Recover Files, File names & folder structure with TestDisk? Topic is solved

Using PhotoRec to recover lost data
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shimada
Posts: 2
Joined: 03 Nov 2012, 02:26

Recover Files, File names & folder structure with TestDisk?

#1 Post by shimada »

I accidentally reformatted my 2TB Seagate External Hard Drive. It was just a quick format and it did not complete. The seagate currently shows my computer as Local Disk G and if you click on it a box pops up saying it needs to be formatted before it can be used.

That drive had 1000's of files of music, video and art projects, documents etc I did scan the disk with icare format recovery and it found over three hundred thousand files but they were all jumbled up and had no file structure so that didn't really help me much as I need to get the data back with it's original file and folder structure in place if possible i.e. things are where I saved them before the drive was reformatted.

The 2TB drive is around three quarters full and I would like to retrive as much of the data as I can. I was told that TestDisk should be able to do this but I am unsure how and would like advice on the correct proceedure to get as much of my data with it's original file struture back as possible. I have a second brand new 2TB external HD to save my retrived data to.

If someone could break down the process for me to get my data back in some kind of order I recognise I would be very grateful. I am not very technical so I do appreciate you all being patient with me here.

Another question to retrieve data on a reformatted 2TB external HD any idea how long this will take to run with testdisk?

Thank you very much in advance!

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cgrenier
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Re: Recover Files, File names & folder structure with TestDi

#2 Post by cgrenier »

Read http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/After_Using_PhotoRec it has some ideas about organizing the recovered data.
You can run TestDisk, Advanced, Undelete to try to recover the file structure but honestly I don't think it will work after a reformat operation.

shimada
Posts: 2
Joined: 03 Nov 2012, 02:26

Re: Recover Files, File names & folder structure with TestDi

#3 Post by shimada »

Thank you that is helpful. I ran Teskdisk already in the normal mode and it was unable to find any partitions however having run other recovery softwares I believe the files are still on the drive but that the file structure has been totally destroyed. I will try a few more things but it seems likely I will have to try and recover the files unnamed and then sort through them it by bit, which could take months!

I will take a closer look at the post photorec article you have linked to, thank you again.

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