DiskTest Question & Writing Partition Manually
Posted: 16 Oct 2015, 00:54
Hello,
I accidentally reformatted the wrong disk (why many of us are here) and am now attempting to recover the original partition tables and data. This is a GUID/GPT HFS+ drive for OS X. I have three main questions.
Question 1: How exactly does DiskTest determine the order in which partitions are found when in deep analysis mode?
Does it proceed sector by sector from the lowest number starting sector to the highest numbered starting sector? Or does it instead take into account ending sectors or size in some way when finding and listing partitions? Something else?
My reason for asking is that it seems to be finding possible partitions in that order, but it has not found a partition that I am quite certain exists at sector 409640. The highest starting sector for a partition that it has found so far is 143097925. If it finds partitions based upon their starting sector, then it would appear that DiskTest will never find my missing partition and I can quit the deep analysis. Is that correct?
This leads me to Question 2: If I am confident that I know, or can learn, the precise offset and size of each of the partitions that I had originally on my drive, can I then manually write that even if the deep analysis never finds the partition that I want?
If so, how exactly?
I think that I know where my partitions are based upon R-Studio for Mac. It listed the following in deep analysis of my disk (which matches the prior partitioning):
A) EFI Partition: Offset 40, total size of 409600. (so end of 409639?)
B) Data Partition: Offset 409640, total size of 1699417472 (so end of 1699827111?)
C) New Install: Offset 1700089256, total size of 253173728 (so end of 1953262983?)
My last questions are about understanding this data:
Am I correct in thinking that "Offset" means the start of the partition in sectors?
Am I correct in thinking that I need to add the Offset+Size of the partition, then subtract one to get the last sector in the partition?
If not, what should I be doing?
Thank you!
I accidentally reformatted the wrong disk (why many of us are here) and am now attempting to recover the original partition tables and data. This is a GUID/GPT HFS+ drive for OS X. I have three main questions.
Question 1: How exactly does DiskTest determine the order in which partitions are found when in deep analysis mode?
Does it proceed sector by sector from the lowest number starting sector to the highest numbered starting sector? Or does it instead take into account ending sectors or size in some way when finding and listing partitions? Something else?
My reason for asking is that it seems to be finding possible partitions in that order, but it has not found a partition that I am quite certain exists at sector 409640. The highest starting sector for a partition that it has found so far is 143097925. If it finds partitions based upon their starting sector, then it would appear that DiskTest will never find my missing partition and I can quit the deep analysis. Is that correct?
This leads me to Question 2: If I am confident that I know, or can learn, the precise offset and size of each of the partitions that I had originally on my drive, can I then manually write that even if the deep analysis never finds the partition that I want?
If so, how exactly?
I think that I know where my partitions are based upon R-Studio for Mac. It listed the following in deep analysis of my disk (which matches the prior partitioning):
A) EFI Partition: Offset 40, total size of 409600. (so end of 409639?)
B) Data Partition: Offset 409640, total size of 1699417472 (so end of 1699827111?)
C) New Install: Offset 1700089256, total size of 253173728 (so end of 1953262983?)
My last questions are about understanding this data:
Am I correct in thinking that "Offset" means the start of the partition in sectors?
Am I correct in thinking that I need to add the Offset+Size of the partition, then subtract one to get the last sector in the partition?
If not, what should I be doing?
Thank you!