Recover data from a HDD that was accidentally erased on iMac

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Level 1

17 points

Recover data from a HDD that was accidentally erased on iMac

I am helping a non-computer-literate friend with his iMac. He was dual booting with Windows. When the Windows partition filled up, he attempted to resize the Disc Utility in Recovery Mode. The HDD was accidently erased during that process.

I would like to help him recover the data on the HDD without removing the HDD. I tried two different alleged methods to create a bootable USB disc on my iMac Neither seem to work when I attempt to boot to his iMac via a USB.

Is there a way to recover data from an iMac via a bootable USB drive. There are several data recovery options for NTFS partitions via a bootable USB drive.

Thanks

Earlier Mac models

Posted on Oct 23, 2024 6:17 PM

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Answer 1

HWTech

Level 9

60,758 points

Oct 24, 2024 9:32 AM in response to TXfiddler

What is the exact model of both Macs? This information is necessary in order to determine if your Ma can be used to create a bootable macOS USB installer for the other Mac. You can get the exact model by clicking the Apple menu and selecting "About This Mac", or for the one without an OS you can enter the system serial number on the check coverage page here (please don't post the serial numbers on this forum since it is considered personal information):

Check Your Service and Support Coverage - Apple Support

FYI, here is an Apple article with instructions for creating a bootable macOS USB installer (both Macs must be compatible with the OS you are creating)....this is the only reliable method for creating a bootable macOS USB installer:

Create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support

You will want to install macOS onto an external USB3 SSD because you want to boot from the external SSD in order to be able to run data recovery software on the internal drive. You do not want to overwrite the internal drive or you will destroy the data you are trying to recover.

If the older Mac has a Thunderbolt port, then you can try putting the older Mac into Target Disk Mode and connecting it to your Mac so you can attempt to recover files from the old Mac. If your Mac is running macOS Big Sur or earlier, then you could connect the two computers using a USB cable instead.

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Answer 2

steve626

Level 6

11,555 points

Oct 23, 2024 8:39 PM in response to TXfiddler

If the HDD was "erased" when changing partitions in Disk Utility, the chance of recovery is small if the disk was HFS+ (an old Mac with an old operating system) and probably close to nil if it was a modern Mac with APFS for the file system. NTFS does not apply here; the internal HDD on a Mac is not NTFS.

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Answer 3

OBXBoost

Level 1

13 points

Oct 24, 2024 4:56 AM in response to TXfiddler

If the iMac has a removable drive, I would pull the drive and slave it to another computer. There's software out there that can read data that has been marked as available (deleted) but I would not use that computer any more as usage will overwrite the data you are trying to recover.

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Answer 4

BDAqua

Level 10

245,501 points

Oct 24, 2024 9:07 AM in response to TXfiddler

Give Disk Drill a try...

https://www.cleverfiles.com/mac-data-recovery.html

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