External HD Partitioning

Hello,
I purchased an iomega eGo BlackBelt Mac Edition. I partitioned it into two partitions. One I use for back up with Time Machine. Twice in as many weeks the partition for Time Machine becomes Read Only. I tried using Disk Utility to repair the drive but it couldn't be repaired.
The first time I contacted iomega they told me the only thing I could do was reformat the drive (and loose my back up files). The second time they told me the same thing... Kind of like Microsoft's "turn off and reboot your PC" solution.
Upon further discussion with Brett at iomega he stated, and I asked him several times to clarify and confirm, NO external Hard Drives should be partitioned because they are likely to become corrupted (like mine).
First, has anyone had similar issues with Time Machine and their back up drive becoming "Read Only" and second, is Brett a genius and we should all heed his and iomega's recommendation of not partitioning external hard drives?
Thanks,
VJAZ
Transcripts of Chat with iomega's technical support:
"So all of iomega's USB drives shouldn't be partitioned because they may become corrupted?
Brett: That is correct.
Brett: They should only have 1 partition.
Just to be clear then, you are recommending no external hard drive, regardless of how it is connected, should not be partitioned?
Brett: Correct.
Are you willing to stand by your statement and have your company post on it's web site and in their product literature that none of your external hard drives should be partitioned?
You are stating all external HDs, not just iomega's should not be partitioned because they are likely to become corrupted due to being partitioned. Correct?
Brett: correct"

vjaz wrote:
Upon further discussion with Brett at iomega he stated, and I asked him several times to clarify and confirm, NO external Hard Drives should be partitioned because they are likely to become corrupted (like mine).
To be a bit more blunt than Barbara, that's baloney.
(I'd be inclined to send that to the manager of support at Iomega.)
First, has anyone had similar issues with Time Machine and their back up drive becoming "Read Only"
That does happen on occasion (nothing particular to Time Machine). Sometimes, ejecting and powering the drive off for a few minutes, then Restarting your Mac and reconnecting the drive will fix it.
Other times, OSX sees that the file system is corrupted, and marks it read only. Sometimes it can be repaired, per #A5 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum), sometimes not. If not, yes, you have to erase and let Time Machine start over.
Are you leaving the drive connected and powered-on at all times, or disconnecting it? If you're disconnecting it, are you sure you've ejected it first? Not doing so means OSX can't "close it out" properly, which can corrupt it.
Power problems (spikes or dips) can corrupt the file system, as can a bad port, cable, or mismatch between them (a plug that works fine in one port may not make good contact in another).
So can electronic or mechanical problems with the drive.
See #A1 in Troubleshooting for a handy widget to display the backup messages from your logs. If this happened in the last few days, use it to find the backup where this happened -- it may be the one with that message, or perhaps the one before it.
If not, the next time it happens, check the widget, copy and post the messages here.

Similar Messages

Pondini, I beseech thee....Time Machine won't back up external drive partitions

Pondini (or anyone else that would like to help),
I am running Mac OS X 10.7.5. At my edit bay, we utilize a Facilis Terrablock 24D for storage, which connects to our system via fibre cables. Before upgrading to 10.7.5, Time Machine would back up all of our drive partitions on the Terrablock. Since the upgrade, Time Machine still recognizes the drives, we can add or subtract files from the drives, and it appears to make and save the changes, but when Time Machine backs up, it will only back up the local hard drive. No error messages come up. It just does its thing but only for the local HD.
All of the drive partitions are Mac OS Extended Journaled. All of the permissions seem to be in order.
I have contacted Facilis and their technical support claims that they never tested their products with Time Machine (as they sell their own backup equipment) but in theory that it should work.
I'm not sure what other information you might need but please let me know and I'll do my best. I was wondering if anyone else has come across an issue like this? Thank you for your time.

