Can testdisk work on a partition image, no preceding partition table
Posted: 04 Feb 2019, 06:58
I'm in the process of recovering an exfat partition from a 64gb microsd card using gnu ddrescue. I chose to rescue /dev/sdb1 (the only partition on the card) to a file, not /dev/sdb (the entire sd card, including the partition table). ddrescue has been running for hours and still has many more hours to go. I'm trying to plan ahead and am researching testdisk while I wait for ddrescue to rescue what it can. The examples I've seen in testdisk documentation using ddrescue and an image file, all use the disk device, like /dev/sdb, and not the partition device, like /dev/sdb1. Does this mean I will need to copy the 1MB of the disk preceding the partition and maybe a few sectors following the partition, and then cat them to produce a complete disk image before I can use testdisk? Or, can testdisk recognize a standalone file system image?