Please help - Partitions disappeared after Write using testdisk

[alexgreen]

Hi,
I’m trying to fix an issue with seagate 6tb using testdisk but i think i just made things worse.

It started when I left files to copy overnight, in the morning my mac showed a notification that the harddrive wasn’t ejected properly. Since then I haven't been able to mount it. Before i used the testdisk I was able to see the harddrive in disk utility but just not mount it and it was grey. Now I can't even see it.


The drive was formatted in Disk Utility as exFat, one partition, non-bootable just a few days ago..


When i got this problem I found a testdisk and read the manual. When I run it for the first time the testdisk displayed a message:

Code: Select all

No partition from this disk must be mounted: Open the Disk Utility (In Finder -> Application -> Utility folder) and press Unmount button for each volume from this disk

The disk was shown grey in the disk utility and displayed errors when trying to mount it. There was an option to Continue which I pressed.

The partition table type was automatically detected as:

• EFT GPT

I could see following partitions after a quick search:

• EFI

• MS Data

Originally I ran a Deep Search that showed a number of errors with the EFI partition, it was saying that something is != 1. But it was taking ages to run a deep search, i.e. after leaving it overnight it only completed 0.3%.

I read the manual again and realized deep search is not actually required in my case as my partition was displayed correctly after Quick Search.
I did the following:

• ran the testdisk again,

• went through Analysis

• Quickly Search the disk had P in front of it

• Used key `P` to check if I could see all the files on MS Data and was able to see them.

• Then I pressed Write and confirmed with Y.

That went very quickly but I still wasn't able to see the drive on my mac. So i was wondering if this is because of that message testdisk displayed at the start (No partition from this disk must be mounted...).

I ran

Code: Select all

sudo diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2 

and ran

Code: Select all

sudo testdisk

again, went through a quick search. This time i could see EFI and MS Data again but MS Data was showing as D(eleted). I used key ‘P’ again to check all the files are there, replaced D(eleted) with P using arrow keys and ran Write. This time it took longer around 10-15 sec.

After this I'm not able to see the disk in disk utility anymore even as the grey and diskutil list doesn't show EFI partition anymore.




When I run the testdisk it cant automatically detect partition type anymore and depending on the partition type i chose it shows:

• Partition: Read error. (when chose Intel)

• Trying alternate GPT (when chose EFI GPT)

When I press on Quick Search it takes ages to run, ie before it would take just 15-20 min and now it’s been 3 hours since it started.

The disk has 3.5TB of data. I was able to see the data just 3.5 hrs ago with the testdisk but not anymore.

What is my best course of action in the situation?
Appreciating your help, the data on the disk is very important to me.

[cgrenier]

Bad sectors can explained why you get worse results each time you use your disk.
You can try to clone your disk to a new empty 6TB or + dis using ddrescue as explained in https://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk.pdf.
Once the copy is done, remove the original disk and try to access your data from the clone.
You can also contact a data recovery company.