LALB wrote:
Upon including this partition and all of its contents, it disappears from the exclusion list as it should AND its size is reflected in the Estimated size of full backup. But this is the kicker! Upon clicking "Save" and starting Time Machine's backup, I receive the error "Time Machine could not complete the backup. There are no disks available to be backed up." Upon going back into TM Preferences > Options, I find that the external drive / partition has been put back on the Exclusion list. It's like it is automatically rejecting the partition after I have saved my exclusion list.
That's quite strange.
TM does that if you try to back up a USB Thumb drive (I've filed a bug report), but this is the first I've heard of it under any other circumstances. Then again, I don't recall a post by anyone trying to back up from a drive connected this way.
If a drive isn't formatted for a Mac (ie, FAT32, ExFat, NTFS, etc), Time Machine cannot back it up, and will list it in gray on the exclusion list (same as the backup drive), and won't let you remove it from the list, so it's clear.
This sounds like a "cousin" of the way it treats a thumb drive, so sure seems like a bug. TM will back up USB, FireWire, and Thunderbolt drives without a problem, if they're formatted right.
If you have any Macs under 90 days old, or covered by AppleCare, a call to them is free, and the best way to get a quick answer (you may have to escalate to a "specialist" however, and it still may take a few days for something unusual). Otherwise it's $50 U.S.
An alternative is to file a Bug Report, per the green box in Reporting a Problem to Apple. That most likely won't get a response for quite a while, though.
Sorry, wish I had a fix!
Let us know what, if anything, you find out.

External Drive Partition Problem

Hello,
I have a 120gig external HD partitioned into three. Two of the partitions mount just fine. However, only recently the 'second partition' does not mount - you should know a couple of weeks ago in order to consolidate my music I changed the settings on the 'second partition' to read-only so that my music would not be copied into that 'second partition'. This is because my music library spans several drives.
However, I have been able to mount it in disk-util and it says it is verified and repaired (nothing wrong). However, the 'second partition' does not show up on the desktop, nor is it 'bolded' in the list along with the other two partitions.
What to do? Any helpful advice is most welcome from anyone???
Thanks. P.

Yes, I am choosing Mount from the Disk Util. However, when i do, it Mounts, but does not appear on my desktop - therefore I cannot gain access to its contents. I am using itunes - I lock the "second partition" in order to avoid its contents being copied over (consolidated) to another music folder.
Any idea? Thanks.

Time Machine no longer showing external HD partitions

I have two LaCie external drives attached to an iMac; one is used for Time Machine and the other is a multi-partitioned drive storing photos, movies, and music.
If I bore down through the TM drive within Finder, I see folders for each backup instance and within those, additional folders representing the Mac HD and each individual partition.
Tonight I discovered this "tree" holds true from 2008 right up until Jan 2011 when only the iMac drive and the top level partition (one of five) have folders.
Alarmed that I may not have archived all my partitions during the last two-three years I first confirmed in Preferences that only the TM drive is excluded from backup by default. I then opened Time Machine and navigated to mp3s that I knew to be ripped and deleted from one of the invisible partitions earlier this year, well after the 2011 mark. Time Machine restored without a problem, from where I don't know.
My guess was a change happened in the way the software was writing the file, maybe labeling the partitioned drive with the first partition? However my "Photo" drive mirrors that partition exactly, no sub folders of music and video.
Anyone have clues as how to make that data visible? My concern is I'm wanting to insure all files are backed up, erase the external and create fewer partitions, before restoring files from TM. Will I be able to easily navigate to those files in TM to restore on a clean install when that partition doesn't exist anymore? Luckily I've only had to use the backup program a handful of times, dumping the occasional file in the same directory it originated from so any guidance would be appreciated.
Thanks

Jerry Shankin wrote:
I re-partitioned my HD and now Time Machine doesn't back it up/duplicate it the way it is now set up. My new info is not being backed up. The most current backup displays what my HD looked like before the new partition I made. Anyone know what's going on?
I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but if you mean the backup runs and completes normlly, but only backs up a few bytes, you may have the unfixed bug in pink type in #D5 of [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum). If not, try the other things there.

