Lost partition on external HDD

Hi there,
I recently partitioned my Time Machine external HDD so I'd have half of it for spare storage (500 GB Time Machine, 500 GB spare storage).
I then was having issues backing up my Time Machine, and went to remove the spare partition. My MBA died overnight, while it was removing the partition, I believe, and now, only the 500 GB of the Time Machine partition is showing up in Disk Utility, with no hint of the other 500 GB. I've also tried using TechTool, but no bad sectors or anything of the sort are turning up, and I'd like to not have to reformat the whole drive, (and lose my Time Machine data) especially in case it doesn't fix it, either.
Any tips? I'm about to try DiskWarrior, but we'll see what happens.
Thanks guys...

I solved my own problem. Plugged it into my PC (Win7) and used Disk Management on there, which immediately displayed the unallocated space, which I allocated into a partition, which then showed up in OSX and was deleteable so as to make the disk one whole partition again.

Similar Messages

  • How to partition an external HDD to NTFS and Fat32

    Hi guys,
    I wonder if you can help me.... I'm trying to partition my WD external HDD into two. I want the first partition to be formatted as NTFS as I will be using this part with only windows. The second half I need to be able to use it on both mac and windows and therefore would prefer FAT 32. I have already partitioned the drive into two and formatted the first half to NTFS. The problem occurs when I try to use disk utility to format the free space on the drive to FAT 32. Can you help me?

    thats well and fine, but you do realize that :
    A: HD are cheap as dirt
    B: putting all your data into a single external HD is a nasty choke point for awful data loss?
    ergo, not a hot idea in general.
    Mac's on OS X can't format or write to NTFS formatted drives, they can read from it though.
    Your best option is to format the external drive on the Windows machine using exFAT as it will do it correctly, the Mac has issues formatting exFAT for Windows.
    Once the drive is formatted exFAT on Windows, it will work like a charm between both platforms and can use +4GB sized files, which FAT32 (MSDOS) cannot.
    .Drives, partitions, formatting w/Mac's + PC's
    from Dsstore

  • Boot Camp Partition Size/External HDD recommendation

    After updating software, hardware, downloading Boot Camp Asst, and installing Windows XP Pro (have not yet downloaded Mac drivers or software, nor have I submitted registration of my WinXP Pro software, still have 29 days), I realized that I set the partition size too small and need to resize it. I read in other postings that I can copy the Windows partition to an external HDD from the Mac OSX side, then run Boot Camp again, delete the "too small" Windows partition, then run Boot Camp again and reset the partition size larger. Does anyone have detailed instructions to do this?
    Also, can anyone suggest an external HDD for this purpose? I need to be able to share files between a PC and my 17" MBP running OS X 10.4.6. Specifically, I need to share (for editing purposes) audio files created with PC-based software with the Windows side of my MBP. The PC has XP Pro and MacDrive6 for Windows installed. I read the "Sharing a FireWire drive between Mac and PC" document on "The X Lab" website and, based on this, am leaning toward getting a FW (not USB) HDD and formatting it in Mac OS Extended format (not sure how to do this but cross that bridge when I get there). Does this sound reasonable? When I run Boot Camp again and have to choose between NTSF and FAT32 should I choose NTSF? Will I also need "SharePoints" or other software to share the Mac's FW drive with the PC?
    I may have the option to share and backup files over the workplace network (if I take the time to set it up). Does anyone know if there advantages/disadvantages to this option?
    Thanks for answers to these questions. Any help would be very much appreciated. Best!

    Frank,
    You might want to check the Boot Camp discussions:
    http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1165
    In case no one in this part of the board knows.

