Macbook Pro lost partition on Boot Drive

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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Superfletch
Posts: 3
Joined: 20 Apr 2012, 00:09
Location: Clever, MO

Macbook Pro lost partition on Boot Drive

#1 Post by Superfletch »

OK... so here's what happened. My Macbook Pro crashed or whatever you want to call it... spinning beach ball of death. I forced shutdown it by holding the power button down and when I tried to reboot all I got was the flashing question mark in the folder. I tried to reboot by holding down the option key to pick a system (i have mac os x 10.7.3 and also a bootcamp partition with Windows 7) neither showed up at the System startup Manager, nor did the Lion Recovery Disk... nothing, nada, all that happened was an arrow came on the screen and it just sat there. So, I did some google searching and ended up downloading a program called DiskDrill. That program ended up seeing the hard drive and my files. It basically told me that my partition was lost or something... so I did some more searching and found testdisk. Can testdisk rebuild my partition?

Code: Select all

Disk /dev/rdisk6 - 500 GB / 465 GiB - CHS 976773168 1 1

The harddisk (500 GB / 465 GiB) seems too small! (< 783 GB / 729 GiB)
Check the harddisk size: HD jumpers settings, BIOS detection...

The following partitions can't be recovered:
     Partition               Start        End    Size in sectors
>  Mac HFS                764864724 1529319811  764455088
   MS Data                976773119 1187411959  210638841
I'm beside myself here... I don't know what to do... it looks like the MS Data partition is my boot camp partition and it seems to be intact and gives me the option to List my files and they are there... But the Mac HFS partition... the one I NEED seems to have problems... HELP.... please.... :?
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remy
Posts: 456
Joined: 25 Mar 2012, 10:21
Location: Strasbourg, France.
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Re: Macbook Pro lost partition on Boot Drive

#2 Post by remy »

The capture you show is not the last step, go on with "continue" and show the screen after.
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Superfletch
Posts: 3
Joined: 20 Apr 2012, 00:09
Location: Clever, MO

Re: Macbook Pro lost partition on Boot Drive

#3 Post by Superfletch »

Well... on a Deeper search I started at 7a this morning, it's now 3p, about 8 hours ago, I'm only 7% of the way through... Is that normal?
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Superfletch
Posts: 3
Joined: 20 Apr 2012, 00:09
Location: Clever, MO

Re: Macbook Pro lost partition on Boot Drive

#4 Post by Superfletch »

This is the screen I'm looking at 8 hours later...

Code: Select all

TestDisk 6.14-WIP, Data Recovery Utility, April 2012
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>
http://www.cgsecurity.org

Disk /dev/rdisk5 - 500 GB / 465 GiB - CHS 976773168 1 1
Analyse cylinder 77004800/976773167: 07%


  Mac HFS                   474484  764929571  764455088
  Mac HFS                   474613  764929700  764455088
  Mac HFS                   474910  764929997  764455088
  Mac HFS                   475063  764930150  764455088
  Mac HFS                   475592  764930679  764455088
  Mac HFS                   475785  764930872  764455088
  Mac HFS                   475898  764930985  764455088
  Mac HFS                   475987  764931074  764455088
  Mac HFS                   476164  764931251  764455088
  Mac HFS                   476373  764931460  764455088
  Mac HFS                   476534  764931621  764455088
  Mac HFS                   476655  764931742  764455088
  Mac HFS                   476992  764932079  764455088
  Mac HFS                   476655  764931742  764455088
  Stop
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remy
Posts: 456
Joined: 25 Mar 2012, 10:21
Location: Strasbourg, France.
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Re: Macbook Pro lost partition on Boot Drive

#5 Post by remy »

Not normal it's so slow. Perhaps you have a harware problem. EDIT : Could also be because of geometry detection : every sector is analysed in this configuration.