Seagate external drive: Partition map check failed because no slices were found

I have a 3TB Seagate Expansion external backup drive connected to my Retina Macbook Pro via USB. The disk will not eject from a regular Finder window - it will only eject from Disk Utility. Backups seem to otherwise be running fine. I tried to verify/repair the disk in Disk Utility, and I got the following error: "Partition map check failed because no slices were found." I am able to verify/repair the partition without any problem, and no errors are found.
I'm concerned about relying on a backup drive that may be heading south. Here is the output from diskutil info:
diskutil info disk3
   Device Identifier:        disk3
   Device Node:              /dev/disk3
   Part of Whole:            disk3
   Device / Media Name:      Seagate Expansion Desk Media
   Volume Name:              Not applicable (no file system)
   Mounted:                  Not applicable (no file system)
   File System:              None
   Content (IOContent):      GUID_partition_scheme
   OS Can Be Installed:      No
   Media Type:               Generic
   Protocol:                 USB
   SMART Status:             Not Supported
   Total Size:               3.0 TB (3000592977920 Bytes) (exactly 5860533160 512-Byte-Units)
   Volume Free Space:        Not applicable (no file system)
   Device Block Size:        4096 Bytes
   Read-Only Media:          No
   Read-Only Volume:         Not applicable (no file system)
   Ejectable:                Yes
   Whole:                    Yes
   Internal:                 No
   OS 9 Drivers:             No
   Low Level Format:         Not supported

@ Allan Eckert: Unfortunately, reformatting is out of the question, I have 5 years of work on this!
@ Loner T: Yes, the firmware did successfully upgrade after router reboot and a bit of troubleshoot.
Thanks for the quick replies. Keep 'em coming!

Format External Drive Partitioned OSX extended and FAT32

I am new to the concept of partitioning a drive and have found information mentioning that disk utility has a MS-DOS option for partitioning a drive. I do not have this as a drop down choice in my Disk Utility options. I have read that this is format equivalent to FAT32. I would like to partition this drive half OSX extended and half FAT32. How do I get the drop down choice and is this possible.
PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Thank you Limnos for all your help. Last night I tried again and it worked! I’ not totally sure on what I did right but:
• Both volumes on the new ext. driver were HFS (from my last attempt the other day) so I looked into a simple erase of one partition/volume into a different format, but DU did not offer a way of erasing it into MS-DOS(FAT32). But I think I did a simple HFS erase anyway of the volume I wanted to format to FAT32. There was nothing “in” that volume because this was a new external drive but I figured it could not hurt anything.
• So then, I think I went back to Partition, locked the partition/volume that I wanted to keep in HFS+ for my Mac files, and (re)partitioned the other just erased volume to MS-DOS. I think I did it under the MBR option.
• It worked! Not sure why but my Mac recognized both volumes one as HFS, the other as FAT32. Maybe someone will find this useful some day!!
• Then, I hooked up the drive to my work Dell, the Dell found only the FAT32 drive (as expected), and I executed a short simple easy command I found on ehow.com (search for ‘convert FAT32 to NTFS’) to make that volume NTFS.
Thanks again Limnos and everyone else!

Increase external drive partition size

I partititioned a portable drive into 2 equal sizes MAC OS Extended (Journaled). Is there a way to resize these drives after they are done. I can't seem to figure it out under Disk Utility. Thanks.

BB623 wrote:
It appears i am out of luck. The bottom partition is a time machine backup. The top is just data. I wanted to reduce the top and increase time machine. Is there a way to temporarily move TM backups and then reformat drive? Simple as copying to HD then a reformat of the portable HD?
That will work, but a much better solution is to back up to a separate external HD.
If you do that, then you can also back up the other partition on the current drive, along with your internal HD.
If you want, you can copy the backups to the new drive, via the Restore tab of Disk Utility, or the Finder. Or, let Time Machine start fresh on the new drive. You can always view and restore from the old ones, per #17 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions. When you don't need them anymore, just erase the partition.
To copy them, see section 1 in #18 of the FAQ.