  • Mounting partition and external hdds in xmonad

    Hi all,
    Recently i ditched DE in favor of tiling windows( XMonad in particular) and now I want to know which is the best file manager for it.
    I have thunar installed but it doesn't automatically mount my external hard disks and my partitions.
    I am able to do so only if I run
    dbus-launch thunar
    some one in irc suggested that doing that is not a good way.
    So I want to know filemanager that mounts external hdd and partitions automatically.
    Thanks,
    Abhinav
    Last edited by pyarch (2014-08-27 01:42:36)

    Stebalien wrote:
    pyarch wrote:
    Stebalien wrote:You don't need a filemanager for that. Personally, I use udiskie however, if you want to use thunar as your filemanager, you can start thunar-volman at login to automount drives.
    I have udiskie installed but it doesn't do anything am i missing something ?
    Did you start it? If you did, you should see an icon in your tray/notification icon area (if you have one) and it should automount external disks when you plug them in.
    start as in ?
    systemctl start udisks2

  • Lost pictures from external HDD

    Hello,
    I created a new iPhoto Library on an external HDD. I had about 16 GB of photos there. I found the library blank (0 bytes) today. When I am trying to open the location from iPhoto nothing happens.
    I have Maverick 10.9.2, iPhoto 9.5.1, the external HDD is ExFAT formatted.
    I tried to use the Disc Utility to repair the disc, it appeared to be OK. I tried to rebuild iPhoto previews (cmd*alt at iPhoto start) and it did not help.
    Could you give me any advice, please?
    Regards
    Frank

    I have Maverick 10.9.2, iPhoto 9.5.1, the external HDD is ExFAT formatted.
    ExFAT is your problem. iPhoto requires the iPhoto Library to be on a drive formatted MacOS Extended (Journaled).
    See these documents:  iPhoto: Issues with FAT32-formatted drives
    and Format external drives to Mac OS Extended before using with Aperture(or iPhoto)
    I created a new iPhoto Library on an external HDD. I had about 16 GB of photos there. I found the library blank (0 bytes) today. When I am trying to open the location from iPhoto nothing happens.
    What probably has happened is, that you created the library on that drive, but iPhoto could not write to it and wrote the image files to a temporary storage.   Check, if iPhoto created a new library in your Pictures folder instead. Did you reboot your Mac, since you imported the photos? If not, wait, unti you have checked the Caches and temporary directories, before you restart your mac, because that will erase any temporary files.

  • How to recover lost files on external HDD

    Hello all, I gave my external HDD (G Drive, I bought it from the app store), as far as I see the model ist something like - HDST HTS 5410, to a friend and the dumm *** deleted all my old files (movies, fotos) and put new ones. So my question is how to restore/recovery if possible. Thank you and really hope there is a chance.

    General File Recovery
    If you stop using the drive it's possible to recover deleted files that have not been overwritten by using recovery software such as MAC Data Recovery, Data Rescue II, File Salvage or TechTool Pro.  Each of the preceding come on bootable CDs to enable usage without risk of writing more data to the hard drive.  Two free alternatives are Disk Drill and TestDisk.  Look for them and demos at MacUpdate or CNET Downloads. Recovery software usually provide trial versions that enable you to determine if the software would help before actually paying for it. Beyond this or if the drive has completely failed, then you would need to send the drive to a recovery service which is very expensive.
    The longer the hard drive remains in use and data are written to it, the greater the risk your deleted files will be overwritten.
    Also visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Data Recovery.
    Your files were most likely overwritten, so don't expect too much success at recovering them.

  • Free Rescue n Recovery partition on external HDD

    Fellow ThinkPad users,
    I had created a Rescue and Recovery partition for my R51 on an external USB HDD.
    Now I switched from the R51 to a T420 and would like to remove the old RnR partition (it's actually only a folder) from my external drive to free space (about 16 Gb from two backups), however, I can't delete it neither in windows nor in DOS nor with Cygwin (linux environment). I get the error message that permission is denied and that I need admin rights, but I am logged in as admin. I even tried on another PC, but no success.
    Any ideas or suggestions for how I can remove this folder? 
    Many  thanks!
    Solved!
    Go to Solution.

    It's an NTFS permissions issue. You have to add yourself to the list of allowed users first, and then delete it. If in Windows, right-click on the folder, choose the "security" tab, under "Group and user names", click "Add", in the new window that opens type your login name into the "enter the object names" form, and click "check names" button to the right of it (which will change it to the right format). Click Ok. Now you should be able to go back to "security tab" and make sure you have "full control" in permissions. Now you should be able to delete the folder.

