You got an external harddrive which was used on a Mac. Now you have to read the data but you linux distribution doesn't recognize the partitions. You only have the device /dev/sdb. fdisk doesn't display partitions:
$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb Disk /dev/sdb: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x515d5868 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
Testdisk ist required for the following steps
Execute testdrive on the external drive.
$ sudo testdisk /dev/sdb
Select disk.
TestDisk 6.14, Data Recovery Utility, July 2013 Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org> http://www.cgsecurity.org TestDisk is free software, and comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. Select a media (use Arrow keys, then press Enter): >Disk /dev/sdb - 320 GB / 298 GiB - LaCie Rugged FW/USB >[Proceed ] [ Quit ] Note: Disk capacity must be correctly detected for a successful recovery. If a disk listed above has incorrect size, check HD jumper settings, BIOS detection, and install the latest OS patches and disk drivers.
Tell testdrive that there is an Apple partition map on it.
TestDisk 6.14, Data Recovery Utility, July 2013 Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org> http://www.cgsecurity.org Disk /dev/sdb - 320 GB / 298 GiB - LaCie Rugged FW/USB Please select the partition table type, press Enter when done. [Intel ] Intel/PC partition [EFI GPT] EFI GPT partition map (Mac i386, some x86_64...) [Humax ] Humax partition table >[Mac ] Apple partition map [None ] Non partitioned media [Sun ] Sun Solaris partition [XBox ] XBox partition [Return ] Return to disk selection Hint: Mac partition table type has been detected. Note: Do NOT select 'None' for media with only a single partition. It's very rare for a drive to be 'Non-partitioned'.
Select advanced options.
TestDisk 6.14, Data Recovery Utility, July 2013
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>
http://www.cgsecurity.org
Disk /dev/sdb - 320 GB / 298 GiB - LaCie Rugged FW/USB
CHS 38913 255 63 - sector size=512
[ Analyse ] Analyse current partition structure and search for lost partitions
>[ Advanced ] Filesystem Utils
[ Geometry ] Change disk geometry
[ Options ] Modify options
[ Quit ] Return to disk selection
Note: Correct disk geometry is required for a successful recovery. 'Analyse'
process may give some warnings if it thinks the logical geometry is mismatched.
Select HFS partition.
TestDisk 6.14, Data Recovery Utility, July 2013
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>
http://www.cgsecurity.org
Disk /dev/sdb - 320 GB / 298 GiB - CHS 38913 255 63
Partition Start End Size in sectors
1 P partition_map 1 63 63
2 P Driver43 64 191 128
3 P Driver_ATA 192 319 128
4 P FWDriver 320 543 224
5 P Free 544 799 256
> 6 P HFS 800 625142447 625141648
[ Type ] [Superblock] >[Image Creation] [ Quit ]
Create an image
Select Image Creation. Choose a destination folder for the image file with a minimum free space of the capacity of the external hard drive. This step may take several hours.
The resulting image (image.dd) can now be mounted.
$ sudo mount -o loop,ro image.dd /mnt/