(URGENT) Deleted APFS on External Hard Drive. Possible to get back files?

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(URGENT) Deleted APFS on External Hard Drive. Possible to get back files?

Hi,

The APFS volumes on my hard drive were accidentally deleted since we thought it would delete the latest MacOS update that was installed onto the hard drive. We did this since we couldn't find any files on the hard drive anymore. It had all of my most important files dating back from years to today.

Is it still possible to retrieve the files and all that was deleted after deleting the APFS on the external hard drive?

Honestly, all of this first happened when my original laptop didn't have enough storage to download the latest Mac update so I used the hard drive to take the update. But after that I couldn't find the files on the hard drive so we tried everything despite it saying on disk utility that the space taken was still taken up according to it. So we tried deleting the APFS volume without being too sure of what it was. Then now it looks like this with all of the 2TB in it, it shows.

Any help would be great since this hard drive has almost all my most important files and backups over the years.

Please help, thank you.

MacBook Pro

Posted on Jul 13, 2021 12:39 AM

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Answer 1

HWTech

Level 9

69,254 points

Jul 13, 2021 10:04 AM in response to heartlesdude

If you installed macOS 10.15+ to a drive containing files, then those files were probably relocated and would have been visible in the Finder under the folder "Reallocated Items" or something similar, but you would have to boot to the OS on the external drive to see it. IIRC, macOS provided a link with the items actually being placed in the "/Users" folder. The files were relocated because macOS no longer allows any non-system files & folders to exist on the read-only macOS system volume.

If the external drive is an SSD and you deleted the volume, then most likely the data is gone for good due to how SSDs work.

If the external drive is a hard drive, then it may be possible to recover the files using a data recovery app such as Data Rescue. Keep in mind you will need another drive with enough storage space to store the recovered files. There is a very good chance that if the files can be recovered that they will no longer have their original file names and you may need to sort through hundreds of thousands of files to find them.

You should always have frequent and regular backups of your computers and any external media which contains important and unique data. Note the last part as that is extremely important if you value your data. Personally I would never use the APFS file system on an external drive since APFS can become corrupt where Disk Utility First Aid is unable to correct the errors which then requires transferring the data temporarily to another location so the corrupt drive can be erased with a fresh file system.

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(URGENT) Deleted APFS on External Hard Drive. Possible to get back files?

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