Recovering an xbox360 usb

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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e3e33e33e3ee3e3e3
Posts: 2
Joined: 16 Sep 2023, 15:05

Recovering an xbox360 usb

#1 Post by e3e33e33e3ee3e3e3 »

ive been looking for a way to recover my usb that has been configured for use with my xbox360, it has my profile and saves on it. problem is, pcs cant read xbox "language" without special software like this: https://gruntmods.com/usb-xtaf-explorer/ in my search i was recommended testdisk/photorec

i tried the testdisk exe, and got to a point where i got these options: "A: add partition, L: Load backup, Enter: to continue" pressing enter gives me a message that says "No partition found or selected for recovery", has it simply not found anything or should i add partition? i dont want to accidentally do something that overwrites or breaks something, i dont really know what this option does exactly

after this i tried the photorec exe, it gave me xbox stuff for sure, but its only a few hundred mb, mostly .png, .avi, .wav and .txt etc, with a few .gz or .tff, basically screenshots, menu icons, intro movies and that kind of thing, i had something like 12 gb on that usb. the photorec exe didnt have any option for xbox like the testdisk one did - it seems like it couldnt see most of it? it also gave me all that in 4 different folders which i thought was kinda weird




how i got here is, i had bought a 2nd xbox360 i wanted to use for a backup, i formatted a usb in the 1st xbox, but when i put it in the 2nd xbox, it couldnt see what was on there for some reason and only gave me the option to configure it again. so i decided to try that, then transfer everything again, even tho it took a long time

well my dumb ass assumed it copied the files, but it moves them. so i just formatted the usb with my 14 or 15 year old profile and a bunch of my saves with no backup. now instead of making a backup, im looking for ways to get my stuff back. i made it way worse lol

i cancelled the format as soon as i started it when i realized i should probably check what it does

i dont own much other than my xbox. so if someone can show me how i can fix all this, itll be a massive save

recuperation
Posts: 2742
Joined: 04 Jan 2019, 09:48
Location: Hannover, Deutschland (Germany, Allemagne)

Re: Recovering an xbox360 usb

#2 Post by recuperation »

e3e33e33e3ee3e3e3 wrote: 25 Sep 2023, 12:42 ive been looking for a way to recover my usb
USB is an interface. Please specify exactly for what kind of device your "usb" stands for.


that has been configured for use with my xbox360, it has my profile and saves on it. problem is, pcs cant read xbox "language" without special software like this: https://gruntmods.com/usb-xtaf-explorer/ in my search i was recommended testdisk/photorec

i tried the testdisk exe, and got to a point where i got these options: "A: add partition, L: Load backup, Enter: to continue" pressing enter gives me a message that says "No partition found or selected for recovery", has it simply not found anything or should i add partition? i dont want to accidentally do something that overwrites or breaks something, i dont really know what this option does exactly
Your download contains a manual in the pdf file format. Further documentation is online:

https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step

after this i tried the photorec exe, it gave me xbox stuff for sure, but its only a few hundred mb, mostly .png, .avi, .wav and .txt etc, with a few .gz or .tff, basically screenshots, menu icons, intro movies and that kind of thing, i had something like 12 gb on that usb. the photorec exe didnt have any option for xbox
Photorec typically does not need that information. You can provide this information by use of the command line. Search your manual for the term "xbox"!
like the testdisk one did - it seems like it couldnt see most of it? it also gave me all that in 4 different folders which i thought was kinda weird
As recovery tool of last resort Photorec tries to recover files that are saved in one folder after another. Photorec does not recover metada information such as folder structures.
how i got here is, i had bought a 2nd xbox360 i wanted to use for a backup, i formatted a usb in the 1st xbox, but when i put it in the 2nd xbox, it couldnt see what was on there for some reason and only gave me the option to configure it again. so i decided to try that, then transfer everything again, even tho it took a long time

well my dumb ass assumed it copied the files, but it moves them. so i just formatted the usb with my 14 or 15 year old profile and a bunch of my saves with no backup. now instead of making a backup, im looking for ways to get my stuff back. i made it way worse lol

i cancelled the format as soon as i started it when i realized i should probably check what it does

i dont own much other than my xbox. so if someone can show me how i can fix all this, itll be a massive save

e3e33e33e3ee3e3e3
Posts: 2
Joined: 16 Sep 2023, 15:05

Re: Recovering an xbox360 usb

#3 Post by e3e33e33e3ee3e3e3 »

recuperation wrote: 25 Sep 2023, 21:51
e3e33e33e3ee3e3e3 wrote: 25 Sep 2023, 12:42 ive been looking for a way to recover my usb
USB is an interface. Please specify exactly for what kind of device your "usb" stands for.


