Accidentally formatted my mac hard drive

Question

Accidentally formatted my mac hard drive

Please, someone help me quick!

While trying to install Windows XP, I selected what I thought was my blank hard drive (as it was the only one that would work). It turned out the drive it actually selected was my main mac drive.

I attempted to restart my mac launching from the mac drive, but it was not appearing. I've inserted my snow leopard disc to at least try and save my data but the intaller won't find my mac drive. I suspect it's been reformatted to the NTFS or whatever.

How can I reformat my HD BACK to OS X?
Is my data gone for good?

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Feb 26, 2011 2:24 PM

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Answer 1

NA Smith

Level 2

345 points

Feb 26, 2011 3:03 PM in response to eddcunningham

Based on your level of texted panic, I'm guessing you don't use a backup system (like The Hatter has detailed). If you formatted your drive, it is likely you will not be able to "reformat my HD BACK to OS X". You can very likely recover precious data at a cost. Default formatting or erasing a HD doesn't strike out the data, only zeroing-out can. You can either start from scratch and cut your loses, or you can recover your data (and then install from scratch). Simply Google "data recovery Mac" and you will see many software options for "finding" precious files on your HD.

Message was edited by: NA Smith

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Answer 2

Feb 28, 2011 7:36 PM in response to eddcunningham

I managed to install OS X onto my second drive and use that to run data recovery software.
With that I managed to save all my important files from the hard drive and am now free to reformat it back to Mac Journaled and continue to use the drive as before.

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Answer 3

The hatter

Level 9

61,041 points

Feb 26, 2011 2:41 PM in response to eddcunningham

Unless installing XP on the same drive, it is best to add a step and remove ALL drives other than where Windows will go.

Some XP SP3 discs have been known to write over an entire drive, one more reason why Step #1 "Backup before you begin this procedure" should really be adhered to.

And with Mac Pro no reason not to with support for drives, internal and external.

Boot Camp Assistant will take a drive and format as Master Boot Record if it is other than your Mac OS X drive. There is even an article from Apple and even Microsoft.

http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/933925

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Answer 4

Feb 26, 2011 2:54 PM in response to The hatter

It was an XP SP3 disc as well.

But this still doesn't answer my question of is the data from my original Macintosh HD gone for good?

I've found a way to launch the disk utility from my OS X 10.6 disk. It turns out that my HD was reformatted to MS-DOS (FAT).
I'm holding back from reformatting it back to Mac OS until I know for sure that my data is officially gone.

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Answer 5

NA Smith

Level 2

345 points

Feb 28, 2011 9:02 PM in response to eddcunningham

Cool. Good of you to post.

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