Hard drive installed, shows in Drive Mngmnt, in Bios, but not in Comp.

Anshad Edavana · 04 Jul 2014

Curious Anshad, why are you obsessed with this being a Mac drive?

Only thing i know for sure is that the partition is neither NTFS nor Linux Ext4. If it is either one of them, PW won't have any issues detecting the file system ID. Only major file system PW is not aware of is Apple HFS+ ( probably BSD file system too ). So there is still a minor chance for the file system to be formatted as HFS+. If not, i hope either "Gparted" or "Paragon" will be able to detect this rogue partition.

Dumhed · 04 Jul 2014

Okay, maybe here is some more info... or maybe the mystery deepens...

The WD long test came up with no problems. I downloaded and ran the Paragon Partition Manager. To my surprise (and anger, if the house sitter messed with my stuff... I haven't called to ask yet), the partition is listed as Apple HFS.

I downloaded Macdrive to attempt to access the drive. And... when I click on "Access Mac Disks" and the link to view Mac Disks... well.. the drive does not show. Just to see if it would show, I clicked on repair damaged disk, there were no mac disks. Instead it said "connect a Mac disk."

Anyway, regardless of how it goes this way... I'd just like to retrieve the files... if they are even still there.

Anshad Edavana · 04 Jul 2014

I can only assume what happened but i think somebody messed with your disk while you are away from it - probably connected to a Mac and partitioned it - is there somebody in your office who has a Mac machine ?.

One more test to do - Uninstall "MacDrive" completely and install "Paragon HFS+" from the below link.

HFS for Windows - file system driver | PARAGON Software Group

Let us know whether it can access the partition.

jumanji · 04 Jul 2014

Please carry on with what Anshad suggests.

Finally I think it is going to be PhotoRec and then GetDataBack and IMO its gonna be a desperate attempt to cling on to what we think can perhaps do the job in an unusual disk condition.

Slartybart · 04 Jul 2014

This won't help much because you don't have a Mac, but I would contact WD, explain what you know and see if they can provide direction.

What do you know:

Drive was originally used for some years on Windows only
Drive was possibly/probably attached to a Mac (version unknown) while on vacation
Windows Disk manager shows
- 200 MB (EFI System Partition)
- 595.89 GB (Primary Partition)
- 128 MB Unallocated
Macdrive utility could not mount the drive
Paragon Partition Manager identified partitions as Apple HFS
Using Paragon HFS+ for Windows to try and recover the data

This shouldn't derail the efforts here, but it should be considered as another resource.

External Drives for Mac Experiencing Data Loss wit... - WD Community

Bill S (a) WD forums said:

External Drives for Mac Experiencing Data Loss with Maverick OS -- UPDATED FOR NOVEMBER 6, 2013 [Edited].
10-30-2013 07:05 PM - edited ‎11-06-2013 01:55 PM
--- Updated November 6, 2013 ---

On October 30th, 2013 Western Digital informed registered customers of affected products via E-mail regarding reports of Western Digital and other external HDD products experiencing data loss when updating to OS X Mavericks (10.9). Our investigation to date has found that for a small percentage of customers that have the WD Drive Manager, WD Raid Manager and/or WD SmartWare software applications installed on their Mac, there can be cases of a repartition and reformat of their Direct Attached Storage (DAS) devices without customer acknowledgement which can result in data loss.

WD has been tracking this issue closely through our WD Forum and through our Technical Support hotline and the occurrence rate of this event has been very low. A specific set of conditions and timing sequences between the OS and the WD software utilities has to occur to cause this issue. Should this event occur, the data on the product can likely be recovered with a third party software utility if the customer stops using the device immediately after the OS X Mavericks (10.9) upgrade. WD will be issuing updated versions of these software applications that resolve this issue.

WD strongly urges our customers to uninstall these software applications before updating to OS X Mavericks (10.9), or delay upgrading until we provide an update to the applications. If you have already upgraded to Mavericks, WD recommends that you remove these applications and restart your computer. If you have already upgraded to Mavericks and are experiencing difficulty in accessing your external hard drive, please do not save anything to the drive, disconnect the drive from your computer, and contact Western Digital Customer Service at Contact Us.

Anshad Edavana · 04 Jul 2014

This won't help much because you don't have a Mac, but I would contact WD, explain what you know and see if they can provide direction.

Bill, i don't think WD can he of any help here. the article you pointed - External Drives for Mac Experiencing Data Loss wit... - WD Community - discuss a bug in Mac which caused data loss. In this case, i don't think the data loss is caused by any bugs because -

1. This disk was sold as a Windows compatible one so virtually zero chance for a GPT partition table by default. Even today, all Windows certified disks which are up to 2 TB in size are typically MBR partitioned.

2. Plugging a MBR disk to a MAC machine won't cause it to be automatically partitioned as a GPT disk.

So unless somebody deliberately re-partitioned the disk as GPT by using "Disk utility" on a Mac machine, a HFS volume won't appear on the disk.

At this point, this is only my assumptions/theory based on some educated guesses. OP should find the truth from his sister or co-workers.

@Dumhed

Ask them nicely if you want to know what really happened.

Dumhed · 04 Jul 2014

K, I'll try to get to the bottom of this. It is a holiday weekend now, so I'll be traveling again with the fam to see relatives... won't be able to get back to this for a couple of days. So, I'll update when I get a chance. Thanks everyone for all the help and suggestions.

Britton30 · 04 Jul 2014

WD Community said:

On October 30th, 2013 Western Digital informed registered customers of affected products via E-mail regarding reports of Western Digital and other external HDD products experiencing data loss when updating to OS X Mavericks (10.9). Our investigation to date has found that for a small percentage of customers that have the WD Drive Manager, WD Raid Manager and/or WD SmartWare software applications installed on their Mac, there can be cases of a repartition and reformat of their Direct Attached Storage (DAS) devices without customer acknowledgement which can result in data loss.

Possibly if the drive was plugged into a Mac meeting the above situation.

gregrocker · 04 Jul 2014

Until it was confirmed Apple partition type I suspected Windows To Go. Does Apple have a portable install which uses EFI system partition?

I can see how someone might experiment with an extra external they found in a drawer, not so much installing it internally.

Would really like to see any OS files found on it.

Slartybart · 04 Jul 2014

gregrocker said:

Until it was confirmed Apple partition type I suspected Windows To Go. Does Apple have a portable install which uses EFI system partition?

I can see how someone might experiment with an extra external they found in a drawer, not so much installing it internally.

Would really like to see any OS files found on it.

Greg,

As far as I can tell, the EFI partition on Macs are initially empty and later used for firmware updates.
They can be removed on Macs and still boot, but updates will no longer work.

EFI System partition - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

wiki said:

Apple–Intel[edit]On Apple–Intel architecture Macintosh computers, the EFI partition is initially blank and not used for booting.[9] However, the EFI partition is used as a staging area for firmware updates;[10] specifically, it places a firmware flash utility (EFI binary) and data file (FD – "Firmware Device"[11]) in the directory EFI/APPLE/FIRMWARE which is then run when rebooting the system in "flash firmware" mode.[12]

If deleted, the system will still boot, and the boot manager will still allow users to choose whether to start a Boot Camp partition or the default Mac OS X, but firmware updates will fail.

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

wiki said:

Apple uses EFI for its line of Intel-based Macs. Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger and Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard implement EFI v1.10 in 32-bit mode even on newer 64-bit CPUs, but full support arrived with Mac OS X v10.8 Mountain Lion.[70]

Anshad, jumanji and I are discussing the options.