Recovering from local to external HDD... but can't find it

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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Vyruz
Posts: 1
Joined: 17 Sep 2013, 20:14

Recovering from local to external HDD... but can't find it

#1 Post by Vyruz »

Hey there,

I'm trying to recover lost partitions from a laptop HDD to an external HDD connected via USB, but when I need to select a destination I can not find the external HDD. I see all the drive letters (A through Z), but when I select one, I see a list of files (mostly .sys files) and a map called tools containing photorec.exe. I see this for every drive I select (A through Z). Peculiar this is that the drive letter doesn't get appended to the "directory" at the top of the menu.

For clarification, I'm using Hiren's Boot CD to launch PhotoRec. And it does see the external HDD when I have to select a drive from which to recover.

I hope someone can help me further.

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cgrenier
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Re: Recovering from local to external HDD... but can't find

#2 Post by cgrenier »

Hiren's Boot CD uses Dos/Freedos when running TestDisk. It means you can only access FAT partition, not exFAT or NTFS. Use another LiveCD if you need access to NTFS filesystem.

tytus
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Joined: 20 Jun 2016, 01:41

Re: Recovering from local to external HDD... but can't find it

#3 Post by tytus »

I have the same problem. The problem is that I can't get out of the virtual disk "r" created by photorec or hirens disk. The pendrive is formated to FAT and it is seen at selecting drives to recover from. I type left arrow and the most general drive is "\" and it is still the viertual drive with photorec files.

How am I supposed to use photorec with hirens? how am I supposed to select destination?

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cgrenier
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Re: Recovering from local to external HDD... but can't find it

#4 Post by cgrenier »

On Hirens, PhotoRec can only write to FAT32 partition. If you don't have a FAT32, use another LiveCD/LiveDVD...

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