Comments on: Restore an Apple Partition Map

By: Dan

Dan — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 03:46:10 +0000

Problem solved, drive restored, thanks to this blog.

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 19:05:51 +0000

Sorry for a long comment, but I want to be sure that I'm being clear about what I have and what my question is about how to go forward. Same starting situation - 1TB external with HFS+ and MacDrive, the APM was overwritten with an MBR. TestDisk shows that all the APM partition data is still there, with invalid block) signature. Bad MAC partition, invalid block0 signature 1 P partition_map 1 63 63 2 P Driver43 64 119 56 3 P Driver43 120 175 56 4 P Driver_ATA 176 231 56 5 P Driver_ATA 232 287 56 6 P FWDriver 288 799 512 7 P Driver_IOKit 800 1311 512 8 P Patches 1312 1823 512 9 P Free 1824 263967 262144 10 P HFS 263968 1953525151 1953261184 11 P Free 1953525152 195352516 pdisk shows the same information on the external. Partition map (with 512 byte blocks) on '/dev/rdisk1' #: type name length base ( size ) 1: Apple_partition_map Apple 63 @ 1 2: Apple_Driver43 Macintosh 56 @ 64 3: Apple_Driver43 Macintosh 56 @ 120 4: Apple_Driver_ATA Macintosh 56 @ 176 5: Apple_Driver_ATA Macintosh 56 @ 232 6: Apple_FWDriver Macintosh 512 @ 288 7: Apple_Driver_IOKit Macintosh 512 @ 800 8: Apple_Patches Patch Partition 512 @ 1312 9: Apple_Free 262144 @ 1824 (128.0M) 10: Apple_HFS Apple_HFS_Untitled_1 1953261184 @ 263968 (931.4G) 11: Apple_Free 16 @ 1953525152 Device block size=512, Number of Blocks=0 (0.0 ) DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0 I have looked through everything on the TestDisk documentation and in this blog, but I can't figure out how I need to proceed to restore the partition. Do I use pdisk to initialize and then write in the details for each of the 11 stages of the map? Or do I just need to put in the data for the main 931.4G block and initialize that? Or maybe just give the initialize command using the existing directory information? Some very specific instruction would be greatly appreciated - this is pretty advanced stuff for me.

By: alex

alex — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 07:52:33 +0000

d2 quadra
/dev/rdisk1

that’s the name of the disk I want to repair but… it doasn’t work.

e d2 quadra
pdisk: can’t open file ‘d2′ (No such file or directory)

By: Ava Davis

Ava Davis — Wed, 26 May 2010 01:11:38 +0000

Data Recovery is a very costly option that is why you should always check your storage media for any signs of wear and tear.`;:

By: haqu

haqu — Mon, 24 May 2010 07:01:00 +0000

Using your instructions I was able to save my 500GB drive full of valuable info. Thank you very much!

By: Avis

Avis — Sun, 02 May 2010 13:49:31 +0000

Thank you so much for the clear step-by-step instructions. Following your instructions, I was able to recreate the partition map in my external USB drive and recovered all the data. I can’t thank you enough.

By: Gabor Petroci

Gabor Petroci — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 00:43:00 +0000

Hi Broes!
A ruined my 1.5 Tb Drive after i sold my PPC MAC. I used on a PC with Madrive until i want to make ntfs partition to changing the hdd to ntfs! So i didn’t know that if i change one partition on win it will ruin all of them, because its a completly different than MBR. So with macdrive i ruined the tables, and my best music projects…
Have you got any solution for PC platform recovery like this. Or i have to get a PPC Mac from somewhere?!
Thanks

By: Broes

Broes — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 09:06:19 +0000

@Dua @zam0th:

It might be that your HDD is partitioned using GPT (GUID Partition Table) or MBR (Master Boot Record) and not APM (Apple Partition Map). I cannot see that from the above data, since it only lists the partitions and doesn’t tell anything about the partition table type.

Note that the bootdisk of all Intel Macs is certainly of the type GPT. Extra drives may be of any format.

When you want to recover a GPT, you might want to look at this thread on MacRumors Forum.

By: zam0th

zam0th — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:49:29 +0000

same problem as above =). can it be fixed somehow?

By: Dua

Dua — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 14:13:59 +0000

I was working with a external 1TB WD disk when I bought a NASduo. In the instalation process I was catch with suprise that it had just made a quick format to my disk. I thought all data of my disk was ruined until I found Testdisk and saw my old partitions and structure of my files. This was the table of my partitions:

Disk /dev/disk1 – 1000 GB / 931 GiB – CHS 1953525168 1 1
Partition Start End Size in sectors
P HFS 409640 488790935 488381296
P DOS_FAT_32 488792064 977172479 488380416 [DOCS]
P DOS_FAT_32 977172480 1465552895 488380416 [PICTURES]
P DOS_FAT_32 1465552896 1953523711 487970816 [OTHERS]

Everything was bright until I received the message “Function write_part_mac not implemented” and I had to use pdisk.
I read carefully all your post in order to restored the missing partition.I open the terminal and when I reached 11) from your to do list this was what i received:

Last login: Sun Feb 7 14:16:21 on ttys000
Macintosh-2:~ M$ sudo pdisk
Password:
Top level command (? for help): L
pdisk: No valid block 1 on ‘/dev/rdisk1′
Floating point exception
Macintosh-2:~ M$

..and once more I’m looking to a brick wall without any clue what to do.
I do not know which partition is missing and how do I acess to my partition table in pdisk. I would desperately appreciate any help.
I’m using a Intel/mac and I hope that this is not a problem..