HFS+ Partition Corruption Error: Drive Recovery Mac

In Mac OS X hard drives Most of the Mac-formatted drives are shipped with either the Power PC compatible Apple Partition Map or the GUID Partition Table scheme, while the PC-formatted hard disk use MBR scheme. The latter hard disks generally come with FAT file system. Thus, when you run fsck in order to check or fix a corrupted Mac OS X partition, it reports errors.

The reason is that it expects a Unix file system with a unique identifier called magic number and not FAT. When it cannot find the expected magic number, it declares that the corrupted partition cannot be repaired. As a result, you need to opt for more effective Mac Recovery solutions.

Mac OS X users often complain that fsck has been unable to repair their corrupted partition with magic number errors. One of such realistic problem is discussed further. Suppose you are a Mac OS X user that installs Boot Camp just to benefit its usability. Later, you find that one of the OS X partition cannot be detected under the operating system. Expecting it as the case of partition corruption, you run fsck. But contrary to your belief, fsck fails to repair the partition and gives the below error message:

“BAD SUPER BLOCK: MAGIC NUMBER WRONG”

As explained above, the above error might result when fsck cannot find the expected magic number. Thus, you need to partition and reformat the Mac hard drive to a partition scheme that fsck can understand. To do so, click 'Partition' tab in 'Disk Utility', select the affected partition in 'Volume Scheme' drop-down menu, click 'Options', and select the 'GUID Partition Table' scheme.

Make sure to select 'Mac OS Extended' option from 'Format' drop-down menu and click 'Apply'. After the partition has been reformatted, you need to restore the lost data from last available backup. In case, no suitable backup is present, the only solution to recover it is to use a Drive Recovery Mac utility. Mac Recovery software are specifically programmed to scan a crashed Mac disk and retrieve the inaccessible and lost files and folders from it.