Deep Scan and internal hard drive space

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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enyalep
Posts: 1
Joined: 20 Aug 2018, 18:35

Deep Scan and internal hard drive space

#1 Post by enyalep »

Hello. I just downloaded TestDisk today, to attempt to recover an external hard drive which is no longer being recognized by my system (Mac running Yosemite). Upon an initial scan, it told me the structure was OK, however my external still fails to load (which was expected, after all I did not repair it). Also btw I've tried using Disk Utility, Paragon, and Diskwarrior. I then tried a deep scan. What I was not prepared for, however, and which I've tried to google to no avail, is that apparently Deep Scan chops away at my internal HD space. If the scan eventually requires as much space is occupied on the external, this simply will not work, as the external space is much larger than my external space.

After trying to quit and then kill the process - both things didn't work - I eventually restarted my computer, however TestDisk continued to run in the background, prompting me to do the only thing I could think of, which was to remove TestDisk from my computer. However, the external space which was eaten up at that time wasn't recovered! I plan on eventually purchasing a new external and to use TestDisk to copy the files one by one (I'm assuming it can do that as opposed to all at once, since as I said the space on the external is much larger than my internal memory). In the meantime though, how do I recover the space that was used by the deep scan?

PS - I am no expert with computers, my apologies if I've asked a dumb question, I was just trying to recover my external without reformatting, I certainly didn't mean to create this mess for myself. If the fact that Deep Scan requires eventually, in my specific case, 2TB of internal memory to deep-scan the 2TB of external memory it is analyzing, if that is somehow common knowledge to people who really know their way around computers, then my bad, but perhaps this information should and could be added to the TestDisk documentation. It's not like it's the first time I've ever used the terminal, and I was following all the instructions with ease until this rather large hiccup came along.

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cgrenier
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Re: Deep Scan and internal hard drive space

#2 Post by cgrenier »

Was there read error messages while TestDisk was running Deeper Search ?
You didn't restart your computer, you only put it in sleep/hibernation mode, it's why testdisk was still running when you turn on your computer.
Your internal disk may be 2 TB but your computer doesn't have 2 TB of memory, "only" several GB.
If nothing works, use PhotoRec. You need up to 2 TB of free space if you recovers from a 2 TB disk.

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