  • NTFS Partition on external HDD changed to read only after failed eject

    Hi all
    I have a Mybook studio split into 2 partitions, a NTFS one and a HFS+ one. After removing the USB cable too quickly following the eject my NTFS partition is read only [I checked using 'get info'].
    I need to change this back and I'm stumped - please advise
    Many kind regards in advance

    Thank you all very much for the advice you have given me. I attempted to make changes with NTFS3G - i upgraded to Tuxera NTFS [which REALLY screwed up everything] - and got a monstorous error message. Disk utility was no good to me either telling me to reformat.
    For anyone reading this thread in search of a solution - I used bootcamp to load up my Win7 Partition and then repaired the disk using the built in utility accessble from right click> properties.
    It appears there was some corruption causing my problem (?) as it created a folder called found.000 which has a random assortment of files from all over the partition in it. Hopefully it found all the lost data but I have no way of comparing it's before and after state.
    Moral of the story - NTFS isn't quite ready for Mac yet, at least in my experience.
    Now if only we could get time machine to work with NTFS..
    Cheers again to you all!

  • Windows to Mac - OS or TM Lost File Structure (External HDD)

    Damage control please.
    I have an old Seagate One-Touch 150GB external drive I use to back up my old Windows machines.
    I have (had) four machines backed up in there - 1 Windows Me and 3 XPs holding business and personal files for the last 8 years.
    I needed a file and since my Vaio laptop broke down I connected the Seagate to my MBP for the first time.
    The Seagate showed up fine, double-clicked it and began looking for my file. No problems until...
    I clicked an old MP3 to listen to it, iTunes came up. No biggie yet. Then Time Machine came up asking me if I would like to use my Seagate as back-up. I clicked O.K. and made sure no formatting or erasing happened.
    Suddenly OSX alerted me that the USB hard-drive was not ejected properly. I though it was a faulty USB cable. But after a dozen tries and reading two hours of 'Apple Discussions' and web searches I find myself without a clue how to recover my files without recurring to a $100+ service or software recovery solution.
    All I did was look for a file and play a song! Please help.
    I tried the Seagate with an XP machine but as with the Mac, it wants to initiate or format the drive.
    XP disk utility tells me that the file structure is RAW and Disk Management tool shows 16MB Unallocated and No File Structure whatsoever.
    I am sorry I upset the Apple Gods by trying to dig into my Windows past. I beg mercy and forgiveness

    Maurizio,
    I clicked O.K. and made sure no formatting or erasing happened.
    Well, there's the problem. Whether or not you knew it was happening, OS X must first re-format any drive for use with Time Machine, unless it is already formatted as HFS+. In short, the drive has been erased. I feel your pain.
    On the bright side, your data will not have been touched; it is still there, just not listed in a directory structure (file system). You will need to look into one of the many file recovery software packages. The drive is not damaged, physically, so a professional service is really not necessary. Just find a suitable software title that can do the job of file recovery for you. These can be had for not too much $$$. Stick with Windows titles, though, since the files were stored as part of a native Windows file system.
    Scott

  • How to recover data from an External HDD partition crash?

    i was partitioning my external HDD into two partition with pre existing data on one portion to make a time maching on the other one. it crashed in the process and now i have lost 500gb of media. help

    General File Recovery
    If you stop using the drive it's possible to recover deleted files that have not been overwritten by using recovery software such as MAC Data Recovery, Data Rescue II, File Salvage or TechTool Pro.  Each of the preceding come on bootable CDs to enable usage without risk of writing more data to the hard drive.  Two free alternatives are Disk Drill and TestDisk.  Look for them and demos at MacUpdate or CNET Downloads. Recovery software usually provide trial versions that enable you to determine if the software would help before actually paying for it. Beyond this or if the drive has completely failed, then you would need to send the drive to a recovery service which is very expensive.
    The longer the hard drive remains in use and data are written to it, the greater the risk your deleted files will be overwritten.
    Also visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Data Recovery.