External Drive Partition, Lost Files

As the title suggests, I made a mistake that "erased" all my files on a backup external hard drive, after splitting a partition in two and installing Mac OS X Leopard on the new partition. I use quotes in "erased" because the data itself is still there, but the access to it isn't anymore. Before thinking about using recovery software and going through the harsh process of churning through hundreds of GB of data to recover files that could be corrupted in the end, I wanted to seek the opinions of more knowledgeable people to see if there are alternative solutions that could be more simple.
Here's my situation and all the steps that lead to my current state. I have a iMac with Core 2 Duo Intel processor, 2.66 GHz, 2 GB of RAM and an internal hard drive of 320 GB, with Mac OS X Leopard (10.5.8) installed. For backup and temporary transfer of files, I use an external USB hard drive, a Seagate FreeAgent with 500 GB (500 billion bytes = 465 GB actually).
I wanted to boot from my external hard drive to do some maintenance on my iMac's hard drive. So I used Disk Utility to split the current partition (the only one) on my external drive. The drive had 465 GB, give or take, with approximately 50GB free. The other partition to be created was 10GB. I know this is the kind of delicate operation that should be done with caution, but Disk Utility was saying explicitly that "this partition will not be erased", refering to the big partition that will become approximately 455 GB, the one that contains all my files. I say to myself, okay, that is safe.
Now, here comes the thing that I'm not 100% sure about. At this point, I don't know if the big partition was already erased. Both partitions (455GB and 10GB) always mounted on the desktop just fine. I was probably just "presuming" that everything went fine.
Then I proceeded to install Mac OS X Leopard from the installation DVD on the small 10GB partition, which went fine. It's only at this moment that I realised that my big partition was empty. Shortly after, I set the permissions of the big partition to read-only, assuming it would minimize further damage.
That's about it. At this point, my first thought was, what exactly just happened? In my mind, playing with one partition should not affect the other ones, but apparently, something did anyway, for a reason that is beyond my knowledge. Right now, I'm still wondering what operation did do the damage, the partition split or the installation of Mac OS X? Why would any of these operations erase the big partition?
And here's another important point to ponder. Before the partition split, my external hard drive was formatted as APM, Apple Partition Map. After the split, or after the Mac OS X installation (which one, I don't know), the partition scheme had changed to GUID. Maybe this is the key to solve the problem.
I know that my data is still intact, at least in most part, and I know that the file structure (B-Tree information, and stuff like that) seems to be intact (completely or partially) as well, because I visualized some sectors of my drive with a tool called iBored, and I recognized some folder and file names.
That's all the details I can provide. Right now, I feel like any low-level operation on my external drive is like defusing a bomb. One little mistake, and boom! So I prefer to do nothing until I can get some advice from others.
Thank you for your help!

I had the EXACT same issue last night.
Today, I downloaded Disk Drill and it is scanning and recovering my lost files from my external hard drive.
http://www.cleverfiles.com/partition-recovery.html
I thought I was going to have a heart attack when none of my files showed up on my Finder and I did not have a clue what I was going to do as my hard drive has practically my whole life on there!
As we speak, disk drill is in the process of scanning my hard drive and locating lost files.
Next step is to recover the files..
Estimated Time Remaining: 3h 20m
I will let you know if this was fully successful. It looks like it wil be though so I say you do what I'm doing and start recovering!

How do I Install OSX to an External Drive Partition?

I have an external FW800 drive that I've made two partitions on. One partition I want to install OSX to, for external booting; the other partition is just for storage. I'm trying to use the SNL install disk but It's not installing, it just stalls out. I must be doing something wrong.
Thanks,
John

Is the external drive prepped correctly?
Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Steps 4-6 are optional but should be used on a drive that has never been formatted before, if the format type is not Mac OS Extended, if the partition scheme has been changed, or if a different operating system (not OS X) has been installed on the drive.
When formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer. Complete the OS X installation.
Or you can clone your current system to the partition:
Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility
Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
Select the destination volume from the left side list.
Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
Check the box labeled Erase destination.
Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the external drive. Source means the internal startup drive.

