hello!

i've been working in pro audio on mac's for over a decade now. i've setup systems for artists and studios a plenty. I've never erased a client's drive, accidentally... until now. I'm not super familiar with terminal at all, but i'm no stranger on how to google something quickly. have reset and logicl core partitions back to +hfs several times, taking machines from yosemite back to mavericks, easily.

after installing a new ssd and hd caddy to replace the optical drive into a macbook pro last night, the original hd was supposed to remain intact, until being wiped at a later date. under alot of stress recently, i jumped into terminal and removed the logical partition with:

diskutil cs deleteVolume <uuid>

with the uuid# of the hd i wasn't supposed to erase... yet. full of stuff (like recent sessions) the client needed to save. no time machine backup or other manual backup available, because he was in a rush to get the ssd in and was going to transfer files off the original hd manually, before wiping it for new usage.

i did NOT finish the second terminal command, by removing the full logic core storage group, i only removed the logic core volume. when i boot the machine holding "option", the old "Macintosh HD" pops up as a bootable option, still. clicking on it, it starts to load as normal for about 15 seconcds, then gets the warning symbol. which is teasing me into thinking, that the hd may still have all of its content on it....

Although disk utility shows "Macintosh HD" disk as just that, with no partition or volume underneath it, like a normal +hfs volume partition, there is no "Erase" tab available next to "First Aid", and when clicking on "Partition" tab, it shows all blue, like it's capacity is still full of contents, despite the space used being only 334 MB out of 750 GB (749.* GB something, of course). i haven't wanted to try anything else in disk utility (like "repair disk") or anything else, in fear the contents might be permanently gone, if so. i've unsuccessfully googled an "undo terminal" answer, and many similar keywords, hoping it may be possible to reverse removing of the logic core storage volume (like an "undo" terminal command?), so that the contents of the hd could be salvaged.

Has anyone ever been in this position, or might know of some sort of "logic core volume" repair fix?

fingers crossed there may be a way to replace the "logical core volume" back into the logical core group, without damaging any of it's contents?!?



thank you for any help in advance!!!

 

there are several tools that should be able to do this, paragon is prolly one of the most capable companies when it comes to disk utils. they have a free tool that can undelete volumes.

click here

 

Don't have a better answer than statik but I really hope you manage to recover that HDD. However, you're lucky that you work with a HDD, a SSD is almost always impossible to recover after a such operation.

 

interesting note on the ssd part. thank you statik for your insight, i will look into paragon

 

Yes, the SSD itself has a algorithm which often moves data around drive's memory blocks (to erode the memory cells as even as possible). Even if you delete something and empty the recycle bin, the recovery from a SSD is impossible (as soon as you power on the drive for recovery it starts moving data around). Keeping important data on a SSD without backup is walking on thin ice.

 

no prob dude, had my fair share of hd problems, externals drives and such that couldnt be read anymore due to rights being fucked up after a reinstall. good luck, think you should be able to recover it all

 

Ok, so getting the Paragon program and setting it up on a little use flash drive to boot from, was no problem. After booting, choosing disk partition undelete and reading the Help instructions. It says to to choose the disk, which I did, and then click "search". But no disk that I select, will allow the operation to continue. It allows me to choose the correct disk (with deleted partition), however the "search" or "next" button never becomes available.

Any ideas? Thanks again for ur help guys!!!

 

http://www.cleverfiles.com/pro.html - try the free version. I never tried it but maybe can do more than paragon.

PS: I would do something like this (if flash disk use is not mandatory): get the damaged hard drive out of his laptop, connect the damaged dirive to my computer, boot the OS on my computer, install paragon on my computer and then run it over the damaged hard drive.

 

it might have something to do with the access rights to his drive, osx can be very picky when it comes to that.

 

Thanks Guys! to follow up, i wasn't able to use the paragon program, on the machine itself. Due to disk permissions, i'm sure. Target Disk out to another machine running paragon, the paragon program wasn't able to see the external drive(s), either. bummer. Disk Drill (the free program) also suggested, was much better! However, after doing a full scan and list of what files would be available after repair disk and mount disk, it would not allow me to proceed any further in free mode, without purchasing the pro/enterprise edition. another little bummer, but i was able to source the pro/enterprise edition, elsewhere.

Thanks again for your help, Disk Drill did work magic and recovered just about everything from the damaged partition!