select the Macintosh HD disc if available.
Click to expand...


Yes i did, i held down the alt-option key and the only harddrive partition that showed was the windows one.
 
Jmarvzz said:
Yes i did, i held down the alt-option key and the only harddrive partition that showed was the windows one.
Click to expand...

Try restarting in Safe Mode, when you hear the startup tone hold down the Shift key until you see a progress bar. If that works it proves your OS X partition is still there. Once you have booted into Safe Mode open System Preferences - Startup Disk and make sure the internal HD is selected then press Restart.
 
rkaufmann87 said:
Try restarting in Safe Mode, when you hear the startup tone hold down the Shift key until you see a progress bar. If that works it proves your OS X partition is still there. Once you have booted into Safe Mode open System Preferences - Startup Disk and make sure the internal HD is selected then press Restart.
Click to expand...

I tried it multiple times and no luck :/ looks like i really did somehow delete the whole thing.

btw, thanks guys for all your help so far though! it's really helpful
 
Anyone else know what i could do?

These are a few screen shots i found of when i look for bootcamp on windows

mac1.png


mac2.png


if anyone else has any advice it would be highly appreciated
 
That unallocated partition is most likely the OS X partition. Someone else might know for sure but aren't there bootable linux CDs that have command line partition tools that could bring it back? (unless you extended the Windows partition into the old OS X space in which case you're done)

Most likely you're done and a re-install is in your future. Hopefully someone else will chime in with better news but if that os x partition has been modified in any way I think it's toast.

Cheers,
 
Dude, looks like you're SOL. You can try http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ to see if you can recover the partition but there is a high probably that will just screw up your windows install.

At this point I think you're only option is to reinstall. If you're willing to try it you can try the partition tools on UBCD.

And sorry for late response, hectic week.
 
Alright guys, seems as if i will be most likely reinstalling everything.

How exactly would i go about doing this? Also when i bought my imac, it did not come with a osx lion disc. So would i need to get one from the apple store? Much thanks guys!
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

EDIT: see following post!!!

When you boot your Mac, hold the option key. The Lion Recovery partition should show up. Select it, and follow the on screen instructions to reinstall the OS.


If no recovery partition is set up, you will need to get ahold of a Lion Disc or USB stick, and follow the directions above, but selecting the appropriate install drive.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

WAIT!!! I just saw those screen shots.

You might be fine. When booting, hold the option key, and select the Mac OS X partition. It might be as simple as that.

Windows won't recognize the Mac partition. also, Windows will keep booting into Windows, unless you select it not to.

If that doesn't work, follow my directions above.
 
Jmarvzz said:
Alright guys, seems as if i will be most likely reinstalling everything.

How exactly would i go about doing this? Also when i bought my imac, it did not come with a osx lion disc. So would i need to get one from the apple store? Much thanks guys!
Click to expand...

No. Apple isn't distributing installations DVD discs anymore with the newer mac models since the release of Lion. Try having a go with the new Recovery Disk Assistant. The new method of way installing/reinstalling OS X
 
UBCD recovery

Hi imthenachoman
Can you guide me about recovery of boot sector through UBCD... I have accidently deleted mine... :(

imthenachoman said:
I doubt you deleted your OS X partition and you probably deleted the boot sector. I'm at work right now so I can't check what the boot partitions are supposed to look like but you should be able to recover it. Are you using Lion? I know Lion has a recovery option. Else, you might need to use Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD) to try to re-create the partition table.
Click to expand...

Thanks
Alok
 
imthenachoman said:
I doubt you deleted your OS X partition and you probably deleted the boot sector. I'm at work right now so I can't check what the boot partitions are supposed to look like but you should be able to recover it. Are you using Lion? I know Lion has a recovery option. Else, you might need to use Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD) to try to re-create the partition table.

If you're unable to re-create the partition table you should be able to mount the partitions/drives and back data up and then re-install.
Click to expand...

Thank you, @imthenachoman. Because of your suggestions, I kept trying to recover my partition until I got it.
My mistake was that I used Linux gParted to shrink my MAC partition, without first shrinking it using OSX Disk Utility, which was the right way to do it. The result was that the shrank partition was freezing up my laptop during boot with a 'forbidden' icon on the screen.

Disk Utility by itself could not fix it, and gParted, which I used to shrink my MAC partition, could not increase it back to original size. I was stuck.

After several unsuccessful attempts using OSX tools, I then used Linux fdisk partition editor. I took careful notes of all partition start and end blocks, and once I identified what I needed to do, I used fdisk to completely delete the remaining shrank MAC partition, and then recreate it with the larger original size, switching its type back to "Apple Core storage" type.

After that, I still could not boot it up, but I could then go into OSX Recovery Mode, and use Disk Utility to make all "minor repairs" needed. Then I was able to boot up from my MAC disk again!!

The repair logs mentioned *hundreds* of files could not be recovered, but so far I am not missing anything important.

I hope these steps can be useful to other people as well.

Good luck!
 
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