My external HDD suddenly decided that it doesn't want to mount one of the partitions anymore. When trying to open under Windows, I got "corrupted partition. Can't open" type of error. So I just formatted that dude, but it would be nice to recover some files.
I tried with R-Linux
GUI software and was unsuccessful - could not read any deleted files. Then decided to try the good old TestDisk
in the terminal. I go to Advanced Filesystem Utils
and then for the selected partition I choose Undelete
but cannot find any deleted files.
I haven't installed any OS on top of that drive after it has been formatted. Not even a single .txt
file has been copied to the drive after the formatting.
Is the recovery of any files doomed? Do you have any magical suggestions?
P.S. I formatted the partition from Windows, and the partition itself is NTFS
.
ddrescue
(notdd_rescue
). Get some hint maybe here... but if, when you have formatted your HDD, you have done not in a Quick way you have overwritten all the empty space and it will be really difficult to find something...ddrescue
is to make a raw copy, after or even directly, you can usePhotoRec
. (PhotoRec ignores the file system; this way it works even if the file system is severely damaged.). Let me know if it works... [and it is not because is named Photo rec that it can see the disk image :-) ] BTW if you have space and time you can find a lot of forensic and administrative tools to help you.