  • Can't boot Arch from external HDD

    Hi, well first off this is not my first Arch Linux installation, I'm using Arch for a little over a year now (coming from slack). But this is my first attempt to have Arch on an external HDD.
    Alrighty, the situation is as follows: A rather new computer (supports booting from USB devices and the bios is set to boot from removable devices first) with a built in HDD and an external HDD that's connected to that computer via USB.
    What I did: I connected the external HDD to the computer and booted off a 2008.6 Overlord core-CD.
    Arch-Live recognized the internal HDD as sda and the external HDD as sdb.
    I partitioned the external HDD using cfdisk and ran mkfs.ext3 on it (I didn't use any switches with that).
    I started the installer, set my mount points (I should mention I'm not gonna use a swap partition here), installed the packages, well just went through the installation routine and installed grub in the MBR of sdb (the external HDD).
    Then I rebooted. And this is what doesn't work: When I boot that computer with the external HDD connected the computer completely hangs right before grub would come up. It freezes completely, ctrl+alt+del doesn't work, I need to use the powerswitch to reboot the computer.
    So I put the Arch-CD back in the CD drive trying to boot into my Arch System on the external HDD. So I started typing:
    root (hd1,0)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sdb1 ro vga=773
    initrd /boot/kernel26.img
    When I try to boot off that grub tells me that there is no such device as hd1,0. The funny thing is, that the auto copmletion in grub works for the kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 but it doesn't for the device /dev/sdb1, in fact even root=/de<tab> returns a "unrecognized string" message.
    So this is what I did and I can't boot off my external HDD, neither can I boot into my system on the external hdd from the cdrom.
    What am I missing here?

    The harddrive you boot from is in my experience always hd0. Could this mean your external disc is hd2?
    Have you tried chainloading from the installer cd to your external disc?

  • Upgrading to Snow Leopard when startup disk is already an external HDD

    Hi All,
    Am just in the process of upgrading to Snow Leopard (currently running Leopard) on my Mac Mini. When originally setting up the Mini, I created an external HDD as the "startup" disk.
    Now when attempting to upgrade, I only have the option to upgrade on to the Macintosh HDD as the upgrade disk tells me that the external HDD can't be used because it doesn't use the GUID Partition Table scheme.
    I know I can use the Disk Utility to change the partition scheme on the external HDD, however will doing this erase the existing data on the HDD and potentially leave me with a Macintosh HDD that isn't the startup disk and an external HDD without an operating system?
    Any advice on how to properly partition the external HDD and effectively upgrade to Snow Leopard when I'm already running Leopard OS X from an external HDD would be greatly appreciated.
    Cheers,
    Lee

    leemathers wrote:
    I know I can use the Disk Utility to change the partition scheme on the external HDD, however will doing this erase the existing data on the HDD and potentially leave me with a Macintosh HDD that isn't the startup disk and an external HDD without an operating system?
    Any advice on how to properly partition the external HDD and effectively upgrade to Snow Leopard when I'm already running Leopard OS X from an external HDD would be greatly appreciated.
    Welcome to Apple's discussion groups.
    I don't see any alternative other than making a complete backup of that external drive, redeclaring the partition scheme, then restoring the backed-up data to it. A side benefit is that you'll now have a backup of everything in case something goes wrong with the upgrade, which is an excellent idea anyway.

