Nimrat Dhillon asks:
I dropped my external hard disk and now my Mac will only recognise one partition and not the other. The data on the partition lost was very important.
What are my next steps, Disk Repair? I don’t want to do anything that jeopardises the data, so eagerly awaiting feedback.
Browser: Chrome 22
System: Mac
Tagged: external hard drive, hardware recognition, mac tips, partition
System: Mac
Tagged: external hard drive, hardware recognition, mac tips, partition
16 Answers -
ha14
October 30, 2012testdisk should have partition find
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
Partition find and mount
http://findandmount.com/
see if they detect your lost partition
Dino Pearsons
October 30, 2012Disk Drill Media Recovery could help. It’s a rather expensive tool, but from my experience works really well. There are other alternatives, as well.
From what you described, the data SHOULD be recoverable, so keep trying, just don’t format/repartition the drive until you get it back.
siddharth singh
October 30, 2012you should downlaod mini tool partition wizard and check if the other partition is detected or not …. if not, you might have potentially damaged your hard drive
SAURAV AZAD
October 30, 2012try disk drill it would help you or search for an alternative on sourceforge.com
Chris Bruchey
October 30, 2012you will be lucky to get the information back if the drop was severe
Alex Schnapps
October 30, 2012http://www.mac-data-recover.com/mac-free-edition.html
Jim Chambers
October 31, 2012Try Mini Tool Mac Data Recovery.
i do not think this will work
October 31, 2012Douglas Mutay
October 31, 2012There is still hope especially if you can see one partition. I will suggest to check the Mini Tool Mac Data Recovery by download it at mac.powerdatarecovery.com. Sound useful. Good luck!!!
Kannon Y
November 3, 2012Hello Nimrat, I’m sorry that your drive has been damaged. A professor of mine once dropped his hard drive and suffered total data loss. You’re fortunate that at least one partition is available. You may be able to recover the lost partition but it will cost around $500 USD.
What you’re suffer from is a head crash.
After experiencing a drop, you should never plug the drive back into your computer. In fact, you can substantially aggravate your data recovery efforts by attempting to read a physically damaged disc. To understand why, you have to know the physical components of the drive.
The reason why is related to the mechanical composition of the HDD. It’s built out of an “eye” (called the head) or reader assembly, a rotating aluminum disc and a firmware controller. There are more parts, but this is the simplest description. Anyway, the eye reads data that’s been magnetically bonded to the aluminum disc (it’s coated in a material that can store this information). And the disc spins at tremendous speeds. Dropping the drive causes the eye to crash into the platter (the aluminum platter, which is shaped like a disc) with such force that it can cause a dent and data loss. If the eye ever travels over the dent, it can cause the eye to crash again. It’s like driving a car at 200 KPH over a speed bump.
The best data company available internationally is Kroll OnTrak:
http://www.krollontrack.com/
Adam Campbell
November 4, 2012Diskdrill is a good piece of software however it’s pricy
TestDisk is a good piece of opensource software, however it is only a command line program.
Data Rescue gets dome pretty good reviews…
First two are pretty good, haven’t tried the last one
Daizy
November 8, 2012It means your partitions are unmounted so I would like to suggest you to use volume repair utility of Stellar Drive ToolBox to mount your partition.
Christopher Webb
November 14, 2012Check to make sure there wasn’t any physical damage that might have destroyed the data.
Vivek Kumar Yadav
November 16, 2012format the whole disk again…
Vivek Kumar Yadav
December 16, 2012Disk Drill Media Recovery could help. It’s a rather expensive tool, but from my experience works really well. There are other alternatives, as well.
From what you described, the data SHOULD be recoverable, so keep trying, just don’t format/repartition the drive until you get it back.
Sashritha Peiris
December 23, 2012You should seriously try Recuva or PhotoRec there is an article about that on makeuseof
Anish Parameshwaran
February 9, 2013If the disk repair in disk utility doesn’t work, you could also try your hand at taking the hard drive to the apple store with your mac. They have fixed many issues similar to this before for me.