deepblue13
Level 1
(4 points)
Q: Missing partition after Time Machine Restore
Hi Everyone,
I am using a mid-2010 27-inch iMac and have an external 2TB WD1230 drive attached to it. I partitioned the external drive to allocate 1TB as a Time Machine backup repository and the other 1TB to put in music files, movies and pictures to save some space on my system's aging 1TB drive.
Good thing I set it up this way because one day, my system just refused to start up. I went into the Utility mode and used the Time Machine restore feature to help me get back on my feet. After an 18 hour restore, the system is now purring well with all the files and settings unaffected. Kudos to the Time Machine process!
However, here's the issue, I did notice while the restore was going on, the system formatted the partition on my external drive labeled "STORAGE" which contained my music and movies. I know the files are there but I need to know how to access these files again as the STORAGE drive is no longer showing up in Finder. I did a Disk Utility scan on the external drive with no luck either. Can anyone who has gone through this similar situation help me out? Thanks so much in advance!
VIN, iMac (27-inch Mid 2010), OS X El Capitan (10.11.5)
dwb
Level 7
(24,107 points)
The restore utility uses TimeMachine to copy a backup set to the drive you point it to. It does not perform any operations on any drive or partition other than the one it is copying the files to. So neither TimeMachine nor the restore utility formatted or repartitioned the external drive (unless there’s more than you are telling us.)
It may be possible to retrieve lost files from that drive using a disk utility such as Data Restore from Prosoft. As a former tech worker, this was my go to software. There’s no guarantee it will work. Disk Drill is another recovery program people I know recommend but I’ve never used it.
