[ale] Rescuing an OS X HD from Linux - partition table hosed

[JK]

PS - I might should've mentioned: this is an old G4 Mini, not an
Intel one.  I can't remember what version of OSX is on it.
Unfortunately, the only other Mac I have access to is an Intel
Mini.  I tried getting the partition table on that machine's
drive just now, but OSX's fdisk does not present the partition
data in a way that makes sense to me, and also it's a different-
size drive (80GB I think).  It looks as if there's one big
partition and three empty parts on the working Mini's drive, but
I'm not totally clear about it.

Thanks,

-- JK


On 1/14/2010 5:36 PM, JK wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> Need a clue, if any are available:
>
> My ex-wife's Mac Mini refuses to boot.  When powered on, it goes to the
> gray Apple/spinny-gear screen for about 10 minutes, then powers down.
> Assuming some horrid hardware issue, I opened the machine up and pulled
> the 40GB HD so as to rescue her files. I popped it into a Linux box,
> which sees the drive just fine.
>
> Problem: fdisk says there are no partitions on the disk.  It sees the
> disk capacity correctly, but claims the partition table is empty.
>
> Googling "default OS X 40GB partition table" and many variations thereof
> has netted me nothing.  I am pretty sure that partitioning the entire
> drive as one big partition is not correct, based on previous (but long-ago)
> looks at Mac partition tables.
>
> Any ideas how I should partition this puppy so as to pull off whatever
> data might still be there?
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> -- JK
>
>


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As the size of an explosion increases, the number of social situations
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