Massive fail: I deleted a whole disk and need to recover it

[Siannath]

Hi there.

I am soliciting help to you. I have done a massive fail. I accidentally deleted a whole 2 TB disk containing lots and lots of important files. It is an external disk and there is no backups. Yeah, mistake.

How I deleted it? Disk Utility App. I selected the partition on the left side, clicked on the "Delete" tab, and then clicked on the "Delete…" button. Then confirmed the deleted by hitting "OK" on the modal dialog, then I realized what I have done.

Note: My machine is on Spanish language, so the button names and such may be different due to translation from Spanish to English.

This is where all went wrong. Obviously is my mistake.

Well… this is the question I need to ask you… is there a way to recover the whole disk?

It is a GUID partitioned disk. Only 1 data partition. I think that been a GUID disk, there is a hidden 100MB partition for EFI or something like that.

I unmounted the disk to avoid accidentally writings on the now-free-space that would overwrite the actual data.

Lots of years ago, on a MS-DOS computer, I made a similar mistake. I deleted the MBR partition table for a disk. I solved the situation by binary-writing the MBR partition table, and after a reboot, all the data was there. Almost miraculous.

Now, in this situation, do you know if a miracle can happen? What is your advice?

I will update the post as I find useful information.

Thanks.

 

[Siannath]

iSkysoft Data Recovery

This software has several search and recover modes. Using the quick search mode does not find any files, just lists the files that OS X currently sees.

Using the "raw search" mode finds lots of files… with no filename. Also, no directories. So, with this software it seems that I will be able to recover data… in a messy way.

I will keep searching for alternatives.

 

[Siannath]

Disk Drill 2

This software features a "partition recovery" and "HFS+ journal recovery" options that didn't work in this case.

Quick scan shows the same few files that there are in every HFS disk after erasing it

Deep scan apparently shows the same messy no-name and no-in-folder files that the previous software.

 

[velocityg4]

Use Stellar Phoenix for Mac. It's the best data recovery software for the Mac that I know of.

If you've got a Windows computer use Nucleus Kernel for Mac. It's confusing that their Mac data recovery program only runs in Windows but that's the way they made it.

Be sure to recover files to another drive. You will likely lose folder structure. Files with incorrect or missing names are usually just useless fragments.

 

[Siannath]

Use Stellar Phoenix for Mac. It's the best data recovery software for the Mac that I know of.

If you've got a Windows computer use Nucleus Kernel for Mac. It's confusing that their Mac data recovery program only runs in Windows but that's the way they made it.

Be sure to recover files to another drive. You will likely lose folder structure. Files with incorrect or missing names are usually just useless fragments.

Thank you very much. I will try with both!

 

[Siannath]

No luck so far. After a 20-hour-scan, Stellar Phoenix for Mac is able to recover only 9 GB from de 2 TB of lost data

 

[velocityg4]

You'll need to send it to a professional data recovery lab then.

 

[Siannath]

Disk Drill did it for me

After a 20 hour scan and a 12 hour recovery, Disk Drill recovered about 75% of my lost files. The files were recovered with no names and no folder structure. Better than nothing. Overall, I am relatively satisfied.

It is important to note that this is a USB 2.0 drive. That explains the slowness.

Thanks.