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I made this partition to move my data to Windows Disk Management

I deleted the partition because it was basically useless.. When I deleted the partition the recovery drive showed up... I think the boot disk was that partition.. Please help I do not wanna lose any data..

lobstermaster
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    Golden Rule: Never touch the partitioning from within Windows. It has no clue how it's being fooled into thinking it's in charge. See the sidebar for some suggestions ➝ – Tetsujin Jan 03 '20 at 17:29
  • Ugh - if you can boot to Internet Recovery - you might be able to past in diskutuil list and get someone to help remap the partition. As long as no data was written, you might get everything back. Of course if you have a backup, you can just wipe and restore. – bmike Jan 03 '20 at 19:01
  • @bmike If I understand the OP correctly the partition was deleted intentionally. It probably was an ExFAT partition to share data between macOS and Windows 8.1|10. The macOS system partition is the second partition. Additional two macOS/OS X recovery partitions (part3/part4). So probably nothing to recover but to repair the "boot logic" (probably the MBR). – klanomath Jan 03 '20 at 19:14
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    @klanomath double ugh - thanks for the additional insight. As always, you and a few others are particularly skilled at the mechanics here. Sounds like we just need to focus on confirming data can be deleted and fixing the boot chain? – bmike Jan 03 '20 at 19:35
  • Please add the output of sudo fdisk /dev/disk0 and the Win8.1 install method (BIOS|EFI). Your related question: Bootcamp installation of Windows 8.1 (High Sierra 10.13.6) audio driver doesn't work (iMac Mid 2011) – klanomath Jan 03 '20 at 19:40
  • If it gets worse, that is exactly what Time Machine backups are for (with a password). Reinstall using the recovery partition and tell MacOS to restore the backup, and you have your machine back. – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Jan 03 '20 at 21:18
  • And use an exFAT formatted external USB drive to move data. Much safer. – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Jan 03 '20 at 21:28
  • @klanomath: The output from fdisk would probably be unimportant because the drive is not hybrid partitioned. Most likely the GUID partition id for the second partition in the GPT is wrong. – David Anderson Jan 04 '20 at 05:52
  • @DavidAnderson I didn't read all comments in the linked question and didn't watch the youtube vid ;-) – klanomath Jan 04 '20 at 05:54
  • @DavidAnderson OK, it's the VBox-to-real-partition method. And deleting the (probably ExFAT) partition No. 7 from within Win8.1 modified/corrupted the MBR/GPT? – klanomath Jan 04 '20 at 06:09
  • @klanomath: I was referring to the image posted by the OP. The first partition is "EFI System Partition". This means the drive is has pure GPT partitioning. If the drive was hybrid partitioned, then you would read "GPT Protective Partition". For example, see my 2011 iMac, which is hybrid partitioned. Also, if the drive was hybrid partitioned then there could only be up to 4 partitions plus free space in the OP's image. I count 6 partitions. – David Anderson Jan 04 '20 at 06:48
  • @klanomath: If the Windows partitioning software recognizes a volume and the GUID type id is not Microsoft (EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7), then the software may change the id. The Boot Camp software alters Windows so that Windows can recognize JHFS+ formatted partitions. A side effect is incorrect GUID id values be set when partitioning is modified by Windows. In the OP's image, the 2nd partition is type HFS because Windows looked into the partition and saw this format. This does not mean the partition GUID type id is 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC. – David Anderson Jan 04 '20 at 07:22

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Your best bet at this point is to perform some formal data recovery.

I've used Data Rescue 4 & 5 with good success. https://www.prosofteng.com/mac-data-recovery/

I've also used MiniTool's products, on the PC side to recover Mac data. https://www.minitool.com/data-recovery-software/free-for-mac.html

You can either boot your mac into Target Disk Mode if you can another Mac available. Or, you can create bootable recovery media from either vendor. The third option would be to have professional data recovery done, but that is expensive.

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The obvious lesson here is that a) always have a backup of your important data, especially if you are messing around with partitions. b) Don't make changes to partitions on the Windows side.

Cloud backups are so cheap these days there's really no sense in not having it, just in case.

BaconDuctTape
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  • Great advice. There’s an outside chance the partition format could be rewritten with dd or another hex editor - advanced expert disk knowledge is required but that would get the files and the directory back assuming no writes happened, just that the partition table data structure was changed. – bmike Jan 03 '20 at 19:02
  • "I made this partition to move my data to Windows" > "I deleted the partition because it was basically useless." Apparently no data recovery required. How does your contribution answer the OP's question (make macOS bootable again)? – klanomath Jan 03 '20 at 19:28
  • @klanomath Reinstall the OS once the data is recovered. That should be quite easily inferred. Thank you for your valuable contribution to this conversation and OP's question. – BaconDuctTape Jan 03 '20 at 21:04