Recover Files From Formatted HFS+ Partition

Question

I offered to help a friend of mine with his computer, and it turned out to be a bit more complicated than I first thought. He originally came to me asking me to recover some of his files from his MacBook. Turns out he used the Vista partition manager to format the Mac partition to NTFS. He said he was trying to resize his partitions, and messed up somehow.

How does one recover files from an HFS+ filesystem? It's been formatted as NTFS, but so far as I know, it hasn't been booted, so the files should be mostly intact. Are there any tools for this, or should I just tell him his files are gone?

Solution

If one is a fast learner, you could use TestDisk to repair the HFS+ partition.

TestDisk is […] free data recovery software! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table).

Comments

[rockit]

TestDisk appears to be the overwhelming choice :)

[slhck]

The OP partitioned the drive to NTFS and lost their files. The tool you recommend doesn't seem to be able to recover files though, and even then, the OP's partition would be NTFS now.

[Pretzel]

It does recover files, i've used it a number of times.

[slhck]

The file system has been formatted to NTFS though.

[Pretzel]

My mistake, overlooked