Stuck on How to Proceed with Recovery

Using TestDisk to repair the filesystem
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TedLee
Posts: 3
Joined: 17 Mar 2015, 07:34

Stuck on How to Proceed with Recovery

#1 Post by TedLee »

Hi,

My 1.5 TB HD died and turned RAW so I used ddrescue to copy it to an external HD, which I partitioned into 2 1.5 TB parts. (Should I have used 1 HD or a nonpartitioned HD?)

I've having trouble using testdisk to recreate the partition or filesystem. I tested photorec so I know to transfer was mostly successful but I'd like to restore the filesystem so I don't have to sort through and rename all the folders and files.

Testdisk detected "None" in the partition media type. After I presseed "Analyse" Testdisk begins "Analyse Cylinder" and finds Cylinder mismatch.

So I'm pretty stuck and would appreciate some guidence on how to proceed. Thanks.

stumpyuk
Posts: 16
Joined: 19 Sep 2012, 11:41

Re: Stuck on How to Proceed with Recovery

#2 Post by stumpyuk »

TedLee wrote:Hi,

My 1.5 TB HD died and turned RAW
Not sure what you are saying here - generally a dead hard drive won't spin up and you won't be able to copy it. What do you mean by the disk turning "RAW"? Was this disk the one containing your O/S or a storage drive? What were the symptoms when you tried to use it? What error messages did you see? What was the file system on that disk, how many paritions, what O/S?
so I used ddrescue to copy it to an external HD, which I partitioned into 2 1.5 TB parts. (Should I have used 1 HD or a nonpartitioned HD?)
I would have used a single partition - you need to be sure your partition is big enough to hold the data you are copying. However, ddrescue should have warned you if you ran out of space.
Testdisk detected "None" in the partition media type. After I presseed "Analyse" Testdisk begins "Analyse Cylinder" and finds Cylinder mismatch.
What version testdisk were you using, what O/S are you running it on?
Did testdisk find any partitions in the image? Screenshot?

Stumpy

TedLee
Posts: 3
Joined: 17 Mar 2015, 07:34

Re: Stuck on How to Proceed with Recovery

#3 Post by TedLee »

stumpyuk wrote:
What do you mean by the disk turning "RAW"? Was this disk the one containing your O/S or a storage drive? What were the symptoms when you tried to use it? What error messages did you see? What was the file system on that disk, how many paritions, what O/S?
The failed HD drive was a second one I used for storage. I tried to run testdisk on the failed HD but it failed "SMART" self test so that is why I used ddrescue to copy the drive into a partition on an external HD. There was enough room on the partition and the copy was successful.
stumpyuk wrote:What version testdisk were you using, what O/S are you running it on?
Did testdisk find any partitions in the image? Screenshot?
I'm running testdisk 7.0 (7.0-WIP Mon Mar 9 19:50:00 CET 2015) on Vista. I d'dn't image the failed HD just used "ddrescue -f". I seem to be running into a lot of trouble with using a new partition for the new drive instead of just one empty drive. Thanks.

stumpyuk
Posts: 16
Joined: 19 Sep 2012, 11:41

Re: Stuck on How to Proceed with Recovery

#4 Post by stumpyuk »

Am reading between the lines here, but I think I see your problem. You wanted to make a clone of the disk (put the 1st sector of your damaged disk on the 1st sector of your new drive). Am guessing that you have sent the clone to the 1st partition of your new drive but then running testdisk against the physical drive. Can you remember the full command you used when copying the data?

You have 2 choices here, either you can create an image file (with a .dd or .raw) extension which you send to the first partition on your collection drive e.g
dd if=/dev/sda of=/mntpoint/filename.dd

You then run testdisk against that file:
testdisk /log /mntpoint/filename.dd

or you clone the disk, sending the data to the physical disk of your new drive. You do not need to partition your new drive for this:
dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb

You then run testdisk against the physical device:
testdisk /log /dev/sdb

Stumpy

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