that has been configured for use with my xbox360, it has my profile and saves on it. problem is, pcs cant read xbox "language" without special software like this: https://gruntmods.com/usb-xtaf-explorer/ in my search i was recommended testdisk/photorec

i tried the testdisk exe, and got to a point where i got these options: "A: add partition, L: Load backup, Enter: to continue" pressing enter gives me a message that says "No partition found or selected for recovery", has it simply not found anything or should i add partition? i dont want to accidentally do something that overwrites or breaks something, i dont really know what this option does exactly
Your download contains a manual in the pdf file format. Further documentation is online:

https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step

after this i tried the photorec exe, it gave me xbox stuff for sure, but its only a few hundred mb, mostly .png, .avi, .wav and .txt etc, with a few .gz or .tff, basically screenshots, menu icons, intro movies and that kind of thing, i had something like 12 gb on that usb. the photorec exe didnt have any option for xbox
Photorec typically does not need that information. You can provide this information by use of the command line. Search your manual for the term "xbox"!
like the testdisk one did - it seems like it couldnt see most of it? it also gave me all that in 4 different folders which i thought was kinda weird
As recovery tool of last resort Photorec tries to recover files that are saved in one folder after another. Photorec does not recover metada information such as folder structures.
how i got here is, i had bought a 2nd xbox360 i wanted to use for a backup, i formatted a usb in the 1st xbox, but when i put it in the 2nd xbox, it couldnt see what was on there for some reason and only gave me the option to configure it again. so i decided to try that, then transfer everything again, even tho it took a long time

well my dumb ass assumed it copied the files, but it moves them. so i just formatted the usb with my 14 or 15 year old profile and a bunch of my saves with no backup. now instead of making a backup, im looking for ways to get my stuff back. i made it way worse lol

i cancelled the format as soon as i started it when i realized i should probably check what it does

i dont own much other than my xbox. so if someone can show me how i can fix all this, itll be a massive save
its a usb flash drive, which i put my xbox profile and game saves on

i tried running testdisk again - selecting xbox, it says "bad xbox partition, invalid signature". i read that it defaults to whatever it detects as the partition type, and found that it defaults to "none", so i decided to try that. it showed me a partition, with a certain number of sectors which, after i did the conversions, was the correct 15 gb. so i went ahead and copied the files, even though it was shown as fat32. but when i did this, even though what im after should be 15 gb, it gave me a file of only 8,192 kb.
this is similar to what happens with photorec, where what i got was only 367 mb. i found the option for keeping corrupted files and this only got it to 374 mb

so, unless im reading the "number of sectors" wrong or theres something i dont know, im confident theres 15 gb there, and that there is xbox stuff on it from looking at the files i got - but i cant seem to get it all back

also, in photorec, i enabled all filetypes and turned on advanced mode, when i went to start analysing again, i got "Try to unformat a FAT filesystem (Y/N)" what will this do?
also, how can i enter commands, to have it look for xbox stuff?

recuperation
Posts: 2742
Joined: 04 Jan 2019, 09:48
Location: Hannover, Deutschland (Germany, Allemagne)

Re: Recovering an xbox360 usb

#4 Post by recuperation »

e3e33e33e3ee3e3e3 wrote: 27 Sep 2023, 14:37 also, in photorec, i enabled all filetypes and turned on advanced mode, when i went to start analysing again, i got "Try to unformat a FAT filesystem (Y/N)" what will this do?
Photorec will try to reverse the FORMAT command on a FAT32 partition. The xbox file system seems to be a FAT32 derivate. Running this function may be detrimental.

also, how can i enter commands, to have it look for xbox stuff?
There is no need for that.

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