1

I need to recover data (very large video files) from an external USB disk that was accidentally formatted in Disk Utility on MAc OS.

Original Partition - EXT-DOS

Newly created partition - Mac OS Extended

Nothing was written to the disk, the mistake was realized immediately during the process.

I have scanned the drive using Disk Drill that finds the lost partition but the video files are not there, just some small jpg pictures that I could recover fine.

Is there a way to restore the previous file structure to find the large (10GB+) files or the sector by sector scanning the only option? I had trouble doing that in the past as the videos were recovered but corrupted.

enter image description here

I have looked at the other question, which is 11 years old and finding the tools and options mentioned obsolete: How do I recover lost/inaccessible data from my storage device?

TomEus
  • 3,725
  • photorec is able to do file based recovery. – mashuptwice Nov 24 '22 at 03:00
  • That is not what I am looking for - PhotoRec is the same as other tools, scanning the sectors of the storage. I am looking for something to "undo" the format action in order to restore the previous EXFAT partition. – TomEus Nov 24 '22 at 07:16
  • 2
    In general there's no way to strictly undo this at home. The overwritten parts of the old filesystem (including some crucial structures) have been, well... overwritten; they no longer exist. Subtle traces may or may not be recoverable in a specialized laboratory due to hysteresis or something, depending on the type of the device. What you can do at home is to examine not-yet overwritten parts in a search for what looks like data with some known structure. This is what photorec does. – Kamil Maciorowski Nov 24 '22 at 07:31
  • @TomEus You said you want to recover files from the drive, not to recover the partitions. That is a difference. In that case have a look at testdisk. Keep in mind that data recovery tools are able to destroy your data even further if handled wrong. I would advise to create a bit-by-bit copy of the whole drive with dd and only work on the image. – mashuptwice Nov 24 '22 at 07:39
  • Realistically there's no 'undo'. There's recovery of files not yet overwritten. – Joep van Steen Nov 24 '22 at 11:53
  • The correct answer SHOULD go on the linked duplicate, but as OP notes, the duplicate despite being the correct duplicate does not address this case well or with current information. – music2myear Nov 24 '22 at 17:57
  • FWIW I added an answer to wiki linked to that may address question: https://superuser.com/a/1758086/705502 – Joep van Steen Dec 16 '22 at 14:26

0 Answers0