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I (stupidly) used my RocketRaid 2300 BIOS to initialize an 8TB HSF+ drive. Now I want the HFS+ drive and directory structure back!
Is this even possible? If so, what steps could be taken?
Joe Bell
Posted 2016-02-23T15:25:28.957
Reputation: 21
Can a HFS+ drive be recovered if reinitialized to Master Boot Record?
Answers
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1) Block level DD copy to another drive (to create clone in case of destructive processes)
2) Disk Warrior directory rebuild
Joe Bell
Posted 2016-02-23T15:25:28.957
Reputation: 21
1I very much suspect it is possible, with minimal if any data loss. First thing first, make sure you **do not write anything further at all to that drive** until you have a solution that you feel confident in your ability to execute. If the data is really important to you, get a second drive and make a byte-level copy of the one you have, work on the copy and leave the original disconnected to ensure any mistakes do not apply to both drives. (You can always use one of the drives later for backups!) – a CVn – 2016-02-23T15:37:22.030
I can get hold of two empty identical drives tomorrow, I will be attempting a DD copy, not exactly what to do afterwards.Will try Disk Warrior, Disk Drill,
Stellar Volume Optimizer on the clones. – Joe Bell – 2016-02-23T18:49:39.323
I'm not familiar with those tools, and I don't know what might be a good approach to HFS+ recovery specifically, but once you are working on a copy, you can fire away with any tools that might be able to recover a HFS+ volume, because if you make any mistake, you can always just re-make the copy from the original and try again. – a CVn – 2016-02-24T08:19:19.397
Bit late feeding back, but I was able to do a DD copy, took several days, then used DiskWarrior to resurrect the HFS+ directory structure and seemingly got all data back. Thanks!! – Joe Bell – 2017-07-31T18:50:48.290
I'm glad to hear that it turned out well. I do suggest that you post a self-answer and accept that; doing so will preserve your findings for the community, and also indicate to the community that you feel your question has been resolved. Write it in the style you'd have wanted someone else to write it in to explain to you what to do, and you might even earn some reputation from it. See also https://superuser.com/help/self-answer.
– a CVn – 2017-08-01T06:42:38.460