You had better stopping the deepersearch. I think that if your lost HFS+ is seen, it should already be there at this stage. On the next screen, you'll see deleted and lost partitions. Please give feedback about this screen.
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bootcamper
Posts: 1
Joined: 13 Jul 2012, 20:33

Re: Macbook Pro lost partition on Boot Drive

#6 Post by bootcamper »

I am having the same problem with the same exact messages as in the first post here. I am working on an Intel MAC with a 500GB Seagate Momentus 7200.4 HDD (my old harddrive broke). I am running Bootcamp and I had to move my Windows partition and extend it. My computer now cannot boot in windows (Mac OS still boots).
The HDD is designated here as Disk /dev/rdisk0 - 500 GB / 465 GiB (RO) and TestDisk detects an EFI GPT partition table. My Analyse screen displays:

TestDisk 6.14-WIP, Data Recovery Utility, May 2012
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>
http://www.cgsecurity.org

Disk /dev/rdisk0 - 500 GB / 465 GiB - CHS 976773168 1 1 (RO)
Current partition structure:
Partition Start End Size in sectors

1 P EFI System 40 409639 409600 [EFI system partitio
2 P Mac HFS 409640 617945087 617535448 [Customer]
Warning: number of heads/cylinder mismatches 255 (NTFS) != 1 (HD)
Warning: number of sectors per track mismatches 63 (NTFS) != 1 (HD)
3 P MS Data 695451648 976771071 281319424 [BOOTCAMP] [BOOTCAMP]

The results from quick search say I have partitions I cannot recover:
partitionscannotberecover.tiff
partitionscannotberecover.tiff (64.51 KiB) Viewed 6377 times
Continuing shows I have ten partitions. Since this isn't physically possible i assume some of these are logical extensions.
partitionscannotberecover3.tiff
partitionscannotberecover3.tiff (107.1 KiB) Viewed 6377 times
I do not know if I need to delete some of these but I am pretty sure they all do not need to be primary. I tried a DEEP SEARCH but it takes forever (see earlier posts in thread). I altered my Disk Geometry to match that published for the 500GB seagate 7002.4 (16/63) which did speed it up but it still would have taken at least 9 hours.

Since I suspect that my real issue is just fixing the boot files I tried Advance options. This is the opening display:
partitionscannotberecover4.tiff
partitionscannotberecover4.tiff (60.2 KiB) Viewed 6377 times
I get the following display under Boot
TestDisk 6.14-WIP, Data Recovery Utility, May 2012
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>
http://www.cgsecurity.org

Disk /dev/rdisk0 - 500 GB / 465 GiB - CHS 969021 16 63 (RO)
Partition Start End Size in sectors
3 P MS Data 695451648 976771071 281319424 [BOOTCAMP] [BOOTCAMP]

Boot sector
Warning: number of heads/cylinder mismatches 255 (NTFS) != 16 (HD)
Status: OK

Backup boot sector
Status: Bad

Sectors are not identical.

A valid NTFS Boot sector must be present in order to access
any data; even if the partition is not bootable.


[ Quit ] [ List ] >[Org. BS ] [Rebuild BS] [ Dump ]
Copy boot sector over backup sector

SInce my back up is bad I tried Org. BS. Org. BS fails so I tried Rebuild BS. Which gave me the following:








TestDisk 6.14-WIP, Data Recovery Utility, May 2012
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>
http://www.cgsecurity.org

Disk /dev/rdisk0 - 500 GB / 465 GiB - CHS 969021 16 63 (RO)
Partition Start End Size in sectors
3 P MS Data 695451648 976771071 281319424 [BOOTCAMP] [BOOTCAMP]

filesystem size 281319424 281319417
sectors_per_cluster 8 8
mft_lcn 786432 786432
mftmirr_lcn 7417343 7417343
clusters_per_mft_record -10 -10
clusters_per_index_record 1 1
Extrapolated boot sector and current boot sector are different.


[ Dump ] >[ List ] [ Write ] [ Quit ]


Should I Write? Should I deal with the incorrect partition table first? What is my next step?
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