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Any Recovery Possible after overwriting original partition?

Posted: 28 Oct 2015, 01:36
by shoresh
I was on a linux system trying to put an Ubuntu image on a memory stick. I tried to do that according to Ubuntu's instructions via the UI but although the stick appeared to have the proper directory structure it wouldn't boot. So I called the vendor of my laptop and they walked me through doing it via the command line with dd. Unfortunately I typed in the wrong drive identifier and put the image on my 6 TB USB drive! Funny how typing one letter wrong can ruin your entire day.

I realize that I wrote over the original partition information but the new partition used only 8 Gig. I'm trying to use TestDisk to recover any files that survived the repartitioning. I've already run Quick Search and Deeper Search and neither found any partitions. Then I noticed the drive was listed twice - once as a logical drive and once as PhysicalDrive2. I'm currently running the Quick Search on the physical drive. I have no idea whether that will make any difference but I'll try anything at this point.

Here are my questions:
1. Is there any hope here or am I wasting my time?
2. If there is hope what drive should I choose (logical or physical) and what file system should I be choosing for the analysis (I've been using Intel up to now).

Thanks in advance for your help.

Re: Any Recovery Possible after overwriting original partiti

Posted: 28 Oct 2015, 16:17
by cgrenier
Yes, you should use the PhysicalDrive, not search partitions inside a partition.

Re: Any Recovery Possible after overwriting original partiti

Posted: 29 Oct 2015, 17:52
by shoresh
So I ran the Quick Search and Advanced Search on the physical drive, and it found no partitions per se, but after pressing enter it displayed a screen showing one partition, which I assume is the one that overwrote the original:

2 P EFI (FAT-12/16/32) 141 228 4 142 45 11 4544

Do I have any options at this point that would allow me to recover the files without the partition with Testdisk or a commercial product?

Thanks for your help.