Mavericks and external disk issue

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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basilic
Posts: 4
Joined: 14 Nov 2013, 09:23

Mavericks and external disk issue

#1 Post by basilic »

I am one of those amongst thousands of unlucky guys having issues with external disk since the OSX upgrade to Mavericks. There are couple of threads since weeks on the Apple support communities forum and nobody has nailed down the issue for the moment.
I used to have an external disk connected with FW800. The drive has the following characteristics:
Western Digital MyBook Studio II, with 2x1TB disks, setup as a factory-default RAID0 volume of 2TB, initially formatted years ago with OSX Disk Utility as HFS Journaled. This volume was part of the Spotlight file indexing. Up until the Mavericks upgrade, that disk was working OK.

The issue is now that the disk is seen empty in the Finder and the volume partition been renamed to MyBook. Going into more basic views, I have the following taken from the Terminal

/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *2.0 TB disk1
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1
2: Apple_HFS MyBook 2.0 TB disk1s2


So, I am trying to figure out how to recover the data as it seems that all is there, and only the partition table get somehow lost. Searching on the net, I came to find the TestDisk tool. And here is listed below what I've done and found.

The disk is plugged in to the Mac using FW800. Volume has been unmounted from Disk Utility.
Starting TestDisk 6.14
The dodgy disk is /dev/disk1. As per what I read in the forum, I instead selected /dev/rdisk1 (still don't know the reason...)
and selected the detected EFI GPT partition
and selected the Analyze option and got the following
Capture d’écran 2013-11-14 à 09.06.05.png
Capture d’écran 2013-11-14 à 09.06.05.png (65.49 KiB) Viewed 2466 times
Quick Search gives me a couple of warnings:
check_FAT: Unusual media descriptor (0xf0!=0xf8)
Warning: number of heads/cylinder mismatches 16 (FAT) != 1 (HD)
Warning: number of sectors per track mismatches 32 (FAT) != 1 (HD)
EFI System 40 409639 409600 [EFI]
Mac HFS 409640 3906755383 3906345744

and the following
Capture d’écran 2013-11-14 à 09.06.45.png
Capture d’écran 2013-11-14 à 09.06.45.png (79.53 KiB) Viewed 2466 times
From the EFI System partition, I am able to list files (option P). Those are system related files, hidden (starting with .) and related to Spotlight as far as I can understand.
I cannot list any files from the Mac HFS partition. I am not given the right to use the P option. So, I select "Enter" to go into the "Deeper Search" option, which at the start gives warnings similar to the "Quick Search" option

check_FAT: Unusual media descriptor (0xf0!=0xf8)
Warning: number of heads/cylinder mismatches 16 (FAT) != 1 (HD)
Warning: number of sectors per track mismatches 32 (FAT) != 1 (HD)
EFI System 40 409639 409600 [EFI]
Warning: number of heads/cylinder mismatches 16 (FAT) != 1 (HD)
Warning: number of sectors per track mismatches 32 (FAT) != 1 (HD)
EFI System 46 409645 409600 [EFI]
Mac HFS 409640 3906755383 3906345744

but then continue the Deeper Search. At some point, I decided to stop this search and got the following
Capture d’écran 2013-11-14 à 09.10.55.png
Capture d’écran 2013-11-14 à 09.10.55.png (138.36 KiB) Viewed 2466 times
I assume there's an issue now with a new EFI partition found and some kind of overlapping with the Mac HFS.

I can list files (with the P option) from the first listed EFI partition. Those files are the same as from the Quick Search results. Even if I am given the right to use the P option for the second listed EFI partition, I got the following
EFI System 46 409645 409600 [EFI]
Directory /
No files found, filesystem may be damaged.

Selecting the first line of the Mac HFS partition doesn't give me the choice to use the P option. I can only use "Enter" that I did and got now the following message:
"No partition found or selected for recovery"
The only choice given is "Quit" which gets me back to the Menu screen with the Analyze choice.

Where I am now? I restarted a Deeper Search and I am letting it going for now.

Questions:
- What is the overall issue?
- What's wrong with the EFI partition and the overlapping with the Mac HFS partition?
- Should I keep the Deeper Search going?

Thanks for your help and support.

basilic
Posts: 4
Joined: 14 Nov 2013, 09:23

Re: Mavericks and external disk issue

#2 Post by basilic »

Deeper Search running since 14 Nov 9:00.
53% completed @16-nov 19:00 (2TB disk FW800)

Is it worth keeping it running?

Grateful for insight please

basilic
Posts: 4
Joined: 14 Nov 2013, 09:23

Re: Mavericks and external disk issue

#3 Post by basilic »

95% completed @18-nov 17:00 (2TB disk FW800)

Running since 14 Nov 9:00

basilic
Posts: 4
Joined: 14 Nov 2013, 09:23

Re: Mavericks and external disk issue

#4 Post by basilic »

Deeper Search completed 100% 18-Nov-2013 @21:54 with the following result
Capture d’écran 2013-11-18 à 21.54.55.png
Capture d’écran 2013-11-18 à 21.54.55.png (81.43 KiB) Viewed 2406 times
Capture d’écran 2013-11-18 à 22.01.33.png
Capture d’écran 2013-11-18 à 22.01.33.png (216.16 KiB) Viewed 2406 times
Unable to select any files except from the first EFI partition

Am still in a mess.

Grateful for an idea

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