recovery of data after quick format

[stneville]

Right first off I have been a total cock...

I was trying to set up a boot camp partition on my macbook and install xp as a dual boot. I went through the boot camp assistant and created what I thought was a 10 gig partition. I stopped the assistant and went back to it and started the windows install. I did a quick format of the partition or what I thought was the partition but this was actually the whole drive! I didn't do this once but twice and started the windows install until i realised what i was doing.

Now obviously my mac wont boot into anything. Now being a cock and working IT i would have usually backed it up before touching it up but being my own machine I didn't bother!

I have done some research it looks like i should be able to recover it using some software. Has anyone got any experience of doing this? The original partitions were HFS and I have now formatted it as NTFS.

What are the chances of me getting the files back?

Edited by stneville on Sunday 14th November 20:45

[Efbe]

should be easy enough to get most back

try recova

[marshalla]

More likely to be HFS+ than HFS I should have thought. I don't think Recuva can handle Mac formatted discs (or even those that used to be Mac formatted).

You could try Testdisk to see if you can resurrect the HFS+ partition(s) or Photorec (which does know about HFS and HFS+) to recover the individual files if there is enough there.

[TheD]

I would have said Testdisk or if want to pay Stellar.
Plus I would like to add that as you are meant to be an IT bod you should be hit with a big stick.

[stneville]

thanks for the replys, Testdisk looks like its going to do the job. I am going to do some thing I should have done in the beginning and clone the original disk.

I have bought a caddy to connect it to another PC running Linux. My question is what is the best way to clone this disk exactly how it is now. I don't want to work on the original disk but at the same time I don't want to mess it up any more than it is now.

I have done some reading and it looks like DD will copy the disk but will it be exactly the same as it is now and not just the data it can see? I was going to attempt to clone it to a partition on an external hard drive any one see this being a problem?

[GlenMH]

Download clonezilla - it will make a cloned image of your hard drive on a new disk

[marshalla]

if you use dd on the raw device it will produce a complete image of the whole disk, including boot sector and partition table. It's one of the methods we use in the forensic world and perfectly acceptable.

[lestag]

stneville said:

thanks for the replys, Testdisk looks like its going to do the job. I am going to do some thing I should have done in the beginning and clone the original disk.

I have bought a caddy to connect it to another PC running Linux. My question is what is the best way to clone this disk exactly how it is now. I don't want to work on the original disk but at the same time I don't want to mess it up any more than it is now.

I have done some reading and it looks like DD will copy the disk but will it be exactly the same as it is now and not just the data it can see? I was going to attempt to clone it to a partition on an external hard drive any one see this being a problem?

hirens boot cd version 12, boot into mini xp, run up seagate disk wizard (acronis true image) and backup to external drive as a file (.tib) (pretty sure it will handle HFS).
http://www.hirensbootcd.org
has lots of the free tools people have suggested on it.

Doing as we speak for a client who was told their HD was fried and it would cost hundreds of quid to get a forensic-uber-cool-dective-smoke-and-mirrors company to recover.

some IT support people should not be in business....

[MorrisCRX]

I see the problem...

working in IT and openly admiting to owning a mac :/