# APFS reformated SSD to HFS+ / data recovery



## joecool (Feb 23, 2022)

2017 13" MBP 256GB macOS Big Sur APFS

SSD was formatted to HFS+ via terminal while booting from external USB drive. It was not secure erase.
Scanned the drive with Disk Drill utility via Thunderbolt connection from another Mac, but it cannot see any data to recover.

Why is that not possible if only the drive format was destroyed?
The actual data was not over written.


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## Solaris17 (Feb 23, 2022)

Because APFS isn’t a traditional file system. The OS lives inside a virtual machine that the boot loader loads into.


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## joecool (Feb 23, 2022)

Ok, that would explain why I don't see any... thank you


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