sandeep_8 0 Newbie Poster

I have a really strange situation with my storage device. I would be really grateful if somebody could guide me through this.
System details: Mac mini 2.0 i7 8GB 500GBx2
External storage: My studio Book WD 6TB (inside probably 3TBx2 raid). file format: NTFS
Connected to Mac through Firewire.
intermediate between mac and NTFS: TUXERA NTFS

My 6TB had around 5.4 TB data in it and was running slow. I thought of defragmenting it (which I regret so much now) using stellar disk defrag.

After 3 days of defrag, when it finished with "done" popup, Mac mini didnt show the disk anymore. I restarted my mac and now disk utility gave an error message on startup that "disk utility cant repair your disk, please copy your data if possible and reformat"

  1. I got a panic attack and tried disk utility at least a dozen times to fix it, but didnt get through anywhere.
    read some blogs to understand the problem, volume repair was suggested as the plausible solution.

  2. Disk warrior for mac came to rescue. It started rebuilding the broken file system. after 8 hours of spinning around the disk and many pop ups, finally it repaired. Disk was recognised by Mac. it showed all folders and files back in its place. BUT

  3. I am not able to open any of the files available on the disk. I tried random files and finally I realized that my files have been corrupted internally. i.e. INFORMATION REGARDING NAME OF THE FILE IS SAME BUT THE CONTENT HAS BEEN FRAGMENTED OR JUMBLED AND GOT EXCHANGED WITH OTHER FILES INTERNALLY.

  4. I also realised that now the file system on my external 6TB is not NTFS but HFS+ (native mac format) which might be the reason behind such a mess.

  5. I tried disc recovery from stellar for mac but after 3 days of deep excavation, I dug out same fractured jumbled heap of useless files.

I am not aware whether it is a common problem or people come across such situation often, but for me its a first time in this black hole.

I also tries PC to recover the stuff but that also gave me the same files.

COULD SOMEBODY HELP!!

IS IT POSSIBLE TO SWITCH TO NTFS FORMAT WITHOUT FORMATTING THE DRIVE?

WILL THAT RESTORE THE LOST SYNC BETWEEN INFORMATION HEADERS AND CONTENT IN THE STORED DATA STRUCTURE?

Thanking in advance for at least giving it a reading.

regards
Sunnydez