  • Mac can't find my partitioned external HDD

    My previous setup was:
    1 WD 2TB external HDD with own power supply, formatted as MacOS Extended (Journaled).
    But I wanted to split this HDD up into two partitions, Archive and Library. I also wanted to have a Time Machine backup of this disk. So I bought another WD 2TB external HDD with own power supply. On this one, I made two partitions, Archive and Library, both as MacOS Extended (Journaled). Then I copied all the files of my first HDD to their specific location.
    So my new setup was:
    My new WD 2TB external HDD with own power supply, with two partitions, both formatted as MacOs Extended (Journaled).
    My old WD 2TB external HDD was still holding a copy of the files on the new one, but I wanted to use this one for backup.
    Now I just had to format the old WD 2TB, so I could use it as Time Machine backup. I knew this was a critical point. Because if something would go wrong I didn't have any backup. But what are the chances that things would have gone bad just right now???
    As you can guess it did go wrong. My new HDD (the one with the partitions) could no longer be recognized by my Mac. My Time Machine backup was still indexing all the files, so didn't get an actual backup of them yet. A disaster!!!
    When connected the new HDD I had a prompt window telling me that my computer couldn't find the disk, with the options 'Initialise...', 'Ignore' and 'Remove'. Choosing 'Intialise' I got into Disk Utility, it does detect the 'mother' HDD, but not the 'children' (= the partitions).
    Is there a way to get my data back? I have everything on it: my files for work (important files for my business), but also my personal files (pictures, complete iTunes library with music and movies...).
    I must say that I had this problem before. Same situation: I partitioned a disk and after a bit, my Mac couldn't find it anymore. Back then I thought it was the HDD, and as the files were not that important, I just forgot about it... until I found it back one day and discovered that I could restore the HDD, but I had to re-format it, meaning that all the files were lost.
    This situation is different as lost files would mean a disaster. :-(
    I hope there's someone out here that can help me.
    Thanks in advance!
    I use a MacBook Pro mid 2007. I currently use Mac OS Mountain Lion (up to date).

    Thank you! That information was definitely helpful.
    I haven't tried since my post to get our printer to work (ended up sending my doc to Staples, in the interest of time, and haven't had to print anything since).
    Anyway, this morning I replaced our ink and tried printing something. It still wasn't working (but this time, all it said was the printer wasn't connected). I reconnected the printer to the network, then turned it off, restarted our computer, and once the computer was back up, I turned the printer back on.
    The printer appeared in our network, again, and my printing job was successful. Yay! I LOVE when technology works. =)

  • Partitioning went wront, lost 32GB on my HDD

    Hi,
    Today I tried using Boot Camp assistent to partition my HDD on my iMac. During this process I got a Kernel Panic. The partitioning went wrong, and now I lost 32GB of my HDD space. Any idea how I can get it back?
    In Boot Camp assistent I can't recover it and also Disk Utility is not able to see the partition. I also used Disk Inventory X to check where the 32GB are, but it can't find it... Anyone? Please?

    You know, every day there is probably at least one or more that have the same situation.
    Short answer: backup, you should have done so before beginning, I think that is spelled out in the pdf with BootCamp (it was with the Betas from last year). Because you likely need to use Disk Utility: Partition: to set it from "current" to one volume.
    BootCamp Assistant tries to find a single unfragmented free chunk of space, in your case, that would be 32GB. After a failure, highly probably there won't be 32GB now that is free and unfragmented.
    Drives that originally were formatted with Tiger and upgraded to Leopard more often have kernel panics but may be other reasons as well.
    Leopard format seems to resize and divide better. Every new OS version does have underlying changes to partition map and tables.
    I would install OS X to an external drive, a smallish partition, and use the rest of the drive for a 2nd backup partition, so you can boot from that, rather than use the DVD Leopard or your system came with.
    What you didn't want to hear? but the "long road" is sometimes the shortest distance from A to B.

  • Data recovery software that help recover lost partition due to using Disk Recovery Assistant on a 2TB HDD?

    I Just use the Disk Recovery Assistant on my 2TB HDD and it wipe it clean. What are the best data recovery tool out there that allow me to recover the lost partition and see the file in folders view not files view like in some data recovery like Disk Drill?
    using ML 10.8 something I tried appleXsoft but no luck.

    My best suggestion is
    Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery
    http://www.macintosh-data-recovery.com/
    Download the free trial version of the software and use the option "Search Lost/Deleted Volumes", It will scan the drive and show you all lost partitions list on preview. Once you click on the selected partition it will show you again 3 options ,
    Quick Recovery- This option is very effective on case of volume corruption
    Advanced Recovery- This option recovers data from formatted volume and scans each and every block of volume for lost data.
    Deleted File Recovery.- It scans unused blocks of volume to recover deleted data.
    On successful recovery the software will show the files in folders view with the folder structure..In case you are unable to see the desired results you would need to go for Raw Recovery which will show results on file basis.This option is only required incase the previous option does not give you the desired results.
    Cheers !!

Maybe you are looking for