Missing five partitions + HDD

[powerscape]

I'm so desperate for my hard disk. I have recently lost the partition table on a 300GB Samsung Firewire drive which contains my works. I would like to try to recover the data from this drive, but I can find no (command-line or otherwise) to do this. I have got 5 Journaled HFS+ partitions in my external hard disk.

Before this problem exist; I selected the fourth partition which capacity is 56GB, and choose 'Erase' with as a disk type 'MS-DOS File System' with Mac OS 10.4.11. But Disk Utility failed in 3 seconds, and gives an error. Then all my 5 HFS+ (Journaled) partitions stopped mounting and is not even recognized by Disk Utility which says no partition map found, and drive is unformatted. And isn't even recognized in Disk Utility which shows only disk name.

I think my apple partition map table corrupted by Disk Utility. All my data still in hard disk, but I don't know how can I mount them again. Disk Utility's verify and repairs buttons doesn't appear for Samsung HDD in Tiger & Leopard. I used some applications for repair my hard disk and partitions. But all of them are failed. Desperately seeking a way to repair or recreate corrupted Apple partition map.

Please, could you help me for mounting my 5 partition in my hard disk. How can I have got my all data again?

Thanks.



These applications do not repair / see / detect my hard disk;
Drive Genius 2.0.2
SpeedTools™ Utilities 2.8
DiskWarrior 4.1
DiskStudio 1.6.1
RescuePRO 3.3.0.0
MacForensicsLab 2.5.1
TechTool Pro 4.6.1
VolumeWorks 1.5
iDefrag 1.6.5
iPartition 3.0.1
DiScoop
Clonetool
Carbon Copy Cloner 3.1
Clone X 3.1
CopyCatX 4
SuperDuper!
DivisiList
Disk Utility tiger or leopard
Drive 10


I used these apps;
Data Rescue II 1.2 gives some part of hard disk as a corrupted files with correct file and folder names under Unknown named folder. All of them is a trash.

FileSalvage 6.1.5 scans disk for 38 hours then crashed after started "File Name Rebuilder". When I checked some of files, like "117.qxd", I see it's working. I've got 198.892 files which 300GB of meaningless lots of files without any file or folder names.

TestDisk 6.9 CGSecurity - This can't detect my partitions names which only found three partitions with correct size. Next 4 and 5 partitions have got wrong size. If I can't find any other valuable solution, I'll try last solutions inside this address; http://www.broes.nl/2008/01/restore-...partition-map/

VirtualLab Client 3.9.1.0 also found all my five partitions. I bought quota from binarybiz, but recovered files are corrupted.

Terminal - I used "pdisk -i" to print the "Partition maps", but given "No valid block on dev/rdisk1/"

I can not use these trial applications;
StellarPhoenix 2.3 found all my missing five partitions.
Boomerang Data Recovery 1.1.6 found some of my missing partitions.


Disk Utility gives this information for my Samsung Hard Disk;

Name : Initio

Type : Disk

Partition Map Scheme : Unformatted

Disk Identifier : disk1

Media Name : Initio HD300LD
Media
Media Type : Generic

Connection Bus : FireWire

Connection ID : 4521213288251392

Device Tree : fw/node@10100500000000/sbp-2@4008/@0:0

Writable : Yes

Ejectable : Yes

Mac OS 9 Drivers Installed : No

Location : External

Total Capacity : 279,5 GB (300.069.052.416 Bytes)

S.M.A.R.T. Status : Not Supported

Disk Number : 1

Partition Number : 0




5 Missing Partition Table inside this:

SAMSUNG HD300LD

300GB/7200RPM/8M/PATA

Rev.A, LBA 586, 072.368 300.0GB T133

Mac OS X 10.4.11, Build 8S165

Mac OS X 10.5.2, Build 9C31

eMac 700 MHz, PPC G4, 768mb sdram, 200 GB ATA WD HDD HFS+, 500GB FW My Book HFS+, 300GB FW Seagate HFS+, 300GB FW Samsung HFS+.






[Satcomer]

You hard drive took a dump and I bet you never backed up. Am I right about backing up?

[powerscape]

You're right. I haven't got any copy from HDD. I never think that I face to face by this kind of problem. So I don't backup anything. I still hope to salvage all of my data. I must find a way to rescue thousands of quark files with lots of office works inside of HDD.

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Sounds like the actual, physical hard drive went south. You can try data recovery services, like http://www.drivesavers.com, but be warned: data recovery is expensive (upwards of a few thousand dollars in some cases). It all depends on how much the data is worth to you.

If the hard drive is physically damaged as suspected, there's really nothing you can do at home to fix it, unless you have a dust-free room (and I know of no one in the world with a true, dust-free room in their home) and the tools available to physically dissect a hard drive.

[powerscape]

I forgot to mention that how I solved my problem in 2008. After formatting process, my partition map is gone. So, I need a convenient data recovery application for my problem. There're lots of recovery apps for macintosh. For example; Data Rescue II, MacForensicsLab, OfficeSalvage, FileSalvage, StellarPhoenix, Boomerang Data Recovery, VirtualLab Client, RescuePRO, DiskWarrior 4.1... But none of them is not usefull for my problem. I need an application that can deal with NTFS, and HFS+ partitions. So, R-STUDIO Network Edition have got all this features with very large format detection capability. File systems supported: FAT (FAT12, FAT16, FAT32), NTFS, NTFS5 (created or updated by Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista), HFS/HFS+ (Macintosh), Little and Big Endian variants of UFS1/UFS2 (FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD/Solaris) and Ext2FS/Ext3FS (Linux). R-Studio is powerful and cost-effective data recovery software which recovers files from HFS/HFS+ (Macintosh), FAT/NTFS (Windows), UFS1/UFS2 (FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD/Solaris) and Ext2FS/Ext3FS (Linux) partitions. It also recovers data on disks, even if their partitions are formatted, damaged or deleted.

You need;
1 PC, R-STUDIO Network Edition 4.5, and MacDrive 7 application,
1 external hard drive enclosure for corrupted drive,
1 another external hard drive enclosure for recovery drive.

• I installed R-STUDIO Network Edition 4.5 and MacDrive 7 in my Dell Notebook.
• I plugged my corrupted drive to the PC.
• Then I plugged the other HFS+ formatted external drive to the PC.
• 300 GB corrupted drive scanned completely 4 hours by R-STUDIO.
• This point you need to learn how to use R-Studio. I selected my missing four partitions exactly. After file list open, I marked my missing folders. Next, recovery progress...
• That's all. Indeed, all my files in my good drive now.
• Later, unmount my good drive from PC.

If you do not want to use this easy data recovery method, second way is rewrite your partition map by yourself with TestDisk. But you should use this solution is your last chance. Because, you might screw your partition map with wrong partition and sector size info while rewriting new partition map. You must have got exact partition map without any error. However do not forget to clone your hard disk to any other hdd for your insurance. The TestDisk was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table). It will also find accidentally deleted partitions (either Apple Partitions, the newer EFI partitions and Windows MBR Partitons) and provide the necessary information for you to restore them using the Apple pdisk command (for Apple Partitions) or the gpt command for (for EFI partitions)

I wish best luck for you.

TestDisk Mac
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/OS_No...OS_.28Intel.29
TestDisk Macupdate
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/27683/testdisk
R-STUDIO Network Edition for windows (HFS/HFS+)
http://www.r-studio.com/
R-Studio for macintosh
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/28262/r-studio