0

I have a USB drive that only had a /dev/disk1 that I could mount by mount -t hfs /dev/disk1 /Volumes/usb on a Mac drive. For the life of me I could not get it mount or be read on Windows regardless of the tools I used.

Windows decided to initialize the drive as a GPT so now I can't mount it under Mac and I see /dev/disk1 and /dev/disk1s1 is there anyway to undo what Windows did so I can access the data?

I should also mention that I did not create any partitions. I simply accessed the disk from Windows Disk Management and let Windows make it GPT thinking it would finally allow me to view the drive after all the other software I tried would not show the drive.

EDIT: So I did some more research and it looks like Apple releases APFS a new version over HFS. Could that have been why I as not able to access the USB drive at all on Windows was due to the new file system?

Improve this question
3
  • I don't know how to undo what Windows has done. I believe that initializing the drive has removed the HFS filesystem, although I cannot prove that. When I want to transfer a USB drive between MS Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, I format the drive as FAT32 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table#FAT32
    – StandardEyre
    Commented Dec 7, 2016 at 23:48
  • To expand upon the good suggestion from @StandardEyre , I usually format my external USB drives in exFAT format. It is compatible with both Windows and OS X, but it doesn't have the 4 GB file size limitation found in FAT32. What’s the Difference Between FAT32, exFAT, and NTFS?
    – Run5k
    Commented Dec 8, 2016 at 0:29
  • " I simply accessed the disk from Windows Disk Management and let Windows make it GPT thinking it would finally allow me to view the drive after all the other software I tried would not show the drive." - When you did, your what I will assume was a OS X compatible filesystem, was removed. You should be able to use OS X tools to recover the data provided you have not replaced it with anything.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Dec 8, 2016 at 0:32

0

Reset to default

You must log in to answer this question.

Browse other questions tagged .