Partition table recovery
Posted: 26 Jan 2013, 05:08
My Dell D620 laptop had an unexpected power outage and no longer boots. There is only one partition of just under 40GB, plus a hidden FAT partition. I have used a USB to SATA cable to recover the data but now I must rebuild the partition table to make it boot once more.
I'm a new user of Test Disk and feel relatively comfortable with using the software, but I'm not a professional recovery expert so please excuse what may seem a stupid question.
The question I have is:
Should I install the TestDisk software on another PC, then attach the laptop drive using the USB to SATA cable? I expect I can see the external drive (even if it shows as unformatted in Windows) through TestDisk and hopefully then complete the steps to rebuild the partition table and restore the laptop to pre-crash state.
Or should I use the Gparted Live CD to get to the command line prompt? I have previously booted the laptop from this recovery CD but I'm not sure if the TestDisk software is on the CD.
Thanks for your advice to push me in the right direction.
I'm a new user of Test Disk and feel relatively comfortable with using the software, but I'm not a professional recovery expert so please excuse what may seem a stupid question.
The question I have is:
Should I install the TestDisk software on another PC, then attach the laptop drive using the USB to SATA cable? I expect I can see the external drive (even if it shows as unformatted in Windows) through TestDisk and hopefully then complete the steps to rebuild the partition table and restore the laptop to pre-crash state.
Or should I use the Gparted Live CD to get to the command line prompt? I have previously booted the laptop from this recovery CD but I'm not sure if the TestDisk software is on the CD.
Thanks for your advice to push me in the right direction.