Help! Formatted External HDD

Using PhotoRec to recover lost data
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TomGrice
Posts: 2
Joined: 12 Mar 2018, 02:26

Help! Formatted External HDD

#1 Post by TomGrice »

The HDD I wanted to recover is a Western Digital Passport 1TB. It had about 500GB worth of data on it and one day, (I dont know but i think) something happened to the file system. Windows bought up an error asking to format the drive before use (so i did (silly me)). I googled Data recovery and found TestDisk and PhotoRec. I used photo rec, followed the instructions and after about 4.5 hours of waiting. This is what i have. [img]https://k50.kn3.net/4/0/2/B/4/7/8D2.png[img]
Any suggestions on what I done wrong?

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cgrenier
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Re: Help! Formatted External HDD

#2 Post by cgrenier »

PhotoRec recovers the files but doesn't try to fix the filesystem.
Read https://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk.pdf chapter "Repairing filesystem"

TomGrice
Posts: 2
Joined: 12 Mar 2018, 02:26

Re: Help! Formatted External HDD

#3 Post by TomGrice »

so i would have to repair the filesystem before using photorec?

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