Disaster from cloning an USB stick

Using TestDisk to repair the filesystem
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masster
Posts: 2
Joined: 18 Oct 2017, 19:19

Disaster from cloning an USB stick

#1 Post by masster »

Hi
So I had this 8GB flash disk that started to have issues. I decided to write an image of it on my HDD for further recovery of the data on it. I've used a small freeware utility that I can"t remember its name now. I have wrongly assumed that an image file of the stick will be saved on my HDD. In fact that utility cloned the flash disk :( I know, it's my mistake I didn' pay attention. Now I know. I'm still bashing my head against the wall daily...

Here is my original HDDs configuration:

- two 160 GB SATA HDDs in RAID0. Total 320 GB.
- two NTFS partitions (primary C of 50 GB' and an extended logical partition D of 270 GB)
- OS: Windows XP Pro SP3

The cloning was targeted on D resulting in a 8 GB FAT32 partition. The rest of the space on D became unallocated.

Windows XP boots and works nicely like before. Except obviously my data on D was partially (hopefully) damaged. So my question is: What is the best strategy to recover as much data as possible from partition D?

I'm desperate, I know. But I need all your help to recover a lot of my previous work.

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cgrenier
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Re: Disaster from cloning an USB stick

#2 Post by cgrenier »

Run TestDisk, select the PhysicalDisk containing D:, Advanced, select the partition corresponding to D:, Boot, BackupBS, confirm, List, Quit
Do you see your files ?
If it doesn't work, please post a copy of your testdisk.log file

masster
Posts: 2
Joined: 18 Oct 2017, 19:19

Re: Disaster from cloning an USB stick

#3 Post by masster »

Thank you for your quick answer.

You're saying "select the PhysicalDisk containing D" but as I've said there are 2 (two) physical disks mounted as RAID0. Most probably partition D is striped on both HDDs. Or am I wrong?

On the other hand, is it correct to assume that for Testdisk it doesn't matter if there is a RAID0 matrix as long as a "virtual" 320 GB disk is seen ?

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