mrityunjayb Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 I have been using the below said HDD with my Macbook and Windows (8.1 Pro) machine interchangeably for over an year. Since the HDD is NTFS formatted I use Tuxera NTFS drivers to enable write on Macbook, which worked fine unless one fine day on plugging in the HDD to my Macbook I find the HDD to be completely empty. On firing disk utility I come to know that hard drive has been formatted to Mac OS Extended partition type. Please note this happened instantaneously as soon as I plugged in the machine to my Macbook, so I assume the drive was not actually formatted but some sort of partition format change has happened. After this I was unable to access any data on the drive on my Macbook and the drive was not being detected on the Windows machine since I do not have 3rd party tools to read Mac OX extended partition on Windows. I have tried FileSalvage data recovery tool to Salvage (Raw Recovery) files from the same drive and able to recover the content but lost the directory structure and file properties. Due to the nature of data stored on the drive (Datasets, Source Code, Resources in Zip files) I would really like to get back my directory structure. Since no actual format happened on the drive (Reason 1 - The format type flip was instantaneous, Reason 2 - Recovered data is still in good shape) I would really like to know if I can convert the Mac OS Extended formatted drive back to NTFS and recover directory structure along with data as it was before that unfortunate day when my machine suddenly decided to format my drive without permission. System - MacBook Air (13-inch Mid 2013), OS X Yosemite (10.10.3) Product (with issues) - WD My Book Studio II - 4 TB (NTFS Formatted using Tuxera NTFS for Mac STABLE VERSION 2013.2) PS: I tried reproducing the scenario on another Seagate 4TB drive (NTFS formatted) with dummy data and after few weeks of random hit and trials I was able to replicate the issue and the drive was flipped to Mac OS Extended format again. I removed the Tuxera NTFS drivers after that suspecting that's causing the issue and since then nothing has happened to my NTFS drives on Macbook. The 2nd Seagate HDD is available for testing the solutions to resolve the issue with original WD HDD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Hurt Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 Well, in that case contact Tuxera. They have very good customer service. Assuming that your disk partition scheme is GPT, use gdisk to copy the backup partition table to the front of the disk. If that too is corrupted/changed, manually change the partition type (in partition table) to NTFS and try remounting. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tranceceiver Posted May 20, 2015 Share Posted May 20, 2015 to make clover botable after install, start clover from the usb stick then go to clover boot options and select ad clover as boot option done Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vusun123 Posted May 20, 2015 Share Posted May 20, 2015 Strange, I left Tuxera NTFS running for almost a year now, on many external HDDs I have, still haven't got any issues. I'm using the latest version of Tuxera NTFS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrityunjayb Posted May 25, 2015 Author Share Posted May 25, 2015 Well, in that case contact Tuxera. They have very good customer service. Assuming that your disk partition scheme is GPT, use gdisk to copy the backup partition table to the front of the disk. If that too is corrupted/changed, manually change the partition type (in partition table) to NTFS and try remounting. Thanks for the response Dr. Hurt. I would highly appreciate if you can help me with some pointers to the process you mentioned above as I am not familiar with moving partition table using gdisk. Would you recommend a specific partition management utility do make the suggested change. Also the partition was indeed GPT. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Hurt Posted May 25, 2015 Share Posted May 25, 2015 Download gdisk for Mac. http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/repairing.html Open terminal and run the following: sudo -s gdisk /dev/disk1 (replace 1 with your disk number) type r and press enter (for recovery) use b, c, and w commands. If needed, Changing the partition type code is done via t command (if I remember correctly) Disclaimer: This is a risky process. I'm not responsible for anything that happens due to following those instructions. Proceed at your own risk!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrityunjayb Posted May 26, 2015 Author Share Posted May 26, 2015 Download gdisk for Mac. http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/repairing.html Open terminal and run the following: sudo -s gdisk /dev/disk1 (replace 1 with your disk number) type r and press enter (for recovery) use b, c, and w commands. If needed, Changing the partition type code is done via t command (if I remember correctly) Disclaimer: This is a risky process. I'm not responsible for anything that happens due to following those instructions. Proceed at your own risk!! Given your disclaimer I going to try this on my test drive first with dummy data (with similar issue) and report back here. Meanwhile I used a tool called R-Studio to scan through my hard drive and got following information about the partition structure (check screenshots), unfortunately I can't infer much from the analysis but do possibly some on the forum can and help me evaluate my chance of recovering back my NTFS partition table. The suggested method through gdisk didn't work for me. Below the command trace. bash-3.2# gdisk /dev/disk1 GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.0 Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their partition table automatically reloaded! Partition table scan: MBR: protective BSD: not present APM: not present GPT: present Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT. Command (? for help): r Recovery/transformation command (? for help): b Recovery/transformation command (? for help): c Warning! This will probably do weird things if you've converted an MBR to GPT form and haven't yet saved the GPT! Proceed? (Y/N): Y Recovery/transformation command (? for help): w Final checks complete. About to write GPT data. THIS WILL OVERWRITE EXISTING PARTITIONS!! Do you want to proceed? (Y/N): Y OK; writing new GUID partition table (GPT) to /dev/disk1. Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their partition table automatically reloaded! Warning: The kernel may continue to use old or deleted partitions. You should reboot or remove the drive. The operation has completed successfully. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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