Found partition but cannot list files or recover it

[bfernandez]

Hello,
I would need your expert advise for the following issue: It seems I deleted by mistake the partition in my external hard disk WD 750GB which I have been using with a Mac computer. I lost all my data while trying to upgrade to Snow Leopard OS on my Mac (I was following a tutorial which suggested to create a new external partition and I naively used my WD and something went wrong), everything in there disappeared and I am trying to recover the partition with TestDisk but eventually I always get an error message. It would be great if somebody could help me.

The thing is, when I connect the USB, 2 hard disks appear: disk1 and rdisk1, what is the difference between them? I normally chose disk1 instead of rdisk1.

Next step it is also a bit confusing because I have a MacBook (Mac OS X 10.5.8, Intel Core), so it should be a mac partition detected but instead it is an EFI GTP one (perhaps the one I was creating).

I decided to try first with Mac and do a quick search. TestDisk detects my lost partition but I cannot list the files in that partition and an error appears and I am not able to go futher. I did also a deeper search which took almost 24h and I got no new partitions after that.

Imagen 3.png (19.61 KiB) Viewed 5659 times

Imagen 4.png (20.28 KiB) Viewed 5659 times

mac partition.png (21.57 KiB) Viewed 5659 times

If I select EFI for the partition search instead of Mac, something similar appears, and I never can have access to the files in the partition.

Could anyone give me a hand with this? I don’t know if I should try to fix the heads/cylinders warning with the advanced options or try other way to recover the partition…

Thank you very much for your help,
Beatriz

[cgrenier]

It's better to use rdisk instead of disk device.
Use EFI GPT and not Mac in your case for the partition table. Can you post the new screenshots or the testdisk.log file ?

[bfernandez]

Thanks Christophe for your comments!
Ok, I chose rdisk and EFI Partition.
Then I : [Analyze] Analyse current partition...
Afterwards appear the following:

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And I press Quick search:

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And finally I get two partitions:

Imagen 1.png (19.72 KiB) Viewed 5628 times

EFI: so small but I have the option fo listing files, although when pressing "P" I get this error message: "No file found, filesystem may be damaged.
Mac: I can not list files and if I click in that partition, it ask me for deeper search but I only get numbers and numbers but anything else:

Disk /dev/rdisk1 - 750 GB / 698 GiB - 1465149168 sectors (RO)
Analyse cylinder 327680/1465149167: 00%


Mac HFS 354307 1465233618 1464879312
Mac HFS 354532 1465233843 1464879312
Mac HFS 354677 1465233988 1464879312
Mac HFS 354774 1465234085 1464879312
Mac HFS 354839 1465234150 1464879312
Mac HFS 355272 1465234583 1464879312
Mac HFS 355433 1465234744 1464879312
Mac HFS 355722 1465235033 1464879312
Mac HFS 357203 1465236514 1464879312
Mac HFS 357396 1465236707 1464879312
Mac HFS 357661 1465236972 1464879312
Mac HFS 357942 1465237253 1464879312
Mac HFS 358327 1465237638 1464879312
Mac HFS 358384 1465237695 1464879312
Mac HFS 358601 1465237912 1464879312
...
...
...

It would be very useful if you have any advise!!
Many thanks in advance,
B.

[cgrenier]

There is a partition on the disk. If a partition has been deleted, a new one has been created over it and the partition reformated. Try to recover your files with PhotoRec.
Good luck

[bfernandez]

Ok, thank you very much, I will try to recover with PhotoRec, but I though the partition was still there and the files available..