How to Fix My SSD Partition with "Unknown Format"

My system has recently crashed. I couldn't do any type of recovery, so I bought a new SSD and installed the OS on it. Now all of my files are on the spare SSD which I cannot fix and access the files. It is 240 gigabytes but only 3 gigabytes is visible. I had Mac OS which took more than 200 gigabytes and some 15 gigabytes allocated for Parallels to run Windows 10 when necessary. Now disk1s2, the main volume that I was using, and the other 15 gb volume, disk1s3, is "unknown format" and I cannot access my files. I am a master degree student and writing my dissertation. All of my files are in the unknown formatted volume. I need to reformat or repair it without losing data. When I try to change the format of these volumes, I get a warning that the disk would be erased. I know that there are ways to recover data using some software but I want my files back the way I organized. I mean I want it back as it was a week or two weeks before. To be clear enough, I will attach some screenshots from disk utility. Any useful help is appreciated. Please help me get everything back. Thank you in advance.

The first one is overall view of my elderly SSD.




This one is the volume that the main OS was installed. Most of my necessary stuff is in it. As you can see the format is unknown.



And this was probably the windows part, or it might be Linux part I am not sure.


Can I make the volumes visible and usable again. Thank you so much.


Posted on May 1, 2020 9:56 AM

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63 replies

May 3, 2020 3:55 PM in response to snckmrt

The disk can be erased to get your disk space back, but you will lose all your data. This is not the ideal situation.


If you have Windows laptop, you can also look at https://www.paragon-software.com/us/home/apfs-windows/#how_it_works and see if you can at least extract all your important non-OS files. If you can, then we can erase/reformat the disk to make ether disk space available.


Mojave allows the use of the -s and -o options, that High Sierra does not. This is from a Mac running Mojave 10.14.6.


fsck_apfs 
usage: fsck_apfs [ [-q | -n | -y] [-l] [-s] [-S] [-o] ] device
       -q            quick check if the superblock and checkpoint superblock are valid.
       -n            verify only (answer "no" to questions)
       -y            always repair (answer "yes" to questions)
       -l            live fsck (lock down for verify-only)
       -s            print space verification summary
       -S            skip iteration of snapshots, although no repairs can be made.
       -o            repair overallocations; please do not run an older fsck_apfs on newer systems with this option

May 3, 2020 3:36 AM in response to Loner T

Here is the output, Loner.


Last login: Sun May  3 04:29:02 on ttys000

Murats-MacBook-Pro:~ muratsenocak$ sudo gdisk -l /dev/disk1

Password:

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.5



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.

Disk /dev/disk1: 468862128 sectors, 223.6 GiB

Sector size (logical): 512 bytes

Disk identifier (GUID): EAA5B986-5782-4B85-9CDA-1A69F053D3EE

Partition table holds up to 128 entries

Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33

First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 468862092

Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries

Total free space is 526187 sectors (256.9 MiB)



Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name

   1              40          409639   200.0 MiB   EF00  EFI System Partition

   2          409640       429799583   204.7 GiB   FFFF  Macintosh SSD

   3       429801472       460652543   14.7 GiB    8300  

   4       460914688       468599943   3.7 GiB     AF00  Untitled 3

Murats-MacBook-Pro:~ muratsenocak$ 


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How to Fix My SSD Partition with "Unknown Format"

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