accidentally deleted partition! help!!

[kefarto]

Ok, I thought it would be cool to try dual booting mac.

All was good, resized my partition 74Gb down to 64Gb. Everything worked.
Then I booted the JaS Mac OSX installer. All was good.
Got to Disk Utility, went to the partition tab and assumed that clicking on the free space in the diagram, setting partion options (Extended, Journaled) and then clicking partition would nicely create a mac partition in the free space i set aside for it.

No. It gave me some error about incorrect arguments, I clicked ok, still thinking it hadn't done anything to the harddrive. Noticed a much larger block of free space on the diagram. Started getting nervous, opened and closed disk utility. Nothing. Rebooted the laptop, and it tried booting from Realtek LAN.

I haven't touched it since, hoping that with your help it can somehow be saved. I don't think its completely formatted because it all happened in a split second. I badly need the stuff on there. It has my mums work and everything. She'll probably stab me if she finds out. Please help me! :sad2:

[Your Amish Daddy]

I don't even think a partition can be restored...I think it's gone for good kid.

[Kentigern]

There are data recovery programs that can restore a partition one being PC Inspector http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file_recovery/info.htm?language=1 Please read the faq, there are also some independant customer reviews here http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/userreviews/fid,23069/userreviews.html

Please make sure you read and understand all instructions before using.
You will need to have another drive with windows loaded available to act as your main drive and use the damaged one as a slave.

Hope this helps you avoid a stabbing :)

[HW_Hack]

Well those bits are probably gone into the next dimension .... BUT by using my favorite debug tool --- I googled mac "partition recovery"


Got a page full of hits ....... I would also try a Mac Forum as well ---- meanwhile leave the mac alone until you have a plan

May the Force be with You

[kryyst]

HW_Hack, he wasn't dual booting a mac, he was trying to install OS X on his PC laptop.

For what it's worth. I'm not familiar with the JAS installer so things may have improved. But the tried and true method for installing OSX on a PC in a dual boot situation is to install it onto another drive then ghost that drive to the partition on your target machine that way you avoid any chance that the OSX install will override your entire drive, because OS X doesn't normally look at partitions during installation.

Check out the tools Kentigram lent you and if those don't work check out partition magic it's got some recovery tools that are pretty decent as well.