EXT4 New OS installed - recover old partition

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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Dibs28
Posts: 2
Joined: 14 Nov 2017, 19:11

EXT4 New OS installed - recover old partition

#1 Post by Dibs28 »

Hi
I stupidly put a fresh install of Ubuntu 14.04 onto my system and created one EXT4 partition as a std installation and realised I have lost my photos folder in the process. Photo rec can recover my photos but doesnt name them properly nor have all the folders that the photos were saved in. So I thought I could recover the partition if the old data was still there. Everytime I run Testdisk on my drive it just shows me the current contents of the system, even using deeper search and not the old data that Photorec discovers. It lists on the deeper search about 5 partitions but they all show the same files which is the new OS folders and it also says non can be recovered because "The harddisk (500 GB / 465 GiB) seems too small!".

Can anyone point me in the right direction to get the folder structure back. I have removed the disk from the system and nothing else has been written to it.

George

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cgrenier
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Re: EXT4 New OS installed - recover old partition

#2 Post by cgrenier »

If TestDisk doesn't find your partition, you will have to sort the files recovered by PhotoRec.
See https://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk.pdf for tips on how to sort jpg files.

Dibs28
Posts: 2
Joined: 14 Nov 2017, 19:11

Re: EXT4 New OS installed - recover old partition

#3 Post by Dibs28 »

Thank you I will look at that pdf.

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