Is this a standard case of lost partition?

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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Fiksdal
Posts: 2
Joined: 09 Apr 2016, 11:05

Is this a standard case of lost partition?

#1 Post by Fiksdal »

Hi

I basically have an external HDD that doesn't show up in Windows 8. Photorec gives me the files, but not folder hierarchy or file names. Those last two are important to me.

Details:

600GB external HDD (FAT32 formatted) that he has been used with Windows 7. 250 GB in use.

Someone else were using it with OS X 10.6. They say all the space suddenly became available as if it was empty, and all they could see were some strange folders with "Arabic" names. Nobody else had physical access to the drive, and the Mac was never online.

The drive did not appear under Windows 8, but it probably would have in "device manager" or whatever it's called.

In OS X 10.10.1, it appears empty except for the folders .fseventsd, .Spotlight-V100 and .Trashes. The supposed "Arabic names" folder don't appear.

As I said, Photorec only finds files, not folder hierarchy or file names, which is what I want.

What should I do here? I don't wanna play around with Testdisk without knowing what I'm doing, as I'm afraid I'll spoil future possibility of recovery.

Is there any tutorial for exactly this type of situation on how to recover the file hierarchy and file names?

Does it matter if I use GNU/Linux, Windows or OS X? I have access to all three.

Any input?

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cgrenier
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Re: Is this a standard case of lost partition?

#2 Post by cgrenier »

Run TestDisk, Advanced. Is the partition size correct ?
If it's ok, choose Boot, RebuildBS, List. If your files are listed, choose Write, confirm, Quit and restart your computer.
If it doesn't work, please copy/paste the testdisk.log file content.

Fiksdal
Posts: 2
Joined: 09 Apr 2016, 11:05

Re: Is this a standard case of lost partition?

#3 Post by Fiksdal »

cgrenier wrote:Run TestDisk, Advanced. Is the partition size correct ?
If it's ok, choose Boot, RebuildBS, List. If your files are listed, choose Write, confirm, Quit and restart your computer.
If it doesn't work, please copy/paste the testdisk.log file content.
What do you mean, is partition size OK? This is what I found.

Disk /dev/disk1 - 640 GB / 596 GiB - 1250263728 sectors

Partition Start End Size in sectors
> 1 * FAT32 LBA 63 1250258624 1250258562 [NO NAME]

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