cgsecurity.org

Hi,

I'm new to the forum. so G'day from Australia.

I have a 32 GB Leef iBridge USB stick which has suddenly asked for formatting.

I have since discovered that it is RAW. (Sorry, if my use of the words are wrong).

I've tried many many different free downloads to try to recover my data and finally I've been led here.

Unfortunately, I'm not really familiar with how to use Test Disk, so was wondering if someone may help, please?

During one scan Test Disk did advise 'partition sector doesn't have the endmark 0xAA55' but I don't really understand what this means.

Any help appreciated

Cheers

Unless the partition table is obviously wrong (ie. wrong capacity), you should try to repair the filesystem, read https://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk.pdf there is a chapter about this problem.
Good luck

Thank you kindly sir, I will give it go

Cheers

Hi there
Sorry for the delayed reply.

Did you mean to use command print? I ran this and I get the message “chkdsk not available for RAW drives”

How should I proceed please?

Should I be following the instructions in chapter 7.5?

Ok, so I tried the following

No log
Selected my problem drive
Intel partition
Advanced

And the message reads “no partition available”

Any help appreciated

Cheers

Hey i got the same exact problem. Partition reading RAW in windows, cant CHKDSK it, when i do the testdisk steps, it says it cant recover the partition, and actually shows a partition of a completely different file format (mines fat32, its showing an HFS filesystem).

I did use the 'produce log' option though, and posted my log file in my thread. Sometimes the info in there can help the pros, i seen one guy get help from the testdisk dev, dev told him 'change the geometry from X to X', and i think that fixed the persons problem. Was hoping for a magical fix like that myself, but i think with our stuff reading RAW, it must not be possible.

Sorry i cant help you, im no pro at recovering partitions. I will say this though, on my HDD, my linux box's read it just fine, its only Windoze that cant read it. Its a terabyte HDD, and honestly its the biggest hard drive i own, so i dont have anywhere to back the data up to (its almost full).. But if you have important stuff on there, like important documents/pics that your really want, and you have another external, i would 100% definitely try mounting your disk/usb/whatever from a linux OS.

You can put Lubuntu on a dvd, and boot from live disk, then plug in your external, and copy off any important stuff. I suggest Lubuntu because its as compatible with stuff as Ubuntu (the most compatible), but its more lightweight, and runs entirely from RAM, so its not dirt-slow like normally running an OS from a liveCD.

If you need any help using linux to (attempt) to recover your data, i'll be glad to. Shoot me a pm in case i dont check this particular thread. Its not hard though, burn Lubuntu live to DVD (it might even fit on CD), put it in your desktop/laptop, and reboot. IF for some reason it doesnt automatically boot, go into your BIOS, and change boot order to 'DVD DRIVE' as first thing, then HDD next (or USB next, booting OS's from USB is fun and fast too)..

IM not sure whats up with this whole RAW situation though, it happened to me out of nowhere. Everything was fine, then all of the sudden windows cant access and asking to format.. Im thinking our 'partition table' is corrupted, it could have been if it got pulled out not correctly, while something was reading/writing (ironically my horrible IT teacher kept doing that to my terabyte, and then this happened, not sure its his fault, but i told him everytime i would rather let it stop scanning and use the 'safely remove drive' option every time).. Could be a windows bug bricking a lot of people HDD's/USB's.. idk. If either of us finds a solution we should let the other know. The main solution is back that stuff up, reformat, but again i dont have the spare storage to back up a full terabyte. I dont have much money, so im really trying to fix this.

Do not choose "No log" if you want help! Without the a copy of the log file, it's hard to understand the problem.
You list "7.5", I am assuming you mean "7.5 TestDisk: Repairing FAT boot sector" but we don't know if a FAT, exFAT or NTFS filesystem.
So for the moment, you should follow "Recovering deleted files using PhotoRec"...