Missing one of external HD partitions

I have a 160Gb external drive with two partitions- a backup and an archive. Every year I archive the photos, movies, and music files from that year, so I have thousands of files in the archive.
This evening I was trying to open some old pictures from the archive partition, and I kept getting an error message that I didn't have the necessary permissions. I restarted, since that usually seems to clear up weird bugs, and when it started up the archive partition didn't appear on the desktop, but the backup partition was there. I went to disk utility and the backup partition shows up as a drive, but the archive partition shows up as a blank document. When I click on it, it shows "0 files".
Am I screwed out of 5 years worth of files? Please no please no please no...
help!
iMac G3 600 MHz Mac OS X (10.4.2)

Dave_O,
This one is easy
Open Terminal again (in this same account). It looks like you still own the volume, but you have somehow locked yourself out of it with permissions. Copy and paste this into your Terminal window:
<pre style="overflow:auto; font-family: 'Monaco'; font-size: 10px">chmod u+rwX /Volumes/Archive\ Partition</pre>
then press <RETURN>. If you just return to the prompt, quit Terminal, then log out and back in. If you get some error message, try this one:
<pre style="overflow:auto; font-family: 'Monaco'; font-size: 10px">sudo chmod u+rwX /Volumes/Archive\ Partition</pre>
Using this second one will require that you enter your admin password. When you are asked, type your admin password (it will not be echoed) and again press <RETURN>. When you return to the prompt, quit Terminal, then log out and back in.
Also, it appears that you have changed the ownership of your startup drive to yourself. NO! Open a Getinfo window for your HD and change its ownership back to "system." The group ownership should be "admin."

External Drive Partition as System?

I have 3 Hard Drives now, and a problem.
One 7200 RPM internal 100 GB HDD. One 7200 USB External 160 GB HDD. And one 5400 25 GB HDD.
Problem: Originally I was going to split the internal 100 GB into two system drives (Panther & later Tiger) and use the 160 external for active data & the 25 GB for storage. I ended up using the whole 100 Internal for one system and was going to partition the external to put another system on part of it. However, OS X won't allow me to install a system to the external. It says that the PC can't start up from this drive.
Is there a way around this? If not, is there a fast way to partition the 100 GB internal and transfer the system & user data that I just installed into it. Or must I erase it ? I still have my old system on the 25 GB HDD.
Sawtooth AGP 1 GHz Sonnet/ Encore G4 512 GB RAM Mac OS X (10.3.9)
AGP 350 MHz G4 512 GB RAM Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Can't boot your computer from a USB drive. Buy a Firewire enclosure and put the drive into a Firewire enclosure. You can then partition it and install OS X on one of the partitions and be able to boot from it.
You can install OS X on a USB drive, but in your case it may be that the drive is not formatted Mac OS Extended but may instead be formatted MSDOS or plain HFS.
Partitioning a drive will erase all the data on the drive.
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Can't see external HD partition on finder, changed Ownership & Permissions

Hi all, a friend has a particular issue with his external HD. He clicked one of the partitions on his external HD and started restricting the options under Ownership & Permissions, until he got ALL permissions set to "no access". Now the HD appears, but the partition he modified does not appear on his desktop or finder, also when he runs Disk Utility he sees both partitions, but the one he changed the permissions/access of, appears as a blank document icon, like when the OS doesn't know with what to open it with, therefore, he can't select it again and click get info/change access again. Any help, tips please? Thanks in advance mates.
MacBook Pro 15", 1.83 GHz, 1.5 GB, 80 GB iPod 5G 30GB White Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Use the instructions in this FAQ to restore access to that partition.
(12892)

Tiger fails to install to external HD partition

So I've been trying to install 10.4 to a "rescue" partition of my 320 GB external hard drive. I've partitioned about 6 gigs to use as a bootable backup in case my internal HD (also partitioned) fails, while the other partition is used for storage.
After several failed attempts - each a "clean install", and each with a full partition erase via Disk Utility prior to attempting a re-install - I tried removing my two 512MB third-party RAM modules. I read about third-party RAM conflicts in these boards, and decided to try and re-install using the original RAM I got with my Pismo (an included 64 MB chip - by itself, not enough to even boot to the Tiger disc; and an additional 128MB chip I got free when I bought my PB).
Again, no dice. Just as always, it installs the Base system successfully, but after about 9% of the Essentials are installed, the progress bar hangs, and I get the error message: "Please try reinstalling."
Here's the relevant excerpt from the install crash log:
Feb 3 18:35:25 localhost : BomFileError 5: Input/output error - ./Library/Fonts/Kai.dfont
Feb 3 18:35:26 localhost : 3076 files looked up in 0.28 seconds. 3076 files written in 34.84 seconds.
Feb 3 18:35:26 localhost : 53052 kilobytes installed.
Feb 3 18:35:26 localhost : Install failed: Some files for Essentials may not have been written correctly.
A font? A font is thwarting my Tiger install? Come on, now ... I'm not buyin' it.
If anyone's got any ideas, I'm all ears.
Thanx
Powerbook G3 Firewire (2000 Pismo) Mac OS X (10.4.4) 100 Gb internal HD, 1 Gig RAM

