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perslh

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 19, 2005
3
0
I have just gone from pc to mac and I am not really sure what I am doing. I have a 100GB hard drive PowerBook and I was having problems with all the help menus and a few things weren't working well so I read on the internet it might be wise to reformat the drive and reinstall the operating system. I didn't erase the previous 7GB of data that was on the drive I just thought it would be erased when I partitioned the drive. I Inserted the os disk and held c as it suggested and went to the disk utility window. Set for partition and the drive was only saying 93GB and I assumed that would erased the old data and start all over again. All the software reinstalled itself and now I only have a 90GB hard drive with only 80GB available with no software on it other the os, so I am assuming that my old data is lost somewhere. Is anyone able to help.
 

Sun Baked

macrumors G5
May 19, 2002
14,936
156
Yes, when you reformat or repartition the drive -- all the data will be lost.

It's still there -- until it gets written over, or you zeroed the drive.

Edit: But you won't be able to see any of it, and it'll require special software to attempt a recovery.
 

perslh

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 19, 2005
3
0
Hey Sun Baked, Thanks for your reply. What is the special software and where do I find it?
 

Nermal

Moderator
Staff member
Dec 7, 2002
20,574
3,875
New Zealand
Some space is used by hidden information and geometry differences (drive manufacturers define 1 KB as 1000 bytes instead of 1024). This is why your 100 GB drive shows up as 93 GB.

Sorry, I don't know the name of any data recovery software.
 

perslh

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 19, 2005
3
0
Thanks Nermal. I ran virtualLab (demo) and it came up with the lost partition. I want to start over. Do you know how to do it? So I get a clean drive??
 
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