Win32DiskImager Wrong Disk

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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sysmin
Posts: 1
Joined: 03 Jun 2019, 16:22

Win32DiskImager Wrong Disk

#1 Post by sysmin »

Hello Guys,

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

As the title says I have inadvertently wiped out my partition structure on an external hard drive while making an image for a Raspberry Pi using Win32Diskimager.

I found a similar situation already posted and I am trying those steps, however it would be nice if someone could confirm this is correct before i write changes to my disk: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7634&p=24638&hilit= ... ger#p24638

However I did something that may have made it worse. I followed the directions I found else where which including deleting the erroneously created data/partitions. Which in theory shouldn't have made things worse on the data recovery side since I didn't over right any data just delete the new partition structure that I did not need. Directions followed: https://superuser.com/questions/913108/ ... diskimager

Let me tell you about the disk. Its 4TB Western Digital My Book. Before all this it had 2 partitions. It originally had 1 Volume NTFS that took the whole 4TBs. I shrunk this volume and made a FAT32 partition for the PS4. So this is the structure before the incident:

[GPT/MBR?| Volume 1 NTFS ~2.75TB | Volume 2 FAT32 ~1.25TB]
Immediately after I made the error:
[unknownGPT?| 32MB Boot FAT32/NTFS? | 7.9 GB EXT4 | Unknown ~3.8TB]
After that I deleted the following newly created partitions
[unknown?| Unallocated ~4TB]

I ran teskdisk and a myriad of other software to try to scan for the partition structure (GPT backup area or NTFS backup area backup table?).
Teskdisk immediately found the FAT32 PlayStation partition. Ironically I don't need the data that lives here I need the one that was damaged.

So I am doing a deep scan at 00% right now and hopefully someone will see this and advise me if I should go ahead and try to write changes as advised in the post above: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7634&p=24638&hilit= ... ger#p24638

Those directions are by the author:
by cgrenier » 28 Jan 2018, 09:35
After Analyze and Quick Search, use Deeper Search.
If you had a NTFS partition, it should be found via its Backup Boot sector. In this case, set this partition as P(rimary). On next screen, choose Write, confirm, Quit and restart your computer.
If you had a FAT32, recovery will be difficult, run PhotoRec, enable the expert mode in Options, start a recovery, set the blocksize to 512 bytes, use the default options otherwise.
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Thanks to the author of TeskDisk (Christophe GRENIER) and all who contribute to make this project/forum something people trust and rely on. Thank you!

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cgrenier
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Re: Win32DiskImager Wrong Disk

#2 Post by cgrenier »

The instructions are still good. After Deeper Search, set all the partitions you want to recover to P(rimary).

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