Acomdata 320 GB drive: HD320UFAPE5-72 made in May of '05. Firewire/USB combo, I think it's an Oxford 911 chipset. Got it this summer, haven't had any issues with it. I didn't try to install OS X on the Backup partition because it was simply going to serve as backup, although I've got bootable .dmg clones of my and my girlfriend's hard drives on it.
Another attempt (same circumstances, haven't increased partition size yet) this afternoon and I'm still stumped. Look at the contents of the drive after a failed attempt (all are folders, unless indicated):
Applications (incomplete, only contains AppleScript, Internet Connect, and Utilities)
bin
dev
etc (alias)
Library
mach_kernel (file)
OSInstall.mpkg.107OCmgEG
private
sbin
System
tmp (alias)
usr
var (alias)
Volumes
It's failing before it gets a chance to hide invisible files and folders, although the installer says it's finished with the System and is onto Essentials when it stalls.
Geez, I dunno...
Powerbook G3 Firewire (2000 Pismo) Mac OS X (10.4.4) 100 Gb internal HD, 1 Gig RAM

Time Machine hoses external NTFS partition?

A friend of mine, a fresh convert from WIndows, attached her external 1TB NTFS-formatted (Windows Vista) disc, wanting to transfer files from it to the internal HD.
For some reason Time Machine appropriated the drive and placed a Time Machine partition on it, taking up close to the whole space (1TB). I assume Time Machine in a friendly manner asked if she wanted to make backups to this external drive without having some kind of protocol on informing the user that this will overwrite existing information.
It was only when Time Machine was about to make a backup writing to this partition she mentioned it for me via chat and I immediately told her to stop Time Machine from doing that. She then shared her screen with me so I could investigate, which I did with Disk Utility after turning Time Machine off completely. It shows the Time Machine partition on the disk, but no NTFS partition is acknowledged.
What I assume have happened is that for whatever reason OS X wasn't able to see the NTFS partition and instead treated the disk as an unformatted device. Then Time Machine put a partition on it.
When doing so, I hope Time Machine didn't write zeros all over the disc and it's a good chance the files in the NTFS-partition is still there. And if it didn't write over the NTFS-partition part, that may also be there.
However, as far I know the NTFS-partition should be visible in Disk Utility. Which is isn't. That's a bit scary.
My next course of action is to use a file recovery application from a Windows machine on this drive in hope that files can be rescued. As we don't have access to an empty 1TB drive it would be even better, if the Time Machine partition could be just removed and the NTFS-partition repaired or reinstated.
Any ideas on how to proceed?

Mikael Bystrom wrote:
I assume Time Machine in a friendly manner asked if she wanted to make backups to this external drive without having some kind of protocol on informing the user that this will overwrite existing information.
Yes, similar to this one:
|
|
What I assume have happened is that for whatever reason OS X wasn't able to see the NTFS partition and instead treated the disk as an unformatted device. Then Time Machine put a partition on it.
It reformatted it. The NTFS partition is gone. Time Machine can only back up to an HFS+ journalled volume.
When doing so, I hope Time Machine didn't write zeros all over the disc and it's a good chance the files in the NTFS-partition is still there. And if it didn't write over the NTFS-partition part, that may also be there.
Correct. A +data recovery+ app should be able to recover most of it.

External Drive Partitions Corrupt

I have an external hard drive with 3 partitions. Lately, seemingly at random, the partitions are becoming unmountable (usually one per day). Running Disk Utility always repairs the partition without issue. Its very annoying. Any suggestions?

I just noticed that when this happens if I simply unplug the external drive's USB cable and plug it back in, the partitions all mount properly. The only way to mount them without unplugging is to "repair" them.

External HD Partitioning

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