exfat partition / data recovery

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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skyorange986
Posts: 2
Joined: 17 Oct 2013, 15:30

exfat partition / data recovery

#1 Post by skyorange986 »

I installed windows 7 yesterday without thinking much of it, but for some reason my exfat partition with all of my data on it was formatted as NTFS for the system reserved partition (it must have been set as the primary disk in my bios).
Either way, though, the partition was overwritten by the windows installer. I ran TestDisk analyse and "Deeper Search"
as soon as I realized what happened, but there was an error when i looked at the files for the partition which was still labelled as NTFS.

sorry no log files or screenshots right now, i'll post them when I run the test again.

Thanks!

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Fiona
Posts: 2835
Joined: 18 Feb 2012, 17:19
Location: Ludwigsburg/Stuttgart - Germany

Re: exfat partition / data recovery

#2 Post by Fiona »

Exfat differs from normal FAT.
The partition type is NTFS and only the boot sector and file system are exFAT.
TestDisk displays an exfat Partition as NTFS and at the bottom of the screen you can determine an exfat partition if the boot sector is displayed as exFAT.
Currently, bootsector recovery and Rebuild BS (rebuild boot sector) is not supported yet.
If your partition is available and you can list your data, you can copy your data to another healthy disk or partition.
Also, if your partition was lost, and testdisk found it, you can register your partition into your partition table again.
If your windows installer was writing into your partition or overriding it and the file system is damaged, you need datarecovery software like PhotoRec.
In PhotoRec, you can use the menu File Opt and pressing s to deselect all file types and select only thoose file types where you'd like to recover off of your hard disk.

Fiona

skyorange986
Posts: 2
Joined: 17 Oct 2013, 15:30

Re: exfat partition / data recovery

#3 Post by skyorange986 »

Thanks, Fiona. Windows had indeed written to the partition and damaged the file system. I ran photorec and now have a lot of folders to sort through and reorganize my (hopefully recovered) stuff.

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