Trouble recovering overwritten partition

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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refi64
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Joined: 19 Feb 2017, 03:50
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Trouble recovering overwritten partition

#1 Post by refi64 »

I don't feel that smart right now...

I have an external HDD with 3 partitions, the first of which was roughly 1.8 TB ("stuff") and contained a lot of important data. You can probably see where this is headed...

The other two contained a Chromium OS installation. Said installation wanted to "repair" itself and re-formatted the entire first partition. Oops.

I tried running a Deep Scan, but TestDisk says the partition "stuff" can't be recovered. Here's the log:

http://termbin.com/g0k6

It also told me this:

https://s5.postimg.org/5gamrzjlz/IMG_20 ... 203549.jpg

I tried following those directions, but it still doesn't work... The file list doesn't show any files to be undeleted.

Is there anything I can try now?

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cgrenier
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Re: Trouble recovering overwritten partition

#2 Post by cgrenier »

Please try latest 7.1-WIP. See https://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk.pdf on how to install it.
You should be able to recover the stuff partition after Analyse, Quick Search and Deeper Search.

refi64
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Re: Trouble recovering overwritten partition

#3 Post by refi64 »

Unfortunately, it still doesn't work. :( Still tells me that "stuff" couldn't be recovered. Here's the latest log:

http://termbin.com/ge1l

FWIW, I probably would've used PhotoRec and gotten this over with, but I have a lot of binary files with pretty much no identifiable headers (e.g. boot sectors, scripts) that PhotoRec doesn't work well on (I tried when I erased the same drive a few years back -- great luck, eh?).

Also, I don't know why, but somehow every recovery tool I've tried has managed to find an NTFS image file, think it's a partition, and show it ENTIRELY intact, but the stuff partition is never found. :/

refi64
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Re: Trouble recovering overwritten partition

#4 Post by refi64 »

FWIW, I also tried increasing the sector count. TestDisk found the partition, but it thought it was corrupted (log: http://termbin.com/x6v7)... gah... :/

Why would recovery tools be having this much trouble? I've seen worse scenarios that somehow managed to have better results...

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cgrenier
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Re: Trouble recovering overwritten partition

#5 Post by cgrenier »

You can set the STUFF partiton as P(rimary) to recover it and next use fsck.ext4 to